Fellow blogger and friend, Jonathan Ng of Beyond Simplicity (though might be switching to a simpler domain) has written a short review of Blogs Malaysia and started a rather interesting discussion in his entry, Web Designers and Blogs.
Firstly, thanks for promoting me and Stanch for the work done on the new metablog or blog network. I didn’t do much work since Stanch was in control of development. And it’s common that when you’re developing a website, you just can’t the sight of either border-ed DIVs or colored in a solid background. ;)
Anyway, the part that sparked interest in Jonathan’s topic was if ads and a web designer’s blog should gel together.
I quote Jonathan directly,
Take Danny’s “Websites Made Simple†for example. It’s filled with ads, even amongst page content. Perhaps some would say that it’s comparable with porn and mp3 download sites (minus the naked ladies and flashing smilies). In my opinion, there were just a tad too many ads, and the Google text ads were not distinguished enough from the rest of the page.
If Danny’s blog was to be solely treated as a profit-oriented blog, I’d understand the ads and the default template. Heck, I didn’t even realize there were that many ads until I visited his site in Opera as AdBlock in Firefox removed all the ads. But what kind of impact would it have on potential clients?
His honest opinion made me think that whether I should minimize the number of ads down (currently it’s three) or have them more clearly presented or even just remove them. I’d go with the first opinion because ads optimization is to actually blend them in with the content. It’s not cheating, just call it a type of marketing. Trust me, I’ve been there about this so I understand you, Jon.
Jon really made me think that with this number of ads, will my blog still be as professional or will I still look as a professional? As far as I know (AFAIK), there are many other prominent web designers and developers around who do the same but the opinion I’d like to make here is;
Should ads may be even in blogs belonging to your business?
I said it before, it isn’t about the amount of ads on a site, it’s about amount of people that will end up clicking on things on a site…which needs to be built up first. The rest of course comes later.
IMO, let’s say if you’ve got a site that features a blog AND your portfolio. You seperate them,giving your portfolio more priority (and hence appearing as the home page), and the blog as another section (with some “recent posts” on the home page). Then I’d agree to have 1 or 2 text ads in between the posts.
As for the ads on your page… well, I’m sure all of us know that web users scan through a webpage, only picking up headlines here and there. And web users are more or less “trained” to recognize sections within a page. For me, I tend to pick up what’s on that chitika ad thing… and skipping the Google ads directly… Chitika has a bordered-section itself, and the image catches attention.
Btw, I bet you’ve got hardly any click throughs on it eh? I think those chitika ads are more suitable on hardware review sites… not “websites made simple”
Edrei, that doesn’t exactly answer the question. And yes, I know that I still need to build my content. :)
So you’re basically saying yes, that I could have ads Jon even though the blog is part of the company or business I’ll be running on?
As for Chitikia, well, I suppose my target audience can’t afford them. :P
The ads on your site don’t bother me, simply because I automatically ignore them. As long as they don’t interfere with the content and page-loading, I don’t care too much about them.
There are certain blogs, however, that have gone overboard. Page loading is a chore, and there’re more ads than content.
It’s like watching a 1 hour drama on TV and discovering that 40 minutes of it are just commercials. Disappointing.
I agree dude, you’ve got quite a bit of ads. I think if you want ads you should try to make them subtle. You could do what Jason Kottke does – he writes reviews and links to his review products through his Amazon affiliates program.
This way, you’re promoting your ads, instead of just plonking them there for people to ignore. My 2 cents. I never make much money from my ads, unlike some people.
I’m comfortable with those ads. Although bloggers enjoy blogging, but getting some side income with some ads would make blogging even more interesting.
Btw, you might want to align your Adsense to center. :)
alvinwoon.com and puppylab.com dont have ads whatsoever.
As for my personal opinion, i think its appropriate to have ads in blog (as you might want your visitors to be able to find additional, relevant information to your postings). However, for portfolio site, it would be a tad bit weird to have ads. Can you imagine the ad sense promoting other design firms on those tiny columns above of your ‘web design’ portfolio?
Not good ^_^.
Sashi,
I understand how you react to ads since I to do about the same. It’s so common that I tend to ignore and just scroll on. I guess this is where image ads help create a little more versatility. :)
David,
They’re already considered subtle in presentation. However, you’ve just added another vote to having too many ads. Though I also agree with you I’m not making as much as some people. ;)
Oh yeah, about the method of Jason Kottke. If Malaysians use things like Amazon more, then I see a benefit of it. If not, it’s just like my Chitika implementation now.
Alvin,
Great way of looking at it from an additional information type of view. These are really some of the more detailed thoughts missed most of the time. :)
i just realised that your site has ads…
life isn’t just the same with firefox :D
what i do find quite annoying is that the ads are very close to the ‘read more’ link ….this can lead to ‘misclickings’. Or is that what you were trying to do all along you sly fox?
urmm.. well, it’s part of the ‘misclickings’ experiment I’m undergoing. though I need to track that properly from now on actually. :P