Blog Ads: Seth Godin vs. The Noob
It’s past three in the morning, and this post is a bit rantish. I feel it’s important to issue that warning.
I’m not normally impressed with blogs that spend their time repeating what the “A-list” bloggers say. It seems that every time a blogger like Seth Godin opens his mouth, half the blogosphere reports on it. It’s awfully repetetive.
But now you’re going to have to excuse a moment of hypocrisy, because I’m compelled to comment on what Seth said today on the topic of blog conflicts through advertising, if only because it mirrors some recent decisions I’ve made.
I have to chuckle a bit at bloggernoob.com, where that site’s author (”the noob”) wrote earlier about an over-emphasis on content. He likens the stance of the “blogging purist” to a misunderstanding of the blogging economy. My grin comes from the fact that the next day, one of the most famous bloggers in the world (who quite obviously understands the blogging economy) posted about how he doesn’t sell space on his blog, specifically to make it “as pure an exercise as [he] can”.
Don’t get me wrong — I have no problem with ad-supported sites. I still run several of them. But sometimes, a site’s revenue is less direct, and ads can actually pull away from a more valuable opportunity.
Seth makes money from his blog by giving the world a glimpse into his mind. The very fact that we know his name shows that he’s a good marketer. The fact that so many bloggers agree with, and repeat, everything he says shows that he’s either very smart, or very charismatic. Either way, it earns him a living as people pay him to talk or write.
I’m not getting paid to give seminars or write books (yet), but I profit from my online ventures in a similar way. I’m entirely self-taught. Over the past ten years or so, I’ve learned how to design, develop and market websites. Aside from some high-school courses in basic programming, I’ve never been formally trained in these activities. I learned what I know by putting up websites, getting people to them, and measuring results.
Now, my clients pay me for that experience. I do a variety of things, from coding Wordpress themes to running AdWords campaigns — from writing email copy to developing full marketing programs. These skills didn’t come from nowhere: I’ve learned what does and doesn’t work through years of experimentation, both on my own and through employment.
So when I relaunched my Philosophy Index site this week, I decided to remove all ads from the site. Considering how little they make, relative to my other forms of income, they’re really a burden. They take up space and distract me from what I actually love about that site. (I’m starting work on a Philosophy degree this fall, so reviving the site has a double meaning to me.)
I feel really good about the decision, and I’ll be honest — reading Seth’s blog post did re-affirm that feeling. It’s not a “holier-than-thou” thing, like the noob says. It’s a choice thing. I want content to be my focus, and I want this blog (and my sites) to be all me. If I were writing short content in simpler language with pictures of models, my blog would be horribly inauthentic. I’m not after the idiots with wallets. I’m looking to work with smart people who can use (and will value) my services.
nice post. i respect the fact that you are self taught in your online ventures. im a do it yourself type myself. i didn’t write my post to impress anyone and i value the opinion of each individual. as far as you removing all of the ads on you blog, i really don’t understand why you would do that, other then the fact that you weren’t making much from it. you wouldn’t want to find other means of monetizing your blog? is this something you did because you were inspired by seth?
No — this blog has never had ads on it, and I removed the ads from my other redesigned site before Seth published his post.
Some of my sites have ads and make decent money. I’m not about to remove ads from them. But as for this blog, I’d rather use it for personal marketing and development. The goal here is to share my own ideas and deliver my own message. Littering it with other peoples’ messages is a distraction that’s not worth the money.
(That’s not to say that I don’t welcome comments — I want discussion here, but not ads that subtract from that experience.)
sounds good.
i think whenever you take a polar stand, it’ll get a lot of criticism. I choose to stand on the left, and u stand on the right about ads and content etc. in reality, everything is gray and swings closer to the middle. thanks for the nice discussion. 
btw, nice blog!
Nice post! I actually used to be totally against monetization, and I’m really new at it. I think my earnings factor in at $3.08 total so far, haha. (not bad for three months!) I definitely think it’s a personal preference thing. Depending on future success (I think 80% of my ads are actually contest winner spots right now…) I may or may not remove ads from Diligent.
While I have begun to look at ways to monetize (an extra few bucks never hurt anyone) one of the things that I’m holding to is the idea that I won’t devote a bunch of space to things that I don’t personally care about. For instance, until today I had a McCain/Palin banner up and now I’ve got a banner ad I made myself for one of the MMOs I enjoy (the blog itself is about me and my experiences with MMOs, so it’s relevant to my content). I’ve tried adsense and found that the sort of ads my keywords were attracting weren’t what I wanted to represent, so I took adwords off. I’ve started working with pay per post but won’t write on things that people like me (computer gamers) wouldn’t care about; I’ll write a review for virus protection software, for example, but not for a credit card listing website.
I don’t want to have really crowded sidebars and ad links cluttering everything up so, for me at least, the aversion to ad spamming is as much about keeping it visually attractive as it is about not ’selling out’ or ‘ad whoring’ or whatever one might call it.
Add to this that I’m really, really new to blogging (indeed, this is the first time I’ve heard the name Seth Godin)… I’m kinda groping around in the dark. I couldn’t tell you how I got a Google PR 3, but I won’t complain!
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Work, Web, Play is the blog of Colin Temple, a self-employed Canadian web marketer. It touches on everything from web code to social media.
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