To monetize or not to monetize
When I relaunched the debabblog, one of my design considerations was whether or not to plan for advertising on the site. These days, we call it "monetization", which if nothing else, is a lot harder to spell than "ads". To be fair, the concept of monetization does reflect an important shift: online advertising, through programs like Google AdSense, is now accessible to just about anyone on any budget.Of course, accessible or not, a new site just gaining steam isn't going to make much money with an AdSense campaign, but the prevailing business wisdom seems to be: "never leave money on the table". I don't really take issue with that; if I knew I could make $30K/year on AdSense ads consequence-free, I'd plaster them across my site quicker than you can say "monetization" (see, it doesn't exactly roll off the tongue).
Guy Kawasaki recently posted an interesting analysis of revenue generated on his popular blog, and the numbers aren't good for those aspiring to quit their day jobs. Others across the blogosphere have taken issue with his numbers, but clearly it takes more than an AdSense campaign for most of us to make a living.
More importantly, though, monetizing carries with it a tradeoff. If I open my site to advertising, especially contextual advertising beyond my control, I risk a loss of credibility. If your goal is just to bump up traffic to make money from advertising, maybe that doesn't matter. Most of us, though, blog for indirect reasons: to establish our expertise, to build credibility for our other businesses, or to attract prospective employers. In these cases, the loss of any credibility to make a few extra bucks just doesn't make sense.
Todd
· Thursday, January 18If you think you'll lose credibility, a few extra bucks won't matter - I agree