I am a John Chow disciple. I subscribe to his RSS feed, and while his blog trumpets how to make money by creating a blog, often it’s an excuse to blog about a restaurant he’s eating at so it becomes a tax deduction.
Regardless, John offers up many great tips on ads, affiliate networks and other sorts of things you can throw up on your site to make some cake.
Earlier this week I made a post about Google Ads and how I think they’ve become invisible to many blog readers. I was eagerly messaged by many friends, including John, urging me to remove the post since, according to Miss 604, “the first rule of AdSense is you don’t blog about AdSense.”
Maybe my point wasn’t made properly, today I’ve run into 2 separate posts basically saying the same thing I was saying: ads on the internet are becoming invisible.
My readers made it clear via their clicks that they were totally uninterested in Google AdSense sidebar ads. After a few short, unprofitable months with AdSense, I switched my strategy to targeted, in-context advertorial content. [Electrolicious]
John trumpets Kontera as a solution to advertising within a blog post. My cyberbuzz site has Kontera added to it. Links that are double underlined are paid external links. They look a little bit different, but still blend in with the flow of the site and don’t stand out.
In a way, there’s already a trend against ads not working as well as they used to on blogs. PR agencies have been trying to get positive reviews and posts on their products almost from day one, but with PayPerPost, ReviewMe, and whatnot, there are more organized ways to get recognition. You can make a decent amount of money by selling your content this way, and several hotshot bloggers are for sale. [The Blog Herald]
I even read another example of how radio ads and endorsements are starting to fall on deaf ears as well.
I use the example in the book where I listen to Daily Source Code with Adam Curry, and he kept talking about his great experience flying Virgin Atlantic. He was talking about Virgin because, you know, he’s a human being and he loved the experience. Well, guess what? When I was flying to the UK and thinking about which airline I wanted to fly, I ended up flying Virgin - all because of one person - one person’s not even overt recommendation, but endorsement. I’ve never met this person before, but I trusted him. I just felt like I trusted him. I trusted them because I listen to him regularly. Gee, that sounds pretty familiar. [Hear 2.0]
So the blog as personal advisor works far better than the blog as advertiser. Local blogstar, Miss 604 is running into what can only be described as a “tech ceiling.”
… when a Vancouver blogger wants to promote restaurants and businesses in the city, what does it take to get a company to hop on board? For example, I’ve personally been told by at least thirty people that my (unsolicited) blog post recommendation to visit a certain butcher shop/deli turned them into faithful regulars of the establishment - score! Blogging equals links equals customers.[Miss 604]
Endorsements work, but they have to subtle endorsements. The Electrolicious example fully details how she went about monetizing her site, and if you’re thinking about working the money magic, it’s a good read.
John can tell you all about how he makes $450 for a ReviewMe posting, and that might be another option for you to chase down.
Me? This blog is about me bitching about things I find interesting and think you might find interesting as well, I don’t know if selling myself is quite the right way to go about things (yet).
So my original post, which I won’t repost because of the advice of my Google-Fu friends, was basically correct - ads are invisible.
The ones you don’t see aren’t working, the ones you don’t even know were there, are.
The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?.
and a tax receipt for supporting Team Diabetes.
