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When Should I Put Ads On My Blog?

December 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

In the blogging world, nothing strikes up more conversations than the term: monetization.  And the biggest question people ask when it comes to monetizing their blog is:

When should I put ads on my blog?  Should I wait until it is more popular?

My answer is this: as soon as you can.

If you start out with ads blocked out on your blog from the beginning, it will be easy and less invasive for the visitors of your blog.  Imagine you are visiting a site you have been reading for several months, then one day you go and it has google ads, sponsorship ads and affiliate programs scattered around.  That would be quite a shock!  While some people would just shrug it off, others will feel the blog owner has “sold out” and never return.

By placing ads on your blog from the beginning, or at least being aware of their placement and sizes, you can still build your site’s loyalty and they will know what to expect from page to page.

If you have a blog you have not monetized and want to, a good place to do this is during a blog redesign.  By doing it when your site’s look and feel completely changes, yes it will be a shock, but perhaps less-so since the entire experience has changed.

Whether you use google adsense, OpenX, google’s ad serving software DFP, or any kind of ad serving – monetizing your blog is relatively simple to implement on the technical side.

As for should you monetize your blog, that is a question for another post…

Filed Under: Blogging, General, Google Adsense, How do I put ads in my blog?, Make Money Blogging

How Often Should I Change My Blog Layout?

December 8, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Visitors to your blog decide to stay or leave within seconds of arriving at your blog.  Your blog’s layout is one of your biggest and most visible decisions you will ever make, so be sure to make the decision wisely when it comes time to decide whether to change it or not.

The most basic of questions you should ask yourself is: Does it really need to change?  Just because your favorite theme developer comes out with a new theme, does not mean your blog needs to switch to it.  Nor do you have to change the look and feel of your blog just because it has been 6 months since you have changed it.  Some of the best websites and blogs haven’t changed their look in years.

Your blog is about the content.

So when do you change the look and feel of your blog?  There is no hard and fast answer, unfortunately.  One answer is whenever you add something “major” to your blog such as a new service or feature you want to heavily promote.  Even then, you might decide to only create pages for that new section rather than redesign your site.

I admit, I used to try new themes every few months. Now, I have a different approach.  First, I find a theme I think will fit the site for the next year or two, install it, and make the necessary modifications to it so it comes as close to my current “ideal” as possible.  Later, once the blog is established and is generating content, I do a complete analysis of top pages and readjust that theme, making tweaks here and there.  Once the site is becoming more and more active, with more visitors, then and only then, do I look to see if there is a better theme that would help my visitors, or I commission a custom theme.

Changing your theme, even if to a better one will be a definite change for your readers, and some people simply do not like change.  Grow your site, grow your content and change the look and feel of your site only when necessary.

 

Filed Under: Blog Software, General

How Often Should I Do A Blog Post?

December 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

One of the questions I get asked by new and intermediate authors is: How often should I be blogging?  I used to have a scientific answer, akin to: 2-3 times a day, best times between 11am-2pm, do affiliate type posts on Thursdays… etc.  But there is one answer that outweighs the interpretation of log files and statistics:

When you have something awesome to say.


If you are blogging just to be blogging, chances are you will tired of it and enter the “blogfading” phase when you write less and less, but get more and more frustrated at the lack of response and readers of your blog.

When I started blogging, I tried to find the perfect niche, the one that will make the most income and be easily monetized.  So I researched niches, analyzed keywords and competition, then I met Joel Comm and he sat me down and simply asked:

“What are you passionate about?”

I was stunned.  Here I was trying to find a niche to monetize, and he turned me in a complete 180.  It sounds simple – but its true. If you aren’t passionate about your topic, you aren’t going to write about it.

Likewise, Scott Stratten of Un-Marketing told a packed crowd at BlogWorld Expo 2010 to simply “blog awesome.”

Write good, meaningful content when you have something great and meaningful to say.  Whether that is twice a day or twice a week or even twice a month – great content will always outperform quantity of content.

 

 

Filed Under: Blogging, Content, General, Writing