I doubt it’s a secret, but I would love to be able to blog/podcast full-time (here, here, here or even here) if I could, or at least add a decent supplement to my regular income (click the “stuff I like” page up top to find some ways you can do that – hint, hint).
And from time to time, I receive random offers to advertise this or that product on my blog for various amounts of lengths of time and money.
Most of the time I trash the offers (solely based on the e-mail or the type of product they want to sell), but depending on the offer, I may take the time to actually investigate the offer and respond.
Late last week I received a fairly nice offer, for an ad to be placed on one of my blog posts for one year. It was for a company I’ve done business with in the past. So naturally, I decided to investigate the offer further.
As it turns out, the ad would be a text-based link for the advertising and would likely show as if it was just a natural link I included in my post originally.
So for instance, I might add a sentence like so…
Once upon a time, I Red Foxes ruled the world.
Or, it might simply be a very simple link like:
at the bottom of the post.
And I would get a check for the link (Red Foxes) back to the advertiser.
The only problem is, I’m not a fan of the company. They gave my shoddy customer service the few times I worked with them, and I’d hate for people to get the impression I recommended or supported using the company.
So I turned them down.
As I’ve suggested before, I’ve made an effort to cut down on the advertising on my sites — and try to only advertise for products I use regularly and/or can highly recommend.
(Which is why I took Google AdSense ads off most of my sites and RSS feeds since I have no real control over what’s being advertised.)
So… was it a good decision or not?
As a reader do you even care if a blogger stands behind the products being advertised on his site?
As a blogger, does it make a difference which ads are displayed on your site? Does it make a difference how much the advertiser is willing to pay?
The way I see it, I will “pay” for a blog one of two ways. 1) With advertising or 2) By direct subscription.
I suggest that the first way (ads) is the preferred method, due to the facts that while I read many blogs, very few are good enough to entice me to pay for the privilege of reading.
I agree with you Ken. I’m curious though if you consider the ads you see on blogs as a reflection of the blogger – or just part of “doing business.”
For example, if you came to my blog and saw an add for adult entertainment films, would it change your perspective of me or my blog? Or perhaps you came and saw a political ad that you agreed or disagreed with, would it change your perspective?
While I understand that things like Google ads are auto-generated, not everyone else does and so that’s why I’ve become more selective in what/who I let advertise on my sites.