Stop! Stop everything you’re doing and give this post your full attention. Spending the time reading this post could be the best decision you’ll make this week.
What if I told you that I’ll share with you the secret to monetizing your blog?
Monetizing your blog or site has for the majority of site owners hasn’t been that successful with them only making a few dollars each month from carrying ads on their site.
The secret to monetizing your site is simple: Stop selling Advertisements.
Confused?
Don’t worry, you’ve every right to be.
What I’m stating is hard to digest, right?
But it’s the harsh truth.
Short Story short:- You’re could be screwing up big time, if you display any sorts of advertisements on your blog.
Hold on, let me get my point clear. Let me justify my statement before you jump to any dangerous conclusions.
The whole system is trashed. Displaying ads was something that used to work flawlessly in the 90’s. Yes, you might see some blogs out there making money from advertisements but have you ever looked at their traffic statistics?
Isn’t it hilarious and quite funny to notice that only blogs with loads and loads of traffic make any money (that actually counts) using advertisements?
Enough of the sermon, I’ll justify my statement.
Here are the drawbacks from having advertising on your site.
1. Ads don’t add anything to the design and look of your site.
Ads don’t tend to be visually appealing and if over used can make a site look cheap.
2. You’re playing with your reputation
Oh! Beautiful banner! I think, I should add another one there. And one there too. One under every post won’t hurt. Oh! And one beside the header will increase clicks. You have the exact same thoughts while placing ads, right?
Over using Ads is one of the most common mistakes.
You are putting your reputation on the line by displaying ads. The mere fact that you show ads on your blog will turn some of your readers of.
It’ll show them how desperate you are to make money. They will feel less unimportant.
3. Affects blog loading speed
Let me get my facts straight, Banners of any sorts aren’t cool!
I won’t wait ages for a blog to load only to find out that it is full of advertisements.
I won’t even bother to look at your content.
Fact is fact that adding banners or advertisements affect the page loading speed of your blog.
4. You loose traffic!
This is another thing that cannot be ignored under any circumstance. There is only a 50/50 probability that a person who has clicked on a advertisement of your blog will ever return back here.
Clicking on an ad will take them to another page diverting their attention. Some people pay close attention and come back to your blog where as some carelessly close your window.
1$ or not, is it worth it? Worth loosing your reader. Some one who could become your potential customer?
5. Divert Attention
I agree. You’ve put in some considerable amount of effort and made sure that your advertisement opens into a new window. But it still will break your readers concentration, won’t it?
No matter how you argue, the truth is that Advertisements aren’t your blog audience’s best friends.
Your readers will concentrate more on the motion advertisements rather than your precious content that you wrote with all your spirit and dedication. Will you let that happen?
Why the difference?
I could go on and on about why you shouldn’t display advertisements on your blog. But I value your time.
I follow a principal fundamental called K.I.S.S – Keep it Simple, silly!
So, I’m gonna keep it simple.
I’ve been talking about why you shouldn’t display advertisements but I haven’t given you an alternative, right?
Don’t worry, I was saving the best part for the last.
And the alternative is……
Make a product. Sell it!
Shocked?
Well, the truth needs to be accepted.
Selling a product of your own makes sense. Doesn’t matter how minor it might turn out to be, ranging from an e-book to a large scaled webinar, from a small plugin to a whole new software.
Anything will do, as long as it fits your audience.
The best example is Brain Clark from Copyblogger. I’ve never seen a single advertisement or a banner on Copyblogger. Inspite of that, Brian earns 20 times if not 100 of what you, me or any ad-displaying blogger earns.The most important thing for any blogger or site owner is to understand your audience. (Treat it like a business)
You need to put in that extra effort and understand your audience. Because you can’t sell to somebody, you don’t even know. A bunch of bloggers sell stuff to people without understanding their audience. You can’t shove products down your readers throat if they’re not interested, right?
Get it yet?
The best way to know your audience perfectly is to work on one particular niche and become an authority. I won’t be talking about becoming an authority. (That’ll be another post)
Again, remember that narrowing your niche down will help a lot.
You’ll make a lot more money.
Selling a product will make you a lot more money. Why?
Because if you’re product is worth the money, people will come back and buy your future products.
And the best part?
You’re deliverying them value which increases the chances that they will recommend you to others
And it’s much more easier:
The best thing nowadays is that it’s easy to sell a product to your audience. With services like Selz, you can sell ebooks or digital downloads securely from any website in minutes with no programming.
What’d you think?
Now that you’ve read the post and filled information into that cute, witty head of yours, go work! Analyze what you’re doing wrong and right it before it’s too late.
Do it now and thank me later. You won’t regret it. If you display advertisements on your blog then re-think your blog strategy again.
What do you think? What are your views? Did you have any similar experiences? Wanna share them with me?
GO ahead, comment below. I promise that I will reply to each and every one of your comments.
Any questions? No worries, drop them in the comments section below. I’ll be more than willing to answer your questions.
Hello Ahamed,
You maybe right but I feel not everyone can create a product to sell or do affiliate marketing without a step by step blueprint.
As a first time affiliate marketer you should always follow a blueprint, even I in the beginning made $200 within 17 days from promoting A small Orage hosting program .
Having a blueprint always comes handy. ;-)
agree with you but only partially!
Ads increases the blog loading time but it doesn’t means that we would stop using ads for monetizing our blogs. Not everybody wants to sell products online. By the way, using ads in the right format and place makes your blog look nice and reputable.
Anyways, nice article.
I agree that the page loading time does matter where many people get annoyed with too many ads or low loading time.
I must say, what a post Ahmed, detailed information and truly justified to the post title. I am your regular reader now.
Nice article Sir… I have learned a new thing here. This is a great info for a newbie like me. You are right, ads make a blog look cheap and increase load time. SO, today most of the users using adblock including me :P. Thanks again for the great info.
Nice !
I completely agree with you ! I used to be able to make a lot with advertisements 5 years ago but these days the revenue has dropped a lot. People just don’t click ads anymore.
I have been working on a product recently that I hope to launch soon.
Thanks
Good insights on making money.
I too don’t think ads don’t give us much money. WE should focus on readers.
Find out your target audience. Know their pain. Offer solution. Get paid. That’s how you should think like if you want to be a profitable blogger in the long run.
Don’t find shortcuts as they don’t give any sales in the long go.
Great tips buddy.. tweeted!
Advertisements can indeed be a pain in the head if used in excess. They truly divert the attention of the readers and also make the page look unattractive. Hence it becomes very important to make wise use of advertisements.
Thanks for this excellent article.
Hello ahmed,
Very informative post. You are very true about the advertisements. The sites with full of advertisements suffer very page loading speed. Writing an ebook in 4000+ words is more profitable than these crap advertisements. Thanks for sharing this ultimate post ahmed.
First thing i wanna say is yeah !!! that is 90% True,because i realized that !!! last 2 months before,i stopped displaying ads from infolinks for the same reason you have said here.My traffic has stopped 80%.i swear ! and after i removed ads i came back to the level.
but i don’t want others to stop the advertisements but ” Reduce the advertisements ” make sure it’s not annoying to your visitors.
Finally i had like to tell you that making our own product is also a good choice as you have been doing…so you are in a right place with a good choice Mr.Ahmed Safwan…
Actually i was also one of the mad blogger who tried everything to get Adsense, and actually I got it! but afterwards my earning were too low with 3k visitors daily! and actually it made my site look cheap and full of crap, i got many responses from my visitors that ads are making my site unusable and bad, then i wrote an ebook on counter strike, promoted through my site and it was a best selling for a week on amazon! So i truly agree with your views
Love this! I personally hate blogs/websites that are full of advertisements. I get the feeling they’re just after money and not the relationship plus it really distracts me. I decided long before I launched my blog that I wasn’t going to put any ads. I have my own e-course which is actually selling quite well. My priority is providing my readers with quality content. Best regards from Kenya.
Hey there, first of all, nice website. I agree, sprinkling ads all over a blog is not very appealing at all. Thanks for the useful tips, I did not realize banners could cause slow load times. Your right about that, any blog that makes a long time to load, I just usually click off lol.
Keep up the great postings!
Awesome post dude. I agree with you but not everyone will. Selling products needs lots of time and even investments.
Peoples like me won’t take risks because one need money. I’d say Selling products is a long term business (method).
I agree with you but right now not going to implement ( take action) But will in future.
BTW I really enjoyed reading your Post, I usually don’t read a post at all (full) but only some. keep it up
can’t really agree on all the points Ahmed. I think you are encouraging people to cut the earnings. Also everyone can not create their own products easily, even it took me time to put my digital products.
I will agree with you on Load time, but it really doesn’t matter much if the traffic is from US and other European counties which has a laser fast net connections.
Also this is a pure crap ” Ads don’t add anything to the design and look of your site”
Thanks for providing such valuable tips and secrets to start making money. No doubt strong foundation leads to the successful attempt in any way either its blogging or some what else.
This post is just like WOW. really nice post and I do agree with all your points making money with ads is really hard espacially if your have less topic instead making won product and selling it is a better way
Hey Ahmed,
Its a well written post but I can’t agree with the first part of this post which tells us to remove the ads completely from your blog.
Although some advertisements are annoying and may divert attention of visitors, advertisements are still a major source of income for many of bloggers.
There is nothing wrong in putting advertisements that are not annoying to visitors and are placed correctly.
All bloggers cannot use affiliate marketing or sell their own products to make money. Example, a blog that provides only information that is not related to any products. For eg., about.com
You are making so easy for us to write a new product like eating an ice cream.
In my opinion, bloggers here normally start their blogging just to earn as quickly as possible, not a good planning let them realize to stop staring at analytics or adsense reports and start focusing on good content.
but I’d agree with you in one aspect, that is; you can really promote your product(s) around you well established blog.
I agree – I don’t run ads on my site (like Adsense) because I believe it detracts from my site.
The only ‘ads’ I run are actually things I recommend.
Been thinking of creating my own product to sell online, just gathering some info and hopefully be able to come up with one real soon.. thanks for the challenge.
Well explained. Yes selling a product is easy then earning money showing ads on your website. Thats the difference between affiliate marketing and adsense. Same 1 click on your adsense ad will give $0.05 while same visitor can be converted into $20 sale if you selling your own or affiliate product.
Hello@Ahmed, Thanks a lot for sharing a long but a informative post with us. i think selling others products on our blog is also a methods to make money online.(Affiliate marketing)
Different Angle…..
What products to sell and where to find the product that matches you blog?
if you dont have any product , is there any place that you can select some products and sell it in your blog and get commission. like share sale.
Finding the right products to sell in your blog can be helpful for the beginners.
Thanks
Bipin
Wonderful post Ahmad! It will surely help all of us in making better earning strategies. could you guide me how to create an e book? any recommendation?
Thanks