An interesting post from Stu about a contract I might have with you. Can’t say I agree with much of what’s suggested, though!
What would you think if I said to you,
“I’ll provide you free content, if you pop by once in a while and look at my advertisers ads.”
As someone who does stuff on the Internet in order to make money, I can appreciate the value of and strive to own valueable assets that are popular websites with consistent and sustainable traffic. The benefits to be had from having such a piece of virtual real estate stretch far beyond the ads that one can serve from it. I consider ads to be a rather primitive and superficial way of monetising a website. There’s just not a lot of depth, no back-end or repeat sales to be made.
Putting it bluntly, my opinion is that people, generally, don’t like conventional ads that they can derive no significant benefit from. One could say that a relevant ad could be considered valueable, but I’d be more concerned about serving too many ads in order to make the same amount of revenue that could be generated in other less in-your-face ways.
That’s where affiliate links can be set apart because you can offer the value in terms of an objective review of a product, for example. I find well-written reviews of products I have a genuine interest in immensely useful. Do I care if there’s an affiliate link at the end of the review? As long as it doesn’t cost me any more than a non-affiliated link, why should I?
Besides, I would rather encourage someone to provide useful content with an affiliate link than to plaster their website with ads that I’ll eventually tune out anyway.
I also appreciate that people will be more willing to link to a website that provides useful content without forcing the visitor to seek it through advertising. Some of my websites have been refused listing in directories because they were, in the opinion of the submission reviewer, too ad-heavy. The more inbound links I can attract to my websites, the better they’ll fair when it comes to SEO and I’m sure you can appreciate the value in that.
Going back to ads v affiliate links in reviews again, I’d suggest people would be more willing to link to a website that offered useful content with affiliate links than with ads. As for blockers, I’ve yet to see an affiliate link blocker so from a content provider’s point of view they’re a better monetsation solution.
As a blogger, I use my blog primarily to share my thoughts, experiences and the occasional piece of advice with anyone who wants it. Do I expect anything from you, the reader? No! Do I expect you to disable your ad blockers? Hell no! Besides being a practically unenforceable rule, I block ads myself so I can appreciate what might annoy you. Look at the list of most popular Firefox extensions. See the ad blockers? I helped to get them into that ranking by installing and using them!
I think if we all took a step back, and showed some appreciation to the providers of the content we consume, the providers would be more willing to make their content available for “free”, and there’s be more content for us to consume.
It’s not that I disagree with that sentiment completely, but I do believe that readers need to be given incentives to act. If I visited a website that said upon entry,
“Drop your ad shields and prepare your web browser to be boarded by an advert landing party”
I’d laugh, divert power from non-essential systems and arm phasers.
Come at me with a useful freebie and in return I might disarm and open that comm line.
Yep, that’s the trekkie in me coming out, but hopefully you’ll catch my drift!
Technorati Tags: Monetising blogs, Monetizing blogs
Hey Fool! (Sorry, wanted to say that since the first time I visited here!
)
You make some valid points, but what about the fact that there’s not always an affiliate product available for every niche. I wouldn’t trust most affiliate reccommendations as far as I could kick them on a windy day either. There’s something in me that sets off alarm bells every time I roll over a link and see “ref?=2342342″ (or in your case: “/recommends/product_xyz” – everybody know’s that’s just a redirected affiliate link) or something similar tacked on the end. The crediblity of the post seems to lack something where it’s just a sales pitch.
The point I was trying to make is that it costs somebody time and effort, and sometimes money to produce quality content. Why should the reader begrudge the blogger the ability to make some return on that investment?
I just don’t get the whole idea of ad blockers. Popup blockers – yep, got one of those, but ad blockers. If you like the content that much to visit the site, why would you begrudge the creator of the content the ad impressions he needs to try to make a return on all the time he has spent creating it.
I’ll be writing a bit more on this tomorrow, but let’s say I have a blog about blue budgerigars, I have the best site on the net on this subject, with thousands of pages of quality content. You’re an avid budgerigar fan, and have been visiting the site for years with your ad blocker installed. One day, you visit the site, and click a link to look at the latest news in the blue budgerigar world, to be greeted with a page that says you need to register and pay $10 a month to access the latest news. You’d be angry, right.
“How dare this bastard try to make money from me!” You might say. But he’s got to cover the costs of running the site, and maybe be compensated for all the time he puts into it. Without your ad impressions, where’s the motivation for him to provide that content for free to you?
There is no contract unless both parties have an agreement, express or implied. A sites cost doesn’t have to be covered by itself – why cannot another site that a person owns cover the costs of more than itself ?
I expect precisely nothing of my readers. You wanna read my crap, feel free, You don’t wanna read, that’s great. Wanna click my aff link – go right ahead. Don’t wanna click it? That’s great.
There’s nothing better than an Affiliate Link in a message, particularly when the person promoting the link has used the product or service, and is willing to answer questions that the prospective purchaser might have. It’s open and it’s honest; “If you like my write up about XYZ and you believe it might help with your bottom-line, consider using my link to purchase.” Remember that no-one is forcing the reader to buy the product…
Taking this quote;
“I’ll provide you free content, if you pop by once in a while and look at my advertisers ads.â€
No, what is being provided is content for yourself, in the hope that a reader will;
a/ be interested enough to read it
b/ look at/click on some ads
Take that 1st paragraph of mine, it doesn’t read right.
Site A ~ Site B ~ Site C
Why can’t Site C, cover the cost of itself as well as the costs of A & B, or vice-versa. That’s what I meant.
It’s better when you say it with a Mr. T voice.
a) they’re not always affiliate links
b) I appreciate that most readers will understand that they may be affiliate links
My intention isn’t to hide any affiliate links by using redirects. There are other factors to consider:
a) I’m not linking to someone elses website
b) I can track the number of clicks to gauge interest
c) The URLs are so much nicer
Given the typical audience that’s likely to read my blog, I see any income generated from affiliate referrals as a nice bonus.
But it’s not always “just a sales pitch” and the reader has the option of not using the link. Is there any more credibility from a post that’s paid for?
You mean like with an affiliate link?
Like Gary, I don’t see that I have to cover the cost of running this website with the money earnt from it. It’s not what I set out to achieve with it. This blog is more of a personal thing, something that I wanted to do. If other people enjoy it then great. Even if all I get out of it is to engage in interesting discussions with other people then I’ve got my value.
If a website/blog that I frequented suddenly went paid membership then I’d simply make the choice of coughing up or not. It wouldn’t really be my place to demand content for free if the provider wanted to charge for it.
I know the subject keeps coming back to making money from content, but I’ve got a nice little PR5 blog with a bit of traffic. There are other ways to benefit from it!
It’s an intersting discussion. Well, there are two types of readers – one who land up at your site through search engine or other sources such as digg, reddit etc, and the others are your regular readers who find your content valuable. Of course there should not be any contract or pressure on any of these readers. If you can throw some affiliate links or ads matching the theme of your website and if the reader finds them of interest, he will click on them and may end up in buying the product. I myself won’t bother to worry if that is an affiliate link as long as I am not paying more than the actual value. Even a traffic of 100 uniques per day can be converted to five to ten affiliate sales per week in that way.
I recently came across these blogs maintained by Angela
http://workathomemomblog.blogspot.com
http://herpes-help.blogspot.com
She does not do any sales pitches in her posts and writes honestly. Her Alexa ratings are also so so. But yet with these free blogs, she manages to generate about thousand dollars per month in affiliate income (check her post dated Oct 16).
So I feel it is better not to worry about the income you generate from the blogs on a short term basis. With a well designed blog with the right content, you can make money even without displeasing your readers.