Should you put banner ads on your blog?

There is a lot of debate around in a lot of blogs on using advertisements on blogs? There are a lot of bloggers out there who feel that the “Advertise here” box on your blogs, and later the 125×125 ads that are displayed on the blogs are a reason for distraction and that they should not exist in blogs.

How valid is this debate and how valuable is this suggestion?

There are a few interesting aspects to it. A lot of times the decision to accept advertisements on your blog is determined by the nature of your blog. It will depend on aspects like :

1. The objective of your blog.
2. Your blog design.
3. Your business plan.
4. The popularity of your blog.

The Objective of a Blog

Are all blogs created with the objective of making money? Not really. Blogging today is not just a way of making money. Business use blogs in addition to their social media marketing, to connect and be in touch with their customers. Professionals use blogs to build their network. Some organizations use blogs to acquire new customers and yet others use it to understand the changing trends of markets and initiate further research to develop newer products. A blog is an excellent medium of interaction with existing and prospective customers.

If I am running one such business as described above, will I want to drive my readers away from my blog to a competitors website or, blog? I would certainly, not. In such a scenario, I would not prefer advertisements on my blog. When the core objective of my blog is to promote my business, why will I want to advertise and promote somebody else’s business?

Blog Designs

Customization is an integral part of any blog. Every blogger wants a unique design for his blog and he is willing to pay for it. That is where themes and frameworks like Thesis, is selling like crazy. When you invested so much of money into your blog design and wanted to maintain the uniqueness of your blog, would you really be interested in destroying the entire design by tweaking in a few advertisement codes on your blog? If I were in your place I would not. But there are lots of bloggers who will still do it because that is what their business plan is.

Many a times you will also find that inserting a few advertisements into your blog at times destroys the entire layout and look of you blog. If your designer did not provide for an ad slot then the decision becomes even more tricky and you end up tweaking and twisting your blog’s design. But if there is a scope of a little bit of tweaking and that doesn’t fiddle with you core design too much, then I would suggest that you insert at least two blocks of advertisements of 2 ads each. Hence to a great extent, your blog design will also determine, if there should be advertisements on your blog.

Business Plan

What is it that you are attempting to gain from your blog? Networking, product promotion, publicity or, running a home business are all parts of your business plans. the core objective of your blog is what becomes the foundation for your business plans. If you objective is to “make money online” from your blogs, then you need to put up a few advertisements on your blog because that can be one of making money strategies from your blog.

Hence depending upon what are your strategies to make money, you might decide to put up a few 125×125 ad banners, Google Adsense ads, Chitika ads etc. on your blog. You might have pre-decided slots for these ads on your blog and you will not be worrying too much about fiddling with the design of your blog.

Popularity of your Blog

Blog popularity is an important aspect that decides whether you should consider advertising. If your blog is not that popular, the ads that you place on your blog will only be for affiliate products that you are promoting, if at all you are doing it. This is because, there will obviously not be too many buyers for your ad-slots and these slots will more or, less remain un-utilized. These ad-slots will only be occupying important space on your blog and will not be doing anything else.

As against this, if your blog is popular and you are getting a lot of advertising offers, then you should certainly consider putting up a couple of banners at least on your blog. These might be a good source of income and can supplement your monetization strategy.

Hence, the decision to put banner ads on your blog should solely be your decision based on calculated and thought about reasons. You should just not decide to remove the banner ads from your blogs, because somebody suggested you do it. Take a carefully thought about decision.

Guest post written by R Kumar, an affiliate marketer who started off on an internet marketing business with about 32 mini-sites. His blogging journey includes a blog on helping develop internet entrepreneurship at DK Speaks and on tips and tricks on tweeting at Tweeting Tips. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.