AdSense Makes No Sense To Koray
Koray (9rules Member) goes on a little rant concerning AdSense and how it has done his website no good. Koray is a very intelligent person, but there are some things that I can say I don’t agree with here.
I made about a dollar a day. I stuck my ads “below the fold”, which is an ad no-no, because I wanted to keep them away from content. What I mean is, I didn’t want the reading to be cut off by ads. And I didn’t want them to be blatant. Ads detract from content any way you slice it.
I can only hope that he didn’t have the expectations to make any money with this kind of setup. I’m definitely not say ads should overpower the content, but treating them like an 8th cousin will not give you any money. If anyone has this kind of mentality they are certainly better off without ads. Less stress anyways and less time spent refreshing the stats page.
Furthermore, they are an insult to your readers. We, readers, don’t like ads for lots of reasons. One fundamental reason is that they are a jab at our intelligence. Do you really think that the place we go when looking for anything is your ads?
As a daily web user I kind of have the same mentality, but understand why the great sites have ads up. That’s the only avenue of revenue they have to support themselves so if its done right I don’t mind. Ads are going to be there no matter what, so I think the people we should get mad at are the ones creating the ugly ads or the ones that causes seizures.
But here is where it gets good…
Would I be adverse to using ads ever again? No. But the right kind of ads. Ads that are visually pleasing, relevant to my readers’ interests, and non invasive. If I can find an ad solution that can serve good ads and won’t detract from my content while staying pretty, I’ll use it. It’s a tall order. But it’ll fit.
Exactly.
Jason Guthrie offers a great followup over at 9rules on how Koray can better approach the situation next time or anyone for that matter.
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POSTED IN: Online Money
4 opinions for AdSense Makes No Sense To Koray
Koray
Jan 17, 2006 at 12:13 pm
How surprised was I to see my name in a headline from workboxers in my feedreader. Hah.
Great post but, let me rebut. I didn’t put ads up to make money. Like I said in the post, I really don’t need it at this point in my life. The lack of money made wasn’t the motive to my post, what I was making would of paid for my hosting and a few slices of pizza. That’s fine with me. I put the ads up as sort of an exercise in observation.
And I agree that some blogs can/should have ads. Like I said, blogs that I like get whitelisted. I understand that for some, adsense is a great way to make money. My main argument, whether I made it self-evident or not, was that the current ad solutions (or the most implemented ad solutions) don’t really fit for a lot of blogs. They do tend to be invasive and inaccurate. Though I suppose adsense is better than those seizure inducing ads.
But yeah, I hope eventually a good ad solution (that I won’t be afraid to place above the fold) comes along.
Scrivs
Jan 17, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Yeah every time I read your article I get a better feel for where you are coming from and it seems you just have a general frustration with Adsense and the lack of a quality solution. Hopefully we can fix that in the upcoming months.
fookr
Jan 19, 2006 at 1:34 pm
I’m with koray, and have to add that for me - those ads on here, just get in the way man. I like your stuff too, but look at it this way.. You have an advert for a blog/content system (squarespace) sat on your Wordpress powered site. The brightest colours on your blog are an ad for icons, on a site that has no icons on it.
You have an adsense advert, for adsense which is kinda pointless. As I comment in this little bunched up pane, above it you got 4 inches of vertical lost by two small adverts, both for stuff that is totally unrelated to your writing. I dig your stuff, but the ads are a downer man.
Hock
Jan 21, 2006 at 8:01 pm
AdSense makes sense (pun intended) for certain types of blogs. It usually works best for product review type blogs where if you’re talking about a certain product and your reader sees a relevant ad, chances are they’ll click on it to find out more. It’s a win/win situation. The key is relevancy. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make some money off your blog.
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