BLOG ADS SUCK: WHY I DON’T PUT ADS ON MY WEBSITE
We’ve all heard about it. Blog advertisements and how they can possibly bring more money for your blog. We come across blogs that are heavily-advertised; we read articles about people earning money through blog advertisements.
Even stories about how people earn money overnight through advertising. Or we even get e-mails, or invites asking us to join advertising systems.
It almost sounds too good to be true, isn’t it? Is there a hidden catch you didn’t read?
But what good things do advertisements bring to your blog anyway? Do blog ads have more advantages than disadvantages?
1 | Where is your heart as a blogger?
Let me tell you something. There are actually people who only make blogs to monetize the blog by putting a lot of ads everywhere in the website.
Not trying to generalize but there are some people whose only intention to make a blog is to gain money from it. This intention is not really nice. It may be clever but the “blogger” is lacking the love of blogging.
To blog is to write articles about your own hobbies, your own passion and share them with the world. Early bloggers in the fetus-age of the internet quotes, “I was only interested to share about the place I have visited to other people so that they can have information and decide whether they would like to visit as well.”
This travel blogger has good intentions, drive and passion to share about his interest.
If you have the passion about the topic you are writing in your blogs, your articles will become more enjoyable and interesting to people.
If you are only writing to be recognized, almost always that the articles you write are bad. Oftentimes, if a writer or blogger is not enjoying what he is doing, his words will sound unnatural.
And if you are only writing for recognition, and the thought of money, it defeats the purpose of blogging.
You would appear as a hypocrite and if your readers begin to notice your true intentions, they would stop patronizing your website — losing possible clickers to all ads you put in your blog.
2 | Advertising only pays you in small amounts
After reading the subtitle, you frowned hard, didn’t you? Contrary to popular myths that advertising can bring you tons of money overnight, well, the thing is — it doesn’t.
If you learn more about advertising, you will begin to realize that not all things you hear or read about advertising. Most of it are half-told lies and sugarcoated words.
As you read more about this method of monetizing your blog, you came to realize how pricing really works. And in order to get paid through advertising, you must create a lot of traffic for your site.
There must be people who will click on this blogs.
Per say, the pricing works this way — for every person who click on the ad, you earn $0.05. That means you will need 10 people to click on this ad to earn five dollars.
But the things are, only few people click on these ads. Some of them are smart enough to know that some ads contain virus, while some are smart enough to not click ads and only focus on the content of the website they are reading.
This will be extremely hard if you do not have a lot of regular visitors daily and you are still starting off in blogging and you still don’t have a solid reader base.
We get down to our conclusion that advertising requires a lot of traffic. And if you do have traffic on your blog, there are many better and much clever ways you can use to monetize this traffic.
3 | Advertisements can slow down your website
Yes, according to studies by professionals, advertisements actually make your website load slower. Of course, many visitors do not like visiting slow websites.
People easily get annoyed when a YouTube video does not load fast or when it’s very slow it freezes. People are likely to click away when a website loads slowly and even freezes from time-to-time. Don’t let your readers go away just because of slow time-loading!
4 | Advertisements can be distracting
If you are not a “blogger” who only blogs for monetizing your blog, or if you are actually a blogger who enjoys writing on his blog and has passion in writing — advertisements can compete to the hard work you are putting in your articles.
You spend 2–3 hours crafting the perfect and interesting article for your readers. You sit down in front of your laptop with your glass of coffee. You put so much thought into your titles and introductions to keep them interesting. Every word you write, you think twice about it. Some articles even take many drafts or so — taking up much of your time.
After a few drafts, you are satisfied with your article and post it on your blog — hoping people would enjoy the articles you have written and even give feedback and constructive criticism.
A visitor sees your article and easily gets attracted to the catchy title you put so much effort thinking. Great job! The visitor actually gets attracted until the middle of your article.
But what’s this — ? The visitor sees a blinking red box on the side of your website. Oh no! The blinking red box attracts the visitor’s attention and he forgets about your hard work article. He clicks on it and completely neglects the article he had only half-finished.
Isn’t that disappointing and such a waste?
Advertisements are actually designed to be attention-seeking. Oftentimes in really eye-catching and obnoxious colors and graphically designed to take attention away.
If you are making content and actually want people to take that content seriously — advertisements are not the best way to go.
5 | You are not your boss anymore
Bloggers are the own bosses of themselves. You can freely pick the time you can work. You can pick your own day-off, without asking anyone for permission. But if you run advertisements, you’re not exactly the boss anymore.
You don’t like how much you’re getting paid? Well, bad news for you but you can’t ask for a raise. You would even need to reach a minimum amount or quota for your blog.
And what’s worse? If you accidentally slip up and violate the Terms of Conditions, guess what? You lose everything you have.
You might want to avoid running advertisements if you do not like being bossed around. Which, a vast majority of bloggers have as an attitude.
6 | People will become lazy and you will too
As people click on your site, the first thing they would notice is the colorful parts of the blog — probably your header and the advertisement boxes lining your website on the sides.
If your visitors see that you have ads running along your website, they would assume that you are immediately selling them something.
Taking it into the real world, someone tries to ask for your money even if you’ve just met them a few moments ago. Now, isn’t that just weird and creepy? You would immediately back away and avoid the person as much as possible.
Visitors would do the same to your blog. They wouldn’t even do a once-over on the content of your blog (even if you do have amazing content). And they would immediately back away, close the tab and forget your website altogether.
At the same time of managing your blogs, you also manage these ads. And sometimes, you even forget that you are running a blog and your purpose to post great content and blog about your passion. You don’t exactly keep your label as a “blogger” but instead, you also become a part-time advertisement manager which could be a distraction for you, as a blogger.
If there are many things going in your hands, it is impossible to create quality work equally and all your time and effort will be invested on the advertisements and not the blog you worked so much to build.
7 | You risk the reputation of your blog
Having the blogs on your website is selected randomly by the algorithms that run your blog. Say, Google AdSense for an example.
And what if a defective product or service, or even a not-so-well company suddenly appears on the side of your website?
You don’t even want to use such defective product. But actually having it posted on your website can imply that you’re are endorsing it and recommending it to others.
What if someone used that product and it did they harm than good? Wouldn’t that greatly affect your reputation, especially if you had already built a good reputation for your website?
You can’t do anything. You can’t remove it on your website and just watch it there, displaying itself and hoping that it does not affect your reputation or hope that nobody tries it.
8 | You look like an amateur — even if you are not
Say, you’ve been a blogger since the early days of the internet. And you can actually consider yourself someone who is knowledgeable and almost an expert about this field.
You’ve been blogging for years, and you’ve already mastered the tips and tricks on how to get around this business.
And then you suddenly heard about advertising and thinks that it is a great idea! You apply it to your blog and then, you get feedback about being an amateur and having a mediocre blog?
If visitors see your website, they would easily think that you are actually thinking the few bucks of advertising are actually worth it. Would these visitors still give your content a try?
They would but it is very unlikely that they would still give your blog a chance.
Visitors often have the mindset that blogs with ads are made by amateurs and you do not like that.
9 | There are other ways to monetize traffic on your blog
Even if blog advertisements are a popular way of monetizing your blog, don’t let yourself be pulled in by the bandwagon effect and instead search for other ways in which you can make money from your hard work.
You may actually sell your own products. You may sell your visitors’ merchandise, such as t-shirts or tumblers, or even sell them e-books or even physical books that contain your content such as life advises or business-related advise.
And of course, do all of your will to advertise your own products, just don’t go overboard.
You may even offer such services to your readers. Of course, the services you offer should be related to your content. There are many ways you can monetize your blog, so sit down and think about it.
10 | You do not achieve the goal of your blog
If you focus on adding advertisements to your blog, instead of actually focusing on improving the content of your blog, you are slowly forgetting about your goal — to share to people your passion, to write about your hobbies and interests, to entertain people, to tell people about something.
This does not exactly happen if you have ads running around in your blog. You want to keep your visitors, but at the same time you post ads on your website, rubbing it on your reader’s faces.
These are very contradicting ideologies. The ads take your readers away from your site, which you work hard to not happen.
You put all your effort to keep your readers binge-reading about content in your website. But as you display ads everywhere, you are not achieving your goal — or any goal either.
Note: I have no problems with Cost-Per-Click & Cost-Per-Impression Ads or something, these reasons are only my opinion about the said topic.
Also, this doesn’t mean that I will not put advertisements on my blog; I will only put direct product advertisements that I have used and really recommend rather than accept ads with third-party companies.
Note: If you’re looking for a freelance writer who specializes in online marketing, check my portfolio blog and let’s talk about business.
