Xondie

A frequent question we hear from clients is whether or not they should put ads, such as Google AdSense, on their websites. The answer is: It depends, but most likely not.

If you are selling a service or product, having 3rd party ads on your site is a very bad idea. One reason is that it cheapens your brand. If you have to sell ad space on your business website, it signals to potential customers that your business doesn’t make enough money on its own.

The more important reason is that when a user clicks on an ad, they leave your site. You have lost a potential customer - a potential customer that is now on someone else’s site already forgetting why they came to your site. Since online ads are relevant to the content on your pages, it is very likely that your direct competitors will be advertising on your site. To allow 3rd party advertising is making a choice to lose the potential revenue from a customer, in favor of making a few cents from an ad click. It is hard enough to get people to your site. Don’t entice them to leave with ads.

In some cases, putting ads on your site does make sense. If you are giving away a service or information for free and you have decent traffic to your site then ads are something worth considering. Internet users understand that free service sites need to make money somehow. Even though ads are slightly annoying to users, they will happily tolerate them in exchange for valuable content.

Before going crazy putting ads all over your web pages, you should pay attention to how much traffic you have coming to your site. If you are only attracting 10-50 visitors per day, you can expect to make around $10/month. You might instead focus on improving your site and attracting customers until you have a few hundred visitors per day. That way, you know that your website has value and you will make at least enough from ad revenue each month to take in dinner and a show.

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