Many of you are already familiar with online advertising. You don’t need me to tell you that there are many bloggers out there who simply rely on advertising to run their blog and to sustain their lives. Examples of “high profile” bloggers include John Chow and Darren Rowse. Many of you are already familiar with the fact that John Chow regularly talks about his monthly revenue from advertising on his personal blog. I’m proud to proclaim that I have in no way helped him earn a single penny through advertising. Why am I proud of this?
I should not say that I am proud of not supporting John’s blog and that I have NOT helped him earn a single penny. Rather, there have been times when I have clicked on certain ads, however, for the most part, I definitely do not bother to even click or browse through the ads on his blog. Much of that is not because I am jealous of his revenue or that I “hate” him. Heck, I don’t even know the guy to say whether I like him or not. In fact, I find his blog to be extremely helpful and I am very thankful for much of the content on his blog. So why do I not support him? It’s nothing personal John, but I simply frown upon the principle of making money online through advertising because most bloggers fail to understand that it is content driving revenue, not advertising.
John does an excellent job of encouraging bloggers to post regularly and avoid common pitfalls when implementing advertising. In fact, he even mentioned in his blog about truly monetizing one’s blog. He also talked about those people who complain about advertising and those who use advertisement blocking software. Let’s face it; I am a strong advocate of blocking online advertising because it is annoying. Too many people, including John, do not adequately place the ads in a manner which does not detract from the content. Does it really matter to me what John has to say about online advertising? Yes and no. He has a great way of offering tips to improve a blog’s visibility on Google and other search engines due to SEO (search engine optimization) techniques. Along those lines, if one can improve their blog’s visibility then they can expect more visits and potentially more clicks on advertising. In a way, I am “stealing” John’s content without supporting him. Do I feel guilty? No because I don’t like online advertising. I think John should really emphasize the fact that all bloggers need to focus only on content before spending any significant amount of time on implementing advertising.
What about other blogs that use online advertising? I’ll be honest, there is only one blog that I visit using Internet Explorer with absolutely NO ad-blocking software. That blog belongs to Jennifer Lynn. What makes her blog really appealing to my eyes is the fact that she does not run banner advertising that feature images. It appears to me that most of her blog relies on Google AdSense and she has done an excellent job of positioning the text ads in a manner that does NOT detract from the content. To show her my appreciation, I occasionally click on the advertising found on her blog.
In essence, I am not against the use of online advertising. I understand that it helps to keep much of the content found online free. However, I do encourage everyone to abandon advertising if they are simply in it for the money. Blogs, such as 30Gigabytes, are simply horrendous and offer poor content. They focus too much on advertising and revenue and constantly and consistently overlook their content.
So what do I do? Primarily, I use and encourage everyone to use Mozilla Firefox along with the AdBlock Plus extension. To keep things fair, I always visit new blogs without blocking any ads to see how it looks. If I find it too annoying, then I simply turn on my ad-block software and I’m happy once again. If your blog uses advertising, that does not mean that I am no friend to your blog. Rather, I hope that you focus primarily on content rather than trying to make a buck or two.
