How to sell advertising on your blog and NOT piss off your readers
- 8 Comment
1. Don’t hijack the page. Full page takeovers are even more obnoxious and intrusive than pop-ups. At least most pop-ups can be blocked. Never force someone to view an ad. Everyone should have the choice to view or ignore any advertisement, anywhere.
2. Don’t use sound. Banners should for the most part not make noise of any kind. Unless perhaps it is a movie trailer ‘AND’ the user has initiated the action. This means that they have either rolled over it and/or clicked on it. If not, don’t play sound. EVER. If you site using flash embedded with sound, remove it. Nothing makes a user close a site faster than music blaring. (Except maybe un-intentionally opened porn at the office)
3. Don’t go NASCAR. Pick a set number of banners and stick with it. Don’t just keep adding banners because you can sell them. 6-8 should be max. If you have to make more money, up the price instead of adding more.
4. Don’t sell pop-ups! These should have been wiped from the web years ago. They fucking piss everyone off. They are visual spam. They suck, bottom line. Don’t use them. Period.
5. Don’t pretend they’re not ads. Doing a paid review on your site is an advertisement. If you were paid, it is an ad. Disclose it.
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8 Comments on this post
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Neerav Bhatt said:
Hi Chad
What do you think of ads like these:
British Heart Fund anti junk food ad - http://creativezone.eyeblaster.com/?ItemId=3944
Mr Bean Movie - Mr Bean http://creativezone.eyeblaster.com/#ItemId=3808
May 30th, 2008 at 6:04 am -
Mitch said:
Very good points. I spent half an hour going through Clickbank products because most of them had either the entire screen taken over by an advertisement for some newsletter or you couldn’t get away from the page without two or three pop-ups trying to get that last sales pitch in. If I hate them, I figure anyone clicking on my site to go there would hate them. I can’t believe any of that stuff actually works, but it must since so many are doing it.
May 30th, 2008 at 8:54 am -
Aaronontheweb said:
All good points - the same goes for dropping affiliate links in your blog posts too. I always make it clear that if I do an Amazon affiliate link when I mention a book that I disclose it.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:26 am -
Mark Jaquith said:
Not a fan of interstitials eh? Those are the most eggregious example of page hijacking.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:11 pm -
Rudolf said:
I’ve only just recently started blogging and I’ve already seen some pretty bad takeovers.. with adds at the top, left, right and inbetween each post. I usually just end up closing the page because it annoys me so much.
Rudolf
June 10th, 2008 at 9:54 pm -
banquet manager said:
I still looking for a real way to advertise that not only works but looks good.
http://soyouwanttobeabanquetmanager.blogspot.comDecember 29th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
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