It took us a while to see the value in putting Google’s Adsense tool on our website, but it has begun to make sense.
We put a link on the lower right side of the blog to see if anything would happen. In the beginning very little did. First, every link it provided pertained to money-making opportunities and blogging… and none of you clicked on any of it.
In recent weeks, however the links have become more focused on what we talk about here. There have been links to corporate branding, internal branding, business branding … and even a link to beer glasses (based on my recent posts on the acute lameness of beer taglines, I’d guess.)
Anyhow, everything is getting clicked on.
Initially I was against putting up the links because I figured that readers would be turned off by two issues. First, it just doesn’t seem very classy. I personally don’t like blogs covered in banner advertisements – they tend to be visually busy and take away from the site content. Adsense is an excellent alternative here – especially with the way that they offer colors that blend in rather than stand out or strobe.
The second issue is that Stokefire makes money off of the clicks. I didn’t want the blog to be a direct revenue source. Sure, I love when people read the blog and write or call us about bringing the Stokefire team on for a contract. I didn’t know how I felt about making a few pennies off of people that chose to go to a competitor’s site.
I’ve recently decided that I feel fine about it. Here’s why:
- We make a ridiculously small amount of money from it… and somehow my conscience is soothed by this.
- We’ve been intending to put up links to our competition and our partners anyhow. Yes – we feel that in order to show you that we’re the best choice you need to understand what the alternatives are. We don’t want any buyer’s remorse. (We still may put up the competitive links, but now we can rest assured that you can find the competitors that want to be found.)
- While the links are becoming more topical, we’re still endlessly entertained by some of the random stuff that shows up. Beer glasses, Multi-Level Marketing, Russian Brides, something called a Rife Machine… you never know what you’re gonna get.
So, call me a sellout… a really cheap sellout. I think I’m gonna stick with Adsense for a while. Kudos to Google for coming up with a program that blends in to the environment rather than forcing us to work our content around it.
…and though I can’t encourage anyone to click on any of the advertisements (that would violate our Adsense contract) I can and will encourage you to take a look at the Adsense list at the bottom of the right menu to see if they’ve nailed the day’s topic or missed it entirely. (The Rife Machine was on a day that I stated a city’s tagline was rife with okay-ness… I’m guessing that the Rife Machine is somehow responsible.) And, heck, if there’s a company there that you think may provide better value than we do – by all means… um… dangit. We can’t say it, but you know what to do.
Tate Linden
Principal Consultant
Stokefire Consulting Group
703-778-9925
