I’ve Realized It’s Too Early
February 7,2008
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I realized that it’s too early to monetize my blog. Since the beginning of this blog, I had implemented AdSense and other contextual advertising on my blog in the hopes of making money. And the money did come rolling in, but only in little amounts, and even after two months, I didn’t make more than $5 
.
Now I have realized that I didn’t do any good in monetizing my blog from the very start. This and this changed my mind, and should change yours too.
So, why do I think monetizing a blog from the very start is not very good?
- You don’t have much traffic to take advantage of. Just placing ads won’t do any good to you if don’t have much traffic. What good is done if there is no one to look at your ads?
- Might turn visitors away. People come to your blog to read your content, not look at your ads. Content plastered with ads will most probably irritate readers. A lone, unobtrusive ad is alright, though.
- Advertisers won’t advertise on your blog. Since your blog is new, and you don’t have much traffic, advertisers won’t like spending their money on something that won’t benefit them. So, you won’t find advertisers who are interested in advertising on your site. Only when your blog grows substantially will anyone be interested in advertising on your blog.
- You waste space. The space that is used up by the ads can be utilized to show your best posts, or any awards you may have won. Very important in the process of building up your blog.
In lieu of the above and after reading the mentioned articles, I decided to strip my blog of all advertisements except the long 336×280 AdSense ad at the bottom of posts, and the Firefox recommendation for non-Firefox users. That’s enough, at least for now.
Only after my blog becomes substantially bigger, will I exploit its monetization potential . But for now, I will be going to focus fully on providing quality content and building up my blog.
I know, its painful. But I’m aiming for the long term benefits, not the short term, short-lived benefits.
Any comments?
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Muhammad
Spot on! An upcoming blogger must really concentrate on building his/her blog’s patronage before thinking about monetization.But things like PayPerPost,Blogvertise,smorty are not harmful
yes you may be right, clement. Also, an occasional adsense ad here and there might not harm either. But you shouldn’t aggressively push with monetization early on: there’s the blog to build first!
You know, it’s like putting the cart before the horse, or making a new born wear adult clothes. That’s just not the correct approach! (or the thing to do in the case of the newborn!)
Having ads on your site will not only cause you the few problems that you will face above. They will also distract and throttles your productivity as they might urge you indirectly to waste your time to check your earnings.
Spend more time to create compelling contents is what a new blogger supposed to do so that you can make your appearance heard.
All the best in blogging.
Thanks for the mention.
I think your decision is wise. I have to say that here I disagree with Clement: I think that for a new blog paid posts are twice harmful: one one hand you are in danger of losing credibility with Google (and believe me, I’ve been downgraded from a PR 5 to 0 over night), and on the other hand, if you don’t build your good content and your strong articles first, people won’t come back to read your paid reviews about some products which probably they also review for money.
I think AdSense is far less harmful than these ones.
simonne - paid posts thru a third party like ReviewMe, PayperPost, etc can harm you (as you said, in terms of PR). But if you do everything privately (that is, deal with the advertiser privately without any middleman), then you’re fine, I say!
The problem with going from no ads then adding ads is that your users will notice the sudden introduction of ads. If you always have a few, and grow them slowly overtime as and when you feel you can/need to then it is less of a shock.
Tom - I agree with you that it can be a little unusual. But I’ve not completely removed them: there’s one below posts and so on. When the time comes, I’ll introduce unobtrusive ads like content links, for example. But the main thing is: its not the correct time now to monetize!
2 months and only $5? Pretty good
I know a lots of bloggers who didn`t manage to make more than a buck in a 2 months.
Well, I don`t really have to say anything, you explained a lots of things.. Just focus on providing a good content to your visitors and you`ll know when is it time to monetize your blog.. I`m currently running a website about guitars and blog about almost everything.. Website is generating around $35/month, and I have just recieved my first check this month. As for the blog, it`s only few days old and I don`t really expect to make $ in my first month.. I focused on writing content and getting traffic to my site, adsense will come later!
Nice site you have. I noticed a lots of teenagers writing blogs last few months and teaching others how to make money from blogs. I guess we are pretty advanced generation! Cheers!