To Ad Sense or Not to Ad Sense

[Fortune Hunter]

I came across a blog last year and have been an avid reader ever since. The owner makes a pretty healthy living off Google Ad Sense. His articles and postings are very good and he puts a lot of time into them. As a result he has developed a very high traffic web site and that is why he added the Ad Sense. He wrote a post that discusses how to create a high traffic blog, which was also very good. In this post he says you should have the blogging software on your own site and domain instead of something like blogger because in his opinion you should be building up your own asset instead of someone else's, i.e. Google's. His site gives away all the content. He doesn't try to sell himself as a consultant or sell products, or anything else as far as I can tell. He does make a ton of cash off the Ad Sense though.

This was a long way of getting to my question, which is if I added a blog to my own site, but the site's purpose is to promote my company and its services would you allow Google Ad Sense on the site also if you were going to have the blog on the site?

I am struggling with the concept that allowing ads on the site, even if I make money off them somehow diminishes my services or takes away from my image. For my industry my content is typically very good, so I believe that the content itself has value and would be easy to "monetize" but I am afraid by doing so I somehow hurt my efforts of positioning my own services. I am also hoping to make money off selling my own products, which I am afraid would be harder if the ads on the site, which I don't control, would lead people away, possibly to a competitor's site. At the same time the idea of making a solid stream of income off of Ad Sense where I don't really have to do anything other than maintain good content sounds great as well. I would love to hear if others have faced this choice and how you handled it.

FH

[incrediBILL]

Do ads in magazines and newspapers diminish the content?

Without the ads there would be no content in the first place because the authors of that content would not get paid. Note that newspapers and magazines ARE a subscription service and still use advertising to survive as the subscription only covers basic costs.

If you don't get paid you can't eat and quickly shrivel up and die.

Now death, that's diminished.

I would say TRY AdSense before jumping to a big conclusion because it doesn't work well with all blogs but on some it works wonderfully. However, until you know if it can properly monetize your content speculation of using it or not is purely that, speculation since it might be a waste of time.

[Quadrille]

If you have a site to be proud of, you must never fear visitors leaving your site; they'll be back!

I alwayas work on the basis that visitors have to leave sometime, so if they want to (indirectly) pay a leaving fee, that's fine by me.

And if my rivals want to pay me to receive used visitors, that's fine too!

But you do need to consider your niche, your target audience and many other issues before deciding. In genral however, it's a case of try it and see what happens - if you put adsense on for a limited period, or part of your site, any potential harm is limited.

Blogs aren't special; most people are well used to seeing ads on blogs; why would yours be different.

I agree about placing the blog on your own site - eg domain.com/blog - that way, incoming links are pointed at your own domain. But it doesn't matter whose software you use - use whatever works and is free / cheap!

Matt Cutts (Google) advises not to have the blog at domain.com, nor at domain.com/wordpress or domain.com/blogger (or whatever) - this gives you the flexibility to change your blog source, plus allows you to use domain.com for it's primary purpose of being an 'index', key page for the whole site.

[incrediBILL]

FWIW you can use blogger and STILL point the blog to your own hosted domain, assuming you want people to figure out who you are...

[Fortune Hunter]

Do ads in magazines and newspapers diminish the content?

Excellent point! I never really thought about it like that until you put it that way. That is one of the reasons I love posting here so much because other people can sometimes see what I just couldn't being so close to the issue. Thanks!

FH