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…