Gentle Reader,
I would like to float a different question regarding the content of this blog. There is a poll on the sidebar. Please answer it.
Some of you may as yet be unaware that I have published a book, and that I am in the process of preparing to promote it. This is going to take a great deal of my time, but more importantly, it is going to take money. As such, I am interested in raising as much as possible through sales and and any other means.
It has been explained to me that given the amount of readership this blog obtains, there is available to me a meaningful amount of money which I could be earning, approximately the equivalent I could expect to earn from a part-time job, two nights a week. This could be done through blogger's adsense.
However, I am very concerned that by employing advertising, I would be undermining the reader's enjoyment of the blog, and compromising the very thing that has made this blog popular. This I would never want to do. Therefore I am asking the reader what the reader thinks of this idea.
The content of the blog would not change. I doubt I would stop swearing and ranting, for instance. I certainly would not stop any other content that I already produce.
Some that I've asked in the real world tell me that no one pays much attention to advertisements on pages anyway, that this is so common that no one would really care. But I wish to ask. Please find the poll and tell me what you think.
Weird. I voted and it didn't show up.
ReplyDeleteI don't so much mind advertisements as I mind the particular advertisements that are likely to appear through blogger.
ReplyDeleteIt would be infinitely better if you could control who advertised here.
That said, the quality here is without peer, and I'll stick around to read it for as long as it's around for me to read.
Tell me how you voted, Digital. I won't hold it against you. I don't know why it didn't work - I have no power of the guts of blogger.
ReplyDeleteAds won't stop me from reading.
DeleteMy research tells me that the offered advertisements are dependent upon who is reading this blog. The cookies that we all produce are mashed together and the resultant ads available depend on their quality.
ReplyDeleteThus, if you were to all buy Porsche cabriolets every few months, and do it with an online presence, I would probably have advertising for those. On the other hand, if you're all spending your e-money on porn ...
Advertise it up. I'll even whitelist you on my AdBlock.
ReplyDeleteYour blog rocks.
Ads are fine. I don't mind them.
ReplyDeleteToo many of them makes a page look ugly.
I'd say emphatically, yes, allow advertising to finance your own marketing efforts. (Full disclosure: I'm in the design/advertising business.)
ReplyDeleteThere's no reason you shouldn't leverage the readership you've acquired through your writing efforts.
Give me your honest opinion on the bookcover then, Keith ... I'd take advice and make repairs on the basis of an expert.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, the art was late for the cover, and come the weekend I plan to replace it; this is what I could do with very little notice. Still, those few copies with this art could be extremely valuable when the book is a classic ... heh heh heh.
I stuck adsense on my own blog, near the bottom.
ReplyDeleteI forget it is there, and I'm sure my two readers are also unaware of its existence.
Try it out, says I. Though, I'm aware that sometimes whatever cash gained is offest by extra taxes.
But don't take my word for it.
My opinion:
ReplyDeleteIt is not selling "out" if you are promoting your own works. Also: You have already produced the work / the goods -- which is different than asking for money for a product that you never deliver (*ahem* Kickstarter *ahem*).
Also, also: Congratulations on completing the book!
I trust you'll keep the amount of space devoted to ads tasteful, so go for it. If it becomes too distracting for me, I'll let you know offline and you can take that for what it's worth.
ReplyDeleteTasteful would be KEY.
ReplyDeleteI like the way your site looks, but that has nothing to do with why I visit. Nothing turns me off like a flashing banner promoting porn that scrolls across the middle of a site, but presuming that ain't what's going on, I doubt it would bother me all that much.
ReplyDeleteIt's my non-scientific understanding that the only one who notices ads is the blogger...
ReplyDeleteRe: the book cover; I'm not a designer, so I don't have the language to give you useful feedback, but it doesn't seem finished to me. It's not terrible, but also doesn't sell the book.