Yves Arsenault

Another aspect of creating websites that generate revenu is advertising and where to put those ads.

One one of my other blogs that I’ve had for several years I thought I’d have fun a couple of years back and just threw some adds up on there wondering if it would ever pay anyting out. Having heard (and read) so many “I got rich on the internet… it’s really easy… you can’t miss” type stories I figured I’d throw some on.

But as some may have guessed those ads never performed well. There are a few reasons for this.
1. I have written quite a bit of content on that blog but I would write about any subject under the sun.
2. I had never thought about ad placement what so ever.
3. I had never tried to participate

I believe there is a balance and this is my own personal opinion.

I personally enjoy reading blogs where the author’s text is easy to read. I don’t mind at all if he or she has ads on the website. It’s part of the business.

But when there are ads everywhere, for me as a reader, it turns me off. That’s not to say that if there is one or 2 advertisements in an articles content that it bothers me. Because it doesn’t. We’ve all seen the countless adsense ads embedded in text, in fact you’ll find some here.

I’ve seen websites where there are multiple ads in the articles text, in the sidebars, the top, the bottom… all over. Sometimes there are so many text ad links all around the article that it confuses the eye. Maybe that is part of the psychology in these website’s design, to somehow trick or confuse a visitor to click a link.

I find this a bad approach from a personal stand point.

On my personal blog I was approached by someone who wanted to pay me X amount to put some text in the bottom of some articles that would link to their sites. At first I thought about it and I really didn’t want any of these links to point towards anything I would object to. In the end I had pretty much decided to do it but then I thought about it some more. The idea of putting some “dummy” text in the bottom of something that I had written just to bump up a website’s ranking didn’t appeal to me. The main reason for this is that it would somehow cheapen what I had attempted to write.

I believe in trying to present quality. I think it’s important. At least, if I visit your website I think quality is important.

Helpful tools for ad placement?

Well, you can have a look at this  page:
Where should I place Google ads on my pages?

I’m not going to give any specific examples of what I personally dislike, but I will give an example of a website that has many advertisements and is still easy to navigate. Has a nice flow too.

It’s John Chow’s website. There are tons of great articles on his site and it has a nice balance between the content he presents along with the ads that are displayed.