In Praise Of Text Over Widgets For Making Money

I want to carry on a little more today on the theme I started in my previous post regarding adverts in widgets.

Following the post Dean Jutilla of Widget Bucks was good enough to leave a comment. It really emphasised my belief that most widget style adverts aren't of value to the average blog unless the products shown tie in exactly with the subject matter of the blog.

I mentioned that camera ads would be okay for a photography blog, for example, but put those same ads on a general blog and making money from them would be virtually negated.

As Dean wrote: "... you are 100% correct, the more contextual the ad, the better the performance. These ads are a tough go on affiliate marketing sites ..."

Space is valuable on a blog so has to be put to the best use.

As I see it the majority of widget style ads and banner ads in general are a waste of space unless used properly. If they aren't contextual the space should perhaps be filled with something else - even dear old AdSense.

At least with AdSense the ads tie in reasonably well to the blog's niche providing you don't wander to far from the subject. I remember once writing about the traffic exchange program Blog Soldiers in depth and ending up with military adverts! (Note: Blog Soldiers is not compatible with AdSense).

Affiliate programs aren't just a matter of joining and then slapping the banner ads on a blog. It doesn't work like that unfortunately, it's not that easy.

We have to 'know' what our readers are more likely to click on and give them the right ads to do so.

I saw that on one of my blogs yesterday all of the clicks on ads were on AdSense - the other ads were ignored. This means I need to do some work on that blog and find more appropriate ads to run alongside AdSense.

I still feel that the most productive money making advertising is text within a post.

Good luck,
Mike.

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