I asked ProBlogger, John Chow, DailyBlogTips, Carey, Smemon and Shoemoney all the same question. As you know my Playstation Blog gets quite a lot of visits and i wondered if i should have put adverts on it. My question was:

my friends are saying i’m shooting myself in the foot by not running adsense or some form of adverts. I just reply with “i’m concentrating on expanding my readership and getting my name out there before i start putting adverts on”

Do you think i’m doing the right thing or have i really shot myself in the foot? Whats your say on this?

And here are the responses:

ProBlogger

“I personally put ads on my blog from day 1 so that I establish the expectation with readers that I monetize the site and don’t have to change the rules later on. However others do as you do successfully.

this post might help.”

DailyBlogTips

“I think you are doing right. Running ads now would give you pizza money, and it could slow down your growth rate.

Focus on building something big and good for readers first, then once you ve done that you think about how you can make money from it.”

John Chow

“One of the neat thing about the adsense and other networks is the set it and forget it ad serving they provide. Before the ad networks, you would have to sell your own ads and that meant less time to produce content. Now you still have time for content and let them handle the ads.

I don’t see anything wrong with adding some related advertising on the blog. For example, TTZMedia.com offers real time banners that can show prices for Playstation and Playstation games. Readers may see that more of a service than an ad.”

Smemon

“Yeah it’s always a catch 22 situation… ads can drive away potential subscribers but at the same time without revenue, you can’t be expected to keep a site afloat.

It’s always best to run a site at a loss and claim moral high ground rather than slap ads all over it claiming they’ll pay for the server. Loyal subscribers and readers are essential as these are the guys who will be promoting your site, commenting on it, linking to it etc… at some stage. But that’s my own opinion.

Having said that, many people expect ads on a site, so i reckon you could get away with one or two ads without pissing people off.

I think you could have two ad slots on that site, one skyscraper/square in the sidebar and one banner after the first post. If it were me, i would NOT place an ad before the first post, especially when the site is only starting out. That’s the first thing people will see and it’s a big turn off.

But seen as you’re traffic is booming you should definitely introduce some sort of advertising even if it just to have the site ‘break even’… server costs, domain, time spent on it etc… you could bank that much and then create a prize fund out of the remainder - that way you’re giving back to the community and taking the limelight off yourself”

Carey

Well, Carey works in the same building as me so i walked to his office to ask him the question face to face. He basically told me that running affiliates would work well. For example if i was talking about a named game i could have a link to amazon to buy this game. He also showed me some nice affiliate management websites which i will look into.

Shoemoney

No response yet.

Overall thank you for all replying to me and helping me out. It’s nice to get help from the big boys out there. I will certainly go over the answers in great detail and see which one will work for me the most.