When browsing our blog to read the latest comments we have about online business, you have probably noticed that our blog is clear of any sort of advertisement, other than the occasional affiliate link. We decided when we started this blog that we wouldn’t put any advertisements up until we started getting decent traffic.
Originally when we first started the site (being total blog newbies) we had discussed monetizing the site at 1000 uniques a month. This was based on our previous experience with monetizing fan sites. However, we exceeded 2000 uniques but we still feel we haven’t built up enough of a community to start placing ads on our site.
I know some of you are thinking, “hey, ads aren’t bad, I wouldn’t mind them…”. However, there is still a demographic that will be turned off by ads on a site and move to something else, before checking out the content. Since John Chow got big, a lot of people have started their own ‘make money online’ blog (including us), and I notice that many of these new blogs place as many ads on their sites as John does.
I fundamentally disagree with this strategy, and here’s why: when you first start a blog, you need to be focused on one thing alone… building readership. Everything should be centered around that goal. The faster you can get a critical mass in your readership, the faster your blog growth will take on a life of its own, and you can focus on your content and, well… making money!
Having ads on your site at the beginning will turn some people off from your site. Depending on your demographic, it may be a very small amount, but every little bit helps. The amount of money you’ll make when you first start out is insignificant anyway, so you might as well give yourself a little boost in reader retention by making your site ad free.
Dave and Jay won’t stay ad free forever, I’m sure most of you will expect that already, but right now we’re just focusing on growth and so far it’s been working. I know I’m a little bit hypocritical here, since I’ve started off another blog with Adsense on every page. I’ve mainly done that because I’m lazy, and I don’t want to add in Adsense to every post myself, later on. I’m sure this will slow my growth a little bit too.
Good Profits.
April 28th, 2007 at 9:36 am
Thanks for the post! I’ve been blogging two months now, and this month I’m almost at 2000 uniques. I’ve been wrestling with the decision of when to monetize. I would love to know what you guys think! From reading this blog and also your comments on John Chow, I’m sure you guys have a better feel for this stuff than I do. Thanks for the informative post.
April 30th, 2007 at 5:32 am
[…] A few days ago, Dave posted about a question that’s on a lot of peoples’ minds: when is the best time to monetize my blog? The problem is, if you ask 1000 different webmasters this question, you’re liable to get 1000 different answers… but based on the comments people were making, I think this is an issue which warrants further discussion. […]
May 16th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
[…] We would recommend launching your site ad-free and only placing ads once your site has started growing on its own - just in case someone who wanted to link to you was turned off by the amount of ads. It’s not so bad in the long run, but when starting off, are you really going to make meaningful money off 10 visits a week? Here is our reasoning behind putting ads up after a site is semi successful. […]