Blogging has emerged as a promising online income generator. So many factors come in and it often becomes difficult for new bloggers to determine the right way forward.
Advertising on blogs is one of the most common practices, but does it really serve the purpose?
Here’s what they don’t want you to know!
It’s perhaps a harsh reality, or they simply don’t want to talk about it, but my personal experience concludes that advertising has become a forbidden fruit for your blog since it doesn’t really do any good in the long run.
Ads on a blog annoy the visitors so much they can’t even stay on the page for more than a few seconds.
Some blogs have exceptional content, offering something beyond the ordinary, but advertising spoils the party. Overcrowded with ads, this is the last thing you need for your blog.
- Ads do less good in terms of profit. You are offered a tiny amount against a click
- They irritate your visitors so much that it becomes impossible to engage them for over a few seconds
- Long-term productivity of your blog gets hurt
- You can’t keep your readership intact
- For just a fraction of bucks, these ads simply ruin the purpose of your blog
- You don’t even have the choice to select the most relevant ads
Why Advertising Fails to Make Money for Your Blog
Marginal Incentive – The incentive you receive against a click is extremely marginal. To earn a handsome income, you need to bring in millions of visitors. Otherwise, you simply can’t even think of making $50 a month.
Nobody is interested in Ads – It’s the harsh reality! What’s your level of interest in these ads when you visit any website or a blog? The same is the case with the visitors to your blog. This is why the conversion rate remains the least.
Ads puncture the tire of the vehicle of your blog. This is why they pay you. If you think this way, you are actually allowing advertisers to bleed your blog. For what return? You don’t even have the freedom to select the ads.
The truth is, you are allowing advertisers to irritate your visitors and distract your readership. In simple words, you spend a lot of time in composing an engaging post, thinking about the topic, spending time and energy, coming up with great ideas, just to let the ads ruin the whole effort in a matter of seconds.
Watch Your Prime Objective
If you go through 20 to 50 guides on building a profitable blog, each of them stresses the importance of engaging the readers.
So, your prime focus is to engage the visitors, encourage them to subscribe and become a consistent visitor.
On the contrary, when you monetize your blog through ads, you are basically violating the prime consideration of engaging the readership.
Regardless of the quality and reliability of the content, the value it offers, and the interest it could develop, these annoying ads overcome the situation and scare your visitors to an extent that they simply leave the page in the blink of an eye.
You do all the hard work, spend time, and the end result is a sheer disappointment. This is the ultimate curse that you need to avoid.
The Psychological Impact
The visitors come to your blog on purpose. They want to learn something, know about a particular topic, see what your blog offers in terms of value, and on top of that, they have a particular mindset.
As a visitor opens your blog, he/she comes across an advertisement that is not even related to the subject of your blog. This contradiction has a powerful psychological impact. It triggers a feeling of purposeful cheating.
As soon as this feeling arises in the visitor’s mind, he/she leaves while uttering a couple of annoying phrases against your page.
You are not there to let every visitor know that you just monetized the blog and that’s why the ads are there, please, calm down!
Despite the fact that you didn’t have anything to do with these irritating ads, the responsibility remains on your shoulders, it’s your blog and you need to manage it properly, no excuses whatsoever!
Why do they hate ads? Here’s why…
- Too many ads give rise to suspicion – Experts generally ignore to mention this point when talking about advertising on blogs. If a website or a blog features too many ads, it gives rise to suspicion and generally, the visitors start fearing about a possible virus, a malicious intention, or an attempt to break into the device. This fear forces the visitors to close the site without even trying to inspect the content.
- Ads shake the visitor’s confidence – It’s the extension of the previous proceedings. As soon as a visitor leaves your blog, fearing possible unauthorized access to his/her device, he/she loses confidence. This is the worst possible result.
- Ads damage your reputation – The visitors, after witnessing a bunch of ads, easily consider you more of a seller than a blogger. They quickly conclude that this blog is about selling products by ditching visitors. It leads to a complete loss of reliability and this is the stage when visitors bid the farewell.
The Root Cause of Distraction
Most newcomers opt for AdSense in an anticipation of making quick money.
But the truth is, you don’t have the freedom to finalize the selection of the ads. Had this freedom provided, things would’ve been completely different.
The fact that you can’t choose the relevant ads in relation to the topic of your blog, turns the tables and it results in decreasing the number of visitors.
It works like trying to fill with water, a bucket that contains holes all around. The water just enters and drains out from all directions. Ads are those holes in your blog which give way to the visitors to run out quickly.
What’s the Solution?
Blogging for money is a good idea to generate some passive income, but it disappoints when a new blogger tends to just trust everyone around.
There are alternate strategies you can try. Personally, I love the minimalist approach. The simplest of pages makes it easier for the visitors to get familiar with everything. It becomes easier for them to find what they want to see. More complications lead to added fuss and it doesn’t help.
Affiliate Marketing is the best alternative to PPC.
I love the fact that affiliate marketing lets you choose the products that are suitable for your blog and the audience. It is important to implement the strategy by doing the right things at the right time.
Here’s what you need to focus on…
- Only select the products that relate to your blog’s subject and the audience.
- Select top-quality products. Avoid opting for low quality or cheaper imitations. Offering top-quality builds confidence in the long run.
- Learn to compare products in relation to price, value, pros, and cons, etc.
- Never try to hide from your audience the fact that you are an affiliate marketer. In this way, your readers will get rid of potential doubts.
- Don’t overpopulate the post with affiliate links. One link at the top and one link somewhere in the middle, or by the end is enough.
- Always tell the truth about the product. Don’t associate the product with the features that it doesn’t have.
Build Your Opinion
Affiliate marketing works when you build your opinion in a positive sense. When your audience realizes that your opinion is right and reliable, only then they’ll come back again and again.
Occasional sales are not enough, focus on consistency. You can achieve consistency only if your audience shows trust. This is why, genuine, true and reliable review writing makes things happen for affiliate marketers.
As soon as your audience detects a difference between what you said about the product and what it actually delivered, they’ll never come back again.
Consider affiliate marketing as your online business and value the importance of truthfulness. Your audience relies on your opinion and makes purchasing decisions accordingly. If you deceive them once, they’ll encourage others to stop trusting on your posts.
Why Affiliate Ads?
If the advertisement doesn’t work for blogging then how can affiliate ads generate profit? We’ll have to go back to the issues with AdSense advertising.
Firstly, they don’t allow you to choose the ads, so the visitors show the least interest.
Secondly, the incentive is marginal in the case of PPC.
Affiliate ads work because you choose the products for your targeted audience. The sales commission is much higher than the PPC rates.
The most important thing is that you don’t need millions of visitors to expect good results.
Affiliate ads, if well targeted, can earn you significant profits. The conversion rate is higher because the level of the audience’s interest is higher.
Before You Leave!
Try to keep the number of ads as less as possible. Just a couple of ads will serve the purpose.
More than three ads per page will annoy the readers. Keep things simple, reliable, and engaging, that’s the ultimate formula!
