What if I sold ads here?

Attention has a cost too: Adding ads is asking users to devote it. If you want the money, you certainly deserve it. OTOH, there is also something to be said for the purity of sites that are done for the love. It'll be a tough choice.

Hi Robert. With the blog mojo you have, you could make a lot of money for charity. I personally have ads on my blog but I don't get quite as many page views as you do. :) I make a couple of hundred bucks and I put most of it back into hosting fees, software, etc. Should really consider adding that money to what my wife and I already give to charity.

Robert: We love what you write, and we come here for that. If I can take a moment or two and consider some ads that you have placed on YOUR site, I will do that. Your work has a real value for we readers, and there is no reason you shouldn't benefit from that.

You don't just have to send it to some anonymous charity either, you could setup a trust fund to help pay the university tuition of someone in your own community who needs it, or to put some computers in public schools, or you could just go on an extra nice vacation each year. ;)

I think that having this kind of opportunity is great. Other bloggers will have different situations that may or may not call for the need to place ads. If you do plan to place ads, then I think there should be transparency on where the ad revenues go.

It may help to get a usability expert to help out with the layout of your blog just so that ads don't clutter the site and mitigate the real content.

Tasteful Ads +1

I think you should. Donate half to charities then keep the other half for yourself. Ads are annoying but it'll take more than a few annoyances to keep me away from your posts. Just avoid those stupid floating flash ads.

Re charities, I think you should ask readers to vote on Charity of the Month to keep it interesting. I think your traffic is enough to give each charity a few thousand dollars.

One more thing. I think you should also consider donating to worthy open source projects as well as charities. Call it Scobleizer Fund or whatever. It'll add extra spice to what you are doing.

Robert - If I could make money off my blog, I would sell ads. Because I am a single parent of two kids that expect to go to college, and damn, the money would help. I think anyone that needs the money, and that can earn the money from ads on their blog should do just that. Why not?

But - if I didn't need the money from the ads, and I could generate money through them, then I would have ads, and I would donate the proceeds.

Donate to whom? I would let my readers decide that. They are the ones generating the revenue.

Sell ads, frame them well, let us continue to read your good work!

That depends on your taste. If you like your blog dainty and "clean', then avoid putting ads in it. but if your primary reason of blogging is to earn, do so. Some readers though don't like a "messy" site. It distracts their attention. Just my 2 cents.

Robert, we've already talked about how you can be making a very nice side income through the advertising opportunities your blog presents. I continue to encourage you to consider throwing the switch and testing it out for a few weeks, at least. What you do with the money, that's your decision.

If I can help, you know my number! :-)

Just don't have big flashy distracting ads. If ads put money in your pocket and allow you more time to do what you love, I say go for it. As long as everything is above board and the ads don't impact what you write. If money was not an issue, most people would be doing something different for a living. I mean who couldn't use a few thousand extra dollars per month? Just write about it so we know how much money is really out there for bloggers.

Robert, put ads up. If they're relevant, your readers will click through and you will benefit a little. I run som Adsense ads on my (far less read than your) blog and wish they were a little more accurate in scope (the matching tech is somewhat flawed).
My hope in running ads for myself is that I will make back enough to cover my hosting (I don't, I make about 1/2). Half of anything else will go to World Vision. The rest I can use as play money.

BTw, you got an interesting site. Wordpress is very correct!

Dave: John Batelle tells me that for best results you should let them run for at least three months. I'm definitely considering it.

So long as the ads are non-obtrusive, then why not? Blogging is work and even if it is something you love doing, I see nothing wrong with benefiting from it, financially. Then again, I despise the idea of pay-per-post which is clearly a different thing.

Get the right advertisers, put them in the right spots, and some people might actually appreciate the ads.

For yourself? No. I'm guessing you really don't need the money or you would've already done it.

If I was in your position and thinking about blogging the way you do, I'd sign a large deal with an individual company if possible (or the other options if not) and reach out to some teachers of creative writing or journalism classes in, for lack of a better word, underprivileged schools. Get Calacanis to pony up some free AOL sponsored net access for some kids and put laptops and camcorders in their hands to start blogging. You could even have sponsors pay you directly in hardware with support contracts attached.

You’ve got a great platform to maybe help launch some careers and get us out of the rich white guy rut of 99% of the blogs out there. If people don't like what you're doing and are offended by the ads even if you're using your space for something good, do you really want them as readers anyway? I wouldn't.

Man, you are the hardest working guy in the blogosphere. Yes. You more than deserve to get paid a bit for the effort that you put into this. You've put in hours and hours and hours of your life into this thing without any income from it whatsoever.

I'm not saying that you haven't benefited from your blog's popularity, but by all means, you deserve it. Especially if it helps you get even better and better gear so that your shows are that much better for the rest of us.

Go for it.

I'd recommend FM of course.

If you say that you'll donate the money there is a risk that your readers click the (pay-per-click) ads just for the charity, not for their content. But if that's OK with the advertisers..

Anyway, as your reader, I wouldn't mind the ads and I definitely wouldn't mind if you kept the money.

Robert, if you choose to run ads I will continue to read but instead of giving the money away to charity I'd rather want you to use it for your own pleasure.

@Fabian:

"Robert, if you choose to run ads I will continue to read but instead of giving the money away to charity I’d rather want you to use it for your own pleasure"

It's rare that people try to talk each other out of charitable causes... people probably get more out of giving than they do taking, and if this is a painless way for Robert to raise money for charity, let him do it.

@radaronpaws: Considering the amount of time Robert has spent on blogging, I'd say he deserves to enjoy every cent he can make with it. If I were Robert, I'd spend the money on my son's future education rather than on some stranger. But I'm not Robert and ultimately it's his work and his choice how to spend the money he earns.

Yes, but not on feeds, Please

Sure, sell ads and do whatever you want with the money. Just be sure you disclose. :-) I mean that, BTW, no tongue in cheek.

It's very interesting to me to see the reaction you've received to your question. It would've been nice to see a more measured reaction from you, Jason and Mike Arrington before you all slammed us as shills. Isn't the question at hand WHERE the ads are placed more than WHETHER?

DnW

I think ads are a fine idea. Do not give half your money to charity because of moral pressure, though. You've earned every penny.

I guess I would be worried if I was to find my ad revenues on my blog getting so big that I couldn't afford to do without the income. YOU KNOW that would spoil a lot of the fun.

But hey, maybe that would still beat working for a living.

Go for it, I say.

I think you underestimate the amount you can get from advertising, put a text based ad between posts 1 and 2 on your web page and you'll probably make more from it than you get at PodTech.
It's your blog, you built up the readership - do it; most (almost all) other bloggers do and no-one complains.

Yeah, Why not. A few here and there wouldn't take away from your site.

I though ads were not allowed on wordpress.com blogs. Unless you have some special deal with them or something.

Not that I would mind small, adsense style ads. But then they require putting code on your blog that wordpress forbids anyway.

Sure you should put ads on if you want to monetize a bit of the value you are creating (as long as they aren't too intrusive and therefore destroy some of that value). Surely the Revver.com (Edelman client . . I work for Edelman) formula has shown this can work. I upload my vblog videos to revver and then donate the proceeds (not massive I admit) to charity. Not sure anyone really objects to a little ad on the end of the video.

don't fall into the charity trap. place ads, earn money. if you decide to donate a portion of it -- or all of it -- there's no need to tell people.

if donating 33% of the ad income to a charity makes you happy, do it. if spending 33% of the ad income to have a better tv than winer makes you happy, then do that.

Drums: there's a HUGE difference between ads that sit NEXT TO content and THE CONTENT ITSELF!

The fact that you can't see that difference scares the shit out of me.

I'd say that if it were my blog, I would have ads for the products or services which I actually use myself.

For example, there's a very nice, fast, and accurate anti-virus software package from a company which not too many people have heard about, so I would advertise for them because I really use it myself, and I have confidence in the product.

If I could promote their stuff, make some money while doing it, then I'd be helping out far more people than just the pocketbooks of a bunch of advertisers.

Robert, do it at the least as an experiment, then report back to us -- your loyal readers -- how it all went.

I'd avoid the likes of Federated Media, though, as they take 40pc of revenues. Take a little advice from an ad pro on pricing and throw out some feelers to that encyclopedic list of tech contacts you have.

I reckon once you've tried it, you'll never look back. Getting paid for something is not just about the money, it's about knowing the worth of what you're doing.

Me personally I don't understand your torments. Is it all about ethics? You do something brilliantly, people use it (and some of them even gain profit by quoting your posts and bringing traffic to their own blogs), you are a professional and a profession is supposed to bring you money. And who cares how you use it?
Anyway it happened that there are so many bloggers out there with the most interesting subjects being earning money by blogging and monetizing their blogs. Everyone launches blogs to earn money. Why hesitating when you already have a successful blog?

With the amount of work you put into the blogosphere Robert, nobody deserves to make some money off of their blog more than you do.

There is nothing wrong with getting paid for hard work.

I say, advertise away man. If it will help your company, which in turn helps you, do it.

I decided to experiment with ads, and decided that I didn't want my friends and "loyal" readers to see them, so I only put them on archive pages, and only on posts older than seven days. Yeah, it radically reduces the views and clicks I get, but I consider it a decent compromise. I don't annoy those who come back all the time, and I still get something from all those old posts that only get viewed when people find them through search engines.

Ahm! I don't know why I got an idea from wordpress that redirecting to another site that sells ads in not allowed.

I thought until the last moment I came here that's not allowed. How did you do that? Should I contact wordpress if I wanted to sell ads or even put those amazon's codes or any affiliates here?

It's not allowed, pobiznews.

Wordpress.com-hosted blogs, except those in the VIP program, are not allowed to have their own advertising at the present time. Adsense will not work here, and other forms of advertising have gotten blogs reprimanded and/or spiked entirely.

The VIP program is very different; you can find the details in the Wordpress blog, or use their home page search function. If you desperately want to combine Wordpress and advertising, and you don't want to join the VIP program, you're best off downloading the software and hosting it off Wordpress.com; quite a lot of blogs are doing that, and in that case you may host Adsense or any other kind of advertising you like.

I, personally, don't want ads on my blog. I know they're there in certain places, but that Wordpress put them there; it wasn't my choice. Wordpress is now working on an ad revenue sharing model, where the income would be split between the blogger and Wordpress, but that's going to be some time till launch, if it ever does launch.

Robert, if you don't need the money, why sell advertising? Look at it this way: at the moment, 100% of the real estate on your blog is advertising for Robert Scoble, his interests, his ideas, and his book. How much would you have to be paid to give up the space to someone else, which is what you'd be doing?

Also, the snob speaks: It does look cheap, frankly.

The only concern I would have Robert, is that you can't lose credibility. If you chose to use ads, make sure you maintain credibility with your audience.

I think of you as the bottom up people's man, don't lose that.

Maybe you should sign up with payperpost and make a few bucks on the side :-)).

Uhm. You do already? I can buy your book from Amazon from an **ad** in the sidebar.

So the question is more like: Should you put up MORE ads. And for me this is ok. If they are relevant and don't jump in my face I actually like ads. On the other hand: If they are totally unrelevant, take too much space and make my surfing take longer, I will go away and stay away. In your case, a few more ads is totally ok. Finance a 30" for Patrick.

Ads are just related sites that have a financial qualifier that affects how relevant they are.

Basically, people put their money where their mouth is.

If I happen to be in their target market, and they are not complete idiots, I can at least expect to see an ad based on something I am interested in.

Then again, I am only one, and to pigeon hole myself with every other sweaty reader of your blog is an injustice to my sanity.

I just clicked on 'top story, should I sell ads here' I didn't even know it was your blog, I am blognostic, I don't subscribe to any blog, I just find stuff as i go.

Blognostic. OMFG sounds like a buzz word!

I think ads depend on the site, and the blogger.

A simple ad or two (small and unobtrusive) would be an OK addition here. The next question is you.

Is this money for you, or charity. I can't answer either of those questions for you, but it depends on need in many cases. Do you need the extra income?

Personally, I would sell ad space on my blog right now. Why? Because I am currently unemployed (as of Friday) so I need the income (bank account is approaching red soon).

Just don't put ads in your RSS feed. I have become used to ads on blogs and I use Firefox/Adblock so I don't see them anyway. But I actively avoid feeds with ads, it seems too mercenary.

No, just keep linking to my blog so I can make money through advertising....

Your blog is increasing the recognition and valuation of PodTech and I assume you are a shareholder.

Go for it Robert. I put adsense on my site last week and have made .23 cents - hey, it's a start.

And if you give that to charity then you are indeed 'da mans'.

Sure! Sell out! Why not? Everyone else is doing it.. I'll just ignore the ad on your blog like i do everyone else's blog. I thought that blogging was done to "get the story out" not to "make as much money by placing an ad anywhere and everywhere i can". But... its your blog.

Here's my answer as to whether or not you should run ads:

http://www.bourland.com/open-letter-to-robert-s...

Enjoy!

Andy

Yes you should, and if you give the money to charity I'd have even *more* respect for you than I do now. In fact maybe Calcanis' big contribution (along with others who do this now like Jeff Clavier) could be the idea that personal blogs "should" run ads and the revenues go to charity. That would be an exciting development, though I suppose Mike Arrington might not appreciate the idea.

Ads fuel the internet economy as well as innovation and growth and there is nothing wrong with legitimate pitches that are not obnoxious, charity or not.

Ads on your blog? Now there's an idea! Allowing marketers of *your* choice to join this conversation and support it? Sounds good to me....

Putting simple text-based ads wont hurt, but it would be really great if you could donate the ads' money to WP for their bandwidth/motivation.

Were you planning on doing it for charity?

How many contributors WikiPedia has now ? Do you think that's enough ? I don't.

Putting Ads on WikiPedia can make people stop contributing to it. You can put ads on your own website - but not on website people has spend their time and others resources to contribute content.

Also ads can make readers unhappy - imagine reading article about your city and seeing some scam ads like GreenCardLottery, screensavers, get rich fast and others ( http://blog.siteadvisor.com/ ).
This is unknown how advertisers can abuse WikiPedia - as everyone can edit it any page - they can put own keywords there to trigger ads. Then money become involved - you will not imagine that those companies can do. There are already large problem with link spamming (for SEO purpose) - policing and managing ads will only add one more problem.

Putting small box with AOL logo nobody will notice does not make sense to AOL - as they need people to notice it and get attention !

As well - are WikiPedia short of money ? Last fundraising campaign was successful.
Getting money simply to donate them to some charity is not best reason to put ads. Those ads are not "free" - consumers have to cover full cost of running them (and large extra) then buying products advertised. Those scam ads I've mentioned before are even much worse - this will mean WikiPedia is helping those scammers (as people tend to trust WikiPedia content) - but will be pretending to be "clean" as all money are donated.

P.S> Why nobody calculated how many money are lost from companies not putting text-ads in OpenSource software source code ?

Image highly paid IT/CS person digging for source of bug or trying to add new feature to product will see some cool ads about tourism, travel, gifts to his wife or kids, new plazma or XBox ? Extremely well targeted one.

It's easy to make all those ads dynamic by forcing people to checkout source code from CVS.

Why nobody has calculated this ?

You've got a lot of white space. You could add ads without taking anything away. Why not?

Hell yes you should sell ads. Why not? Down with the free love for the good of humanity nonsense. There's nothing wrong with making a buck, especially since it's an honest one.

blaze: charity would play into it, but would be a percentage. Maybe about 25%.

Robert,

I can see the difference. I disclose, and have from the start. I have challenge anyone to come and point out differences between paid and unpaid content on my blog, to call bullshit on me for any post where I'm not honest, whether paid or unpaid.

No one has.

On the other hand, I pointed out that the Washington Post allowed a columnist to basically shill the MuVo player and slam the iPod without dislosing that Creative is a sponsor of his efforts, and no one batted an eye. Not so much as an interested click.

There seems to be a disconnect between theory and reality when it comes to blog monetization.

In your case, whatever you do will be okay with me, I'll still be reading. As long as you don't compare me to big tobacco companies.

Let the debate rage on.

DnW

GO FOR IT !!!!

You should be entitled to receive some compensation for the effort you put into you blog.

I would not hesitate, of course, none of that PopUp/Popunder crap.

Unlike the majority of you dudes, I think adding ads is pathetic...I think of Xanga, MySpace, and the like when I see a blog with ads on it. It takes up valueable whitespace on a page (the part of the page with nothing on it), and messes up your theme in that you have to have the frames and theme work together. For viewers like me, you then eventually appear to be another cheap capitalistic sell-out only there to make money, and are no longer there for the love.

Maybe instead of ads, if this is for charity, set up something on PayPal or whatever and allow for people to donate. If you have the pay-per-click, hon, be prepared because there will be people who are going to abuse those ads, and your sponsors are going to sue you or whatever...

Ads down the side of a page have never bothered me a whit. Pop-ups are the devil's work, though.

There's nothing wrong about making money honestly.

Your writing is excellent, and I would be fine If ads would be put up. You deserve the couple thousand dollars a month.

Scoble, must you give your readers any more reason to not return to your blog?

Just kidding. Do want you want. It's your blog, so you can do whatever you want. Why does anybody else's opinion matter, since it will mean several thousand dollars per month for charity?

Selling ads on your site would halve your current readership, but most probably not affect the rate of adding new readers. It's a few of us who have been reading it for a while, who will move the scobelizer links from "people we know and should read" to "blog-zines"

Same things I did with GigaOM ... no offence to Om ... but it was a change of designation from the dude blogging to the company blogging!

Oh, and I put ads on my blog because it is not considered a "must read" by the public. Yours, luckily, is.

Scanning through the comments here it looks like I'm in the minority thinking that running ads on your blog is a bad idea. Frankly I'm pretty suprised at this.

I hadn't noticed it until just now, but it seems that nearly all of the blogs that I read by actually going to the site have no adds. The rest are through rss.

Nothing against rss. We all know how good it is at pulling mountains of info into one place, but for people who I really respect and maybe friends too, I spend that extra tome to go to the site because it gives me a sense of that person.

All I'm saying is be very carefull. It's not always obvious where the real value is. I find it quite incredible how you've managed to build up such a fantastic worldwide reputation (with people most of whom you've never even met) of integrity, honesty and independance, despite working for company which has often not been reguarded so highly.

Would it all have worked out the same had you put ads in from the beguining?

What is your gut telling you?

I don't think there is anything wrong with the idea of making money from your blog with ads. As someone mentioned above... keeping up a blog takes work.

Isn't that a violation of the Wordpress.com TOS? I believe it says no advertising on these blogs.

Or is that a benefit (double standard) of VIP membership with Wordpress.com?

To quote from http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/00070...

"I'm not opposed to advertising. I won't pretend that I don't like money, particularly here in the United States where money is synonymous with freedom."
...
"Realize that advertising changes the nature of your blog. The first ads you take convert your blog from a non-profit to a commercial venture. It's no longer a hobby; you're being paid to blog. It's work. And unless you're only accepting only random ads, there are also new avenues for conflicts of interest."

You already do. For your book. It's good BTW. Look, blogging is about getting real, right? So let's get real. The "real" is that the vast majority of the people commenting on this post would kill to have enough traffic to their blogs to warrant significant ad revs. That's the "real." The "real" is that you've paid your dues. The "real" is that you've worked hard at this for a long time. I'm of the opinion that this post was not meant to be taken literally, but if it was, sell the freaking ads brother. If I'm right, and it wasn't meant to be taken literally, then still sell the freaking ads brother. Just keep your content strong and everything will be cool.

Robert,

This is what i wanted to say by instinct after reading your caption.. GO FOR IT!

BUT, After reading through all the comments (and the time it took) by brain regrouped and this is what i have to say now:

DON'T DO IT!

Why?

Selling Ads - Short term benefit
You become one among the masses who has a popular blog and selling out.

Not Selling Ads - Long term benefit
You become one among the few who has a popular blog and not selling out.

So keep the way it is.. and earn more big bucks outside (because of the blogs, ofcourse) as you bring in more readers everyday.

Offtopic, yes VOX is a good idea.

I spend a lot of time on my blog. I wouldn't mind getting some cash back with ads, as long as I have control over what gets advertised.

sytycd — ads on Wordpress.com blogs are not allowed except in the VIP program. There used to be a double standard (ie "not allowed except for the people we pick") but in response to complaints Wordpress has set up the VIP program. It does cost $200 per month, so that's bound to strip out people looking to make ten bucks here or there from Adsense.

If you want to use Wordpress and you want advertising, download the software, install it in your own webspace, and you can run all the ads you want.

Personally if you go for adsense it would be a mistake in your case be cause you have no control over what is advertised. If you pick specific products such as your books or products you believe in such as wordpress or a hosting company etc that would be adding value.

Something that I came across yesterday was at www.notesinspanish.com where they are promoting t-shirts now I wouldn't mind a Scoblitzer t shirt.

Anyway if you did it right it would ad value.

I gotta say that I never click on ads on a website. I might see a service or something that catches my eye but I never click on it from the site I search then go there from the results - it's weird I know, but that is what I do.

I have even blocked the whole Google Adsense domain using Adblock - so I never even see them!

The T-Shirt idea is an excellent one. You could even make it more attractive by randomly signing the odd one. That would make it more popular and you could still donate to charity. Cool idea sfsilks63

Suttle ads aren't that annoying; the whole purpose of ads is to try to get you to do/react to something. If you're smart about what direction you want to go; i.e. have the ads be pertinent to the overall whole of your blog then I say go-for-it. Just try to stay on track with the things that are interesting to you and that keep your readers attention.

Ciao...

If you can back the company/content of the ads you'll run, do it.

Fame, celebrity, they don't care about your family, none of us ever know when our fortunes might reverse. Earn everything you can, while you can.

Given the feedback I just came up with a more modest, third version of my proposal... interested in hearing your thoughts on it.

http://www.calacanis.com/2006/10/31/wikipeda-ad...

hey hows it goin

As long as the advertisements are clearly marked, I don't see any issues with having advertising on the blog.

Instead of affiliate programs, or cost per click placements (Google), I think your blog would be better off with selling time based sponsorships. TechCrunch has sponsorship ad units on the right side of their homepage.

I'd stay away from accepting any advertisers that you may blog about in the future or have in the past. I think that simple rule could solve a lot of issues around perceived conflict of interests.

i got a free razr from this website and thought i would share :-)

Thank you for your kind reply and this full informative post. I checked the VIP and found that my sites are still to reach this size of daily visitors.
I downloaded the software before couple of months to host somewhere as you said but I don't know how to work it to have my blogs there.

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