The commentator of the day (COTD) belongs to Jacob Donnelly of Blog Revolter for his comment on my Why I Don’t Run Google AdSense On My Blog post. I think Jacob’s comment boiled it down really well.
Everyone keeps saying, “Oh, but for us average bloggers, we have to use Adsense…†Stop whining first off. Everyone started as an average blogger. You don’t HAVE to monetize with Adsense because, let’s be frank, the cost of running a blog for a year is almost nothing, so you don’t HAVE to break even. Therefore, focus on what is actually going to work.
Instead of putting an Adsense block on your site that will take people away from your site, and thus perpetuating a cycle of you trying to constantly get new people, why not, instead, put Aweber there? Collect people’s e-mails. And remind them that you exist every once in a while so they come back. Suddenly, you’ll start to see your traffic rise because you’ll have return visitors. And then…Yup, you can sell private advertising.
So, for all those people whining about “us average bloggers HAVE to monetize with Adsense,†just remember that if you want to succeed, stop whining and succeed. Short term quarter clicks is nothing in comparison to $40,000 a month. Just ask John.
New readers to my blog may not realized that for the first 8 months of the blog’s life, it had zero advertising on it. The goal back then was to build a readership and you can’t do that if you’re trying to send them away by clicking on ads. You might make a few bucks here and there but you’ll be missing out on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.