There are actually more than ten commandments to good web design but I only want to speak about one of it. This commandment is dubbed;
Thou shall NOT kill thy website with ads.
I wonder who’s doing this right now?
I’ve noticed a lot of local bloggers hopping onto the bandwagon of Adsense to help them gain revenue. Especially after many have heard the joy of some receiving their first cheque from Google. Hurrah! for them of course. However, many who want to earn the revenue fast not only have managed to hide the ads successfully, they’ve gone over their head by placing ads all over their website.
Have people forgotten what it was like to be irritated by the many ads when visiting one of our more favourable websites? Have people forgotten what it felt to have ads always sticking out at you when you’re reading an article? Have you ever believed there’s a limitation of the number of ads on your website?
No? Well, I guess you just don’t respect the visitors who visit your website because they enjoy reading your content and not all the other worthless content. Ads are not bad, but not being able to control the extensive number of them makes them bad. Or should I say, it makes the author bad.
It’s common sense that the ads shouldn’t be the limelight of your website. It should be the decorative yet revenue gaining element in the website. So I’m advising those starting a blog or those who can still control themselves, YOUR content is king and not others. You are the reason people enjoy your website. Don’t take away their joy by putting an ad on every corner possible.
Cheers.
How much do I agree with you! There are too many ads popping up already all over the web, disturbing the viewer/ visitor, and sometimes damaging, what you actually want to achieve with your entry. Blogs were ad-free, a while ago, and that was part of what made blogs so appealing to many.
I also fully agree that it is the content that is king, and that the ads are not even suitable as a queen, if they are all over the place. It is however, all about design, and self-limitation, just as you indicate as well.
A well thought-out entry. Keep it up! :)
Thanks Jasmine. :) You’ve got quite a hefty load of great stuff over at AsiaBusinessConsulting too. Cheers.
Though we are the few that agree, many would choose to remain with the mentality of money comes first before their hearty readers. But I guess we can’t change the world.
Well that’s the problem isn’t it. You would like your revenue, then again…you are still blogging for the same reasons you blog. It’s hard to balance it both.
I’m having a tough time trying to figure out the best place to place my Adsense without ruining the flow of my blog. It’s going to take a lot of minor tweaking to make it look right though.
I really hate ads.. AdSense is good that they are less distractive overall. However depending on how you place them, they can get very distractive.
I kinda have experience in this area. I prefer to have ads as a secondary if forced, but guess what? They hardly make any money. On one of the sites i worked on, ads were placed at places where a reader will definately see them, but that didn’t generate much. Then we tried several “optimizing” methods that made the ads tricky and deceptive so people would click on them. This increased the revenue from ads 10 fold.
It was something i objected to, however the money had to be made somehow to support that site. To the manager of course the increase in revenue justified how distractive the ads were. Users weren’t complaining so we stuck with that.
It really boils down to what your objective with ads are. A secondary income, something to sustain the site or a way to make money. I saw an adsense owner making like 25K USD a month…
Adsense? Ads? Where? What is that? Oh, I forgot. I’m using Firefox (with userChrome.css customisations to block them). So, to me, this adsense discovery thingie is not ‘extraordinary’ to me. :-D
If only everyone were a geek like you Chee Aun. LoL! :P
I guess not only we need an objective as said by Hawk but we also need control of ourselves. Cheers.
It’s really funny how things have changed. Back then, I forked out the money to get myself hosting and domain name because I dislike having ads put up on my website courtesy of the free hosting providers.
Now, everyone’s rushing to put ads in their websites to earn revenue.