Blogging Don'ts #3: Don't put other company's advertisements on your small business blog

I have been noticing a lot of ads on blogging websites lately. These ads fall into two categories:

Pay-per-click
The most common are pay-per-click ads so-called because when someone clicks on the ad you get money. It's not a lot of money, usually a couple of cents, but with thousands of clicks it adds up. The most common ads like this are from Google and Yahoo!

Affiliate Ads
This type of ad appears as a graphic or a link and the owner of the blog only gets paid after something is purchased at the website the link sends people to. Amazon is the most popular affiliate type advertiser in the world.

The first problem with these ads is that it looks unprofessional. Your blog represents a business that has a brand, a logo, a certain look to it. Ads for other companies simply don't follow these concepts. It sends a mixed message to the customer who sees your blog and then thinks, "wait, is this business about woodworking or is it about making money through online advertising?" It's like going into the pet store and the cashier tries to sell you life insurance at checkout. The main focus of the blog is diluted and the marketing message you are working so hard to put across gets lost.

The second problem with these ads is that they don't generate nearly enough money to warrant diluting your message. They typically generate less than ten cents for every hundred people that visit your website. If you aren't making more than ten cents/100 visitors selling your own product, you should reevaluate your business. The point is that you can make more money by selling these people on your product than you can trying to sell them other products through these ads. Instead of using Google ads, create your own ads that look similar, but drive people to the sales part of your own website.

Finally, there are people who make good money using these types of ads on their blogs. But these people are professional bloggers who are researching and writing 8-14 hours a day in order to attract astronomical traffic to their blogs. In addition to this, they have to find a niche that is able to generate this type of traffic and has not already been dominated by other bloggers. My guess is that you have neither the time nor the inclination to pursue this line of blogging.

So stay away from placing ads on your site unless you have a really good reason to do so. Your blog will look more professional, it's one less thing you have to manage, and you will make more sales on your site as a result.

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