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6:07 am
February 5, 2012
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Funancials
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To keep things in perspective…Mark Zuckerberg waited years and years (longer than venture capitalists had hoped) before he considered monetizing Facebook. There were millions of active users he could have profited from but was more focused on the end product (in our case it's the content).
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8:22 am
February 5, 2012
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The Frugal Toad
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I'm of the opinion that it is preferable to place adsense sooner rather than later as your readers will notice and possibly question your intent. I run new posts without adsense for the first week using WhyDoWork Adsense plugin as do many others.
As others have said, content should be your primary focus and not monetization.
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11:08 am
February 5, 2012
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Modest Money
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Good point funancials. The same goes for sites like google and youtube. It is a different situation though. With those sites the potential was so huge that early ads would be very risky. If I thought my blog might be worth billions or even millions, I'd have no problem waiting on putting up ads. When things are on a much smaller scale, I personally feel that ads from the start is the way to go.
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11:53 am
February 6, 2012
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Suba @ Wealth Informatics
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Post edited 11:55 am – February 6, 2012 by Suba @ Wealth Informatics
I didn't have ads for the first 8 months. If I had to do it again, I would still do the same. This was (and still is) my reasoning.
1) I am obsessed with stats. I already check all the Alexa, compete, google analytics, sitemeter.. add another 100 stats… If I add the ads, I will check that one too.
2) I like money. So even though I will "tell" myself that I won't earn anything, just because it is another "possibility", I will still track the money, try to learn about how to optimize the ads, what I am doing wrong… Total waste of time. The logical me would tell me the only wrong thing is to check how much I made, but I know me and I know that I would check it anyway.
3) Over optimizing for nothing. I have seen people asking questions about the font color or the format of the ads that gets more clicks when they have 10 posts. When you have ads and nothing happens with the revenue but someone said they earned $x, you will start second guessing and start changing ads when you should be writing and making the content better.
4) For every one saying the readers will be pissed off about suddenly adding ads, I want to ask – What readers? Do you know what your readers personally like or hate in your site? Have you asked them that and they said they were unhappy about something? Readers come for content and as far as I know, most blog readers are ad blind, so they won't even notice a change unless you point them to it. And you are giving them valuable content, they won't resent it.
I wanted to wait until I hit a certain traffic level before I added ads. That is what I would do again because it let me concentrate on one metric – traffic and I learned things that will improve it.
I wanted to concentrate on writing and for ME, I wanted to avoid the distraction of money which I know would attract me even though I love blogging. Now, for any other blog I don't care whether they have ads on the first day or the after a few years and I also don't know care for the ads as long as it is not a pop up or something that is tricky enough and makes me click on it to read the content…
I might be totally wrong, as I am not an experience blogger so take it for what it is – my 2c :)
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1:47 pm
February 6, 2012
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MaximizingMoney
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Funancials said:
To keep things in perspective…Mark Zuckerberg waited years and years (longer than venture capitalists had hoped) before he considered monetizing Facebook. There were millions of active users he could have profited from but was more focused on the end product (in our case it's the content).
Yeah, but wasn't Mark still getting rich through funding and other resources during this time. It's not like he wasn't making any money at all, because he was only focused on the end product for his users. He was still getting relatively rich, but just choosing to do so in other ways and not through ads. That's a little different than being completely altruistic.
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4:09 pm
February 6, 2012
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Funancials
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MaximizingMoney said:
Funancials said:
To keep things in perspective…Mark Zuckerberg waited years and years (longer than venture capitalists had hoped) before he considered monetizing Facebook. There were millions of active users he could have profited from but was more focused on the end product (in our case it's the content).
Yeah, but wasn't Mark still getting rich through funding and other resources during this time. It's not like he wasn't making any money at all, because he was only focused on the end product for his users. He was still getting relatively rich, but just choosing to do so in other ways and not through ads. That's a little different than being completely altruistic.
Could he afford to eat? yes. But don't all of us have primary jobs as well? We don't (or shouldn't) rely solely on blogging income. If you're placing ads without visitors then clearly you're wanting to make money. If you're wanting to make money, you're better off getting a part-time job paying $7.25/hr.
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4:50 pm
February 6, 2012
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First Million is the Hardest
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My site is fairly new and I don't have ads on it yet, although I've been toying around with the idea lately. I've been a reader of all different sorts of blogs for years, I don't think if or when you decide to put ads up matters as much as HOW. The mere presence of ads has never turned me off from a website, but if the amount of advertising starts to overshadow the amount/quality of content on the page its likely I won't be returning to that site anytime soon.
Just my $0.02, Its certainly an interesting discussion either way.
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6:10 pm
February 6, 2012
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Shannyn @FrugalBeautiful.com
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Whatever you do, just don't ad the videos that start audio automatically…those are instant "red x"'ers in my book!
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7:38 pm
February 6, 2012
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MaximizingMoney
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Could he afford to eat? yes. But don't all of us have primary jobs as well? We don't (or shouldn't) rely solely on blogging income. If you're placing ads without visitors then clearly you're wanting to make money. If you're wanting to make money, you're better off getting a part-time job paying $7.25/hr.
I'm not sure if everyone here has primary jobs beyond blogging, but at least a few don't I think, and I believe some people do rely solely on blogging-related income. If you're placing ads at all, with or without visitors, then clearly you want to make money, but yes, you're probably better off getting that part-time job until you can clear $7.25 an hour blogging, especially if the rent is due soon.
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9:33 pm
February 6, 2012
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Dominique Brown
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I put 2 ad blocks on my blog early and often so my readers get used to the format. I didn't expect to make any money just want my readers to get used to it.
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4:31 am
February 7, 2012
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Invest It Wisely
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I think putting Adsense early on is fine, but I actually haven't done it with my two new sites and if I do, I think I will only have them show up on older posts, with maybe a small block on newer posts. Otherwise it's just too intrusive IMO.
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5:09 am
February 7, 2012
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MoneyBeagle
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I haven't enabled anything on my newer site yet, which is just around 3 months old. I was thinking to wait at least six months.
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8:47 am
February 8, 2012
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Mark D. Cook
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MoneyBeagle said:
I haven't enabled anything on my newer site yet, which is just around 3 months old. I was thinking to wait at least six months.
Good idea! I waited over six months after building a little bit of a following until I threw any ads on my blog.
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9:12 am
February 8, 2012
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Aubrey Rose
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I think its okay to run them from the get-go. Its not like you are expecting to make hundreds right off the bat.
My blog isn't "brand new" but is still in the being established phase, and I run ad's with adsense. Now I only earn like a penny a day, but hey… thats MY penny!
Also I plan on switching from adsense to larger ad's if my blog ever gets that large. I just don't want my readers to be shocked when that happens.
I write because I love to write, but the money I make from my blog goes straight to my adoption fund. So every little penny really does count.
Whats the harm, as long as they aren't popping up. Personally, I don't even notice ad's anymore.
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9:14 pm
February 8, 2012
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MyJourneytoMillions
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I don't think adding ads is a big deal in terms of reader enjoyment…that being said I think it has one massive con:
People get discouraged from blogging.
94% (read: made up stat) of bloggers aren't going to make SHIT off adsense for 6 to 12 months. So I think it can really hurt someone's ego that they have worked on a site putting up 3 to 5 posts up a week to earn NOTHING. For me, it took 18 months to get a check from adsense (I have earned a pretty good one EVERY month since then). My obsession to get that first check can be a HUGE downer for a lot of people.
SIDE NOTE:
Everyone that is saying to get the readers used to ads and they have only been blogging for a few months, I have to ask this question, and I mean no disrespect: what readers? At 3 months I was lucky to get 40 people a day, and I may be even be inflating that number. Those coming to the site that early are probably awesome yakezities so ads/no ads probably doesn't really matter. I am not sure if this is a pro or con just a random thought as I read the thread.
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1:45 am
February 9, 2012
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Eugene Craig III
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I may be in the minority, but I have always viewed having credible ads as a vote of confidence. I think there are positives and negatives to having ads on your sites early on. They could add ethos to your site if they are highly relevant, but due to low traffic numbers the return on the ads will be low to non-existent. I guess to each his own! – Gene
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