If You Must Have Ads, Make Them Look Nice

While many start their blogs for fun, a blog can become a source of income seemingly over night. You may hold ideals that regard using your blog to make money as selling out or losing sight of its core intentions, but everyone must find a way to keep paying the bills.

It should be perfectly understandable that bloggers who spend all of their time blogging need to make a living from doing so. Using advertisements on your blog can be a source of income, which can be quite lucrative if you maintain steady traffic. However, if you’re going to have ads, you should take the time to make them attractive.

Subtlety and Presence

If decide to have ads on your blog, you should fully commit to doing so. Don’t put up a puny little ad in a corner somewhere that nobody will ever see. The key is to make the ads visible yet subtle. It’s likely not a good move to put up ads that are flashy and will take attention completely away from your content. However, if the ads are present and not overbearing, no one will mind.

Avoid Irritation

People hate having to close a popup before being able to see the content of a site, so it would be best to avoid these. Overhead ad bars, side ad bars, and linked-in text seem to be the least annoying. Animated ads may also irritate readers. After all, they come to your blog to read, not test their seizure threshold.

Don’t Overdo It

Once you begin drawing an income from advertising, you may be tempted to add more to your blog. This is absolutely fine to an extent – while well-placed and non-irritating ads won’t drive down traffic, having a veritable Times Square encapsulating your content will likely do so.

Again, it all comes down to balance. Look around the Internet at different blogs. If you are irritated by the advertisements on a particular blog, or if you find that they pull attention away from the content, make a point to avoid using this format.

Donations

It might seem ridiculous that people would donate their hard-earned money to support some anonymous writer in his or her blogging ventures. Surprisingly, many bloggers report that donations are a significant source of their income.

Don’t be afraid to place a donation link on your blog. It only takes around an hour to set one up through PayPal, so definitely give it a shot.

Don’t Hesitate

There are numerous methods for making a steady income with advertisements on your blog. While some bloggers see advertising as sacrilege, they might go out of their way to link to your blog. Ironically, this will make you money. Just remember to do yourself (and your readers) a favor and use ads that won’t pull attention away from your content.