Why you should, hide your advertising

There are much more famous sites promoting pages and pages of advertising. Pages where the ads are surrounding every single post, under the post or even embedded in the post itself.

Have you wondered why they do it and why you shouldn't?

Bloggers like John Chow can get away with loads of advertising on the screen because we expect that on a site like his. The "Make Money Online" segment of the blogging world is full of sites offering tips and tricks on how to make money online. The reality is that this kind of layout and style only works in that segment. Readers who are interested in making money from blogging are happy to put up with loads of ads.

For those of us who DON'T write for the MMO world, we really can't and shouldn't do such things. Usually I find ads annoying and uninteresting, so I avoid reading them and certainly never click on them! I find that if it's a non-MMO site that has an over monetized feel to it, I am unlikely to return.

So create the kind of blog reading experience that you can enjoy. Tone down the advertising, make the layout focus on your posts and not the "click the monkey to win free Viagra" buttons. Make your blog something that people will want to come back to every day and provide content for them to enjoy while they are there.

Making a living from blogging isn't something for everyone and that market segment is saturated with terrible looking pages as it is. Focus on your niche and serve them well with quality content, if it's good then traffic and money will follow naturally.