I’ve decided to put some subtle adverts back on On Blogging Australia and this blog. This article covers why I did it, and how.
The history: why the ads went away
I gave up on advertising on my main blogs after Meg’s megarant. At the time I decided that I didn’t want to be anything like John Chow. I still don’t. While his “make money at any price” philosophy is offensive, it also isn’t as sustainable as being a decent human being (like Yaro and Darren).
Why they are back
The ads are back because I promised Lightening that I’d write an article on how she could make a little bit of money with her blog. Advertising is part of this simple plan - and I didn’t feel right talking about it but not doing it myself.
How I put them back
The ads are in the post footer between the post text and the comment block - they look like this:
It is a fairly simple job to add advertising like this to the page footer in a self-hosted WordPress (also known as WordPress Multi User or MU) blog.
- In the Dashboard, go to Presentation > Theme Editor
- Select the Single Post template.
- Insert the code you want displayed between the <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/theloop.php’); ?> and <?php comments_template(); ?> lines.
- Have a look at the result by selecting Update file then click on the View site link - and note that it will only show up when a single post is selected. If there isn’t enough space between the text and the ads, or the ads and the comments, put a few break <br> tags in and look at a single post.
That is all there is to it.
Time will tell if I do make much money from this strategy or not - I know that it does make a small amount fairly consistently. I’ll let you know 
Hi Andrew
Oh, I thought we were going to let that post die a natural death - thanks for resurrecting it (NOT)
BTW, I have never objected to monetisation - just when you can’t find the content for all the AdSense!
Good for you - I hope you make stacks
Hi Andrew, If you provide good content, readers never mind about ads. We all get used to Ad-blindness. Oops , how do we make money>
Hi Meg,
thank you for your comment.
That is OK, what are friends for?
I take your word that the “too many ads” dig was not at me, but it still did make me think about what I was doing and why - hence getting rid of the ads.
I’ll let you know if I do make stacks - if I do, WordCamp Canberra will be on me
Best regards, Andrew
Hi Thiru,
thank you for your comment.
I believe that Ad-blindness and money making are not mutually incompatible - that is, if you can write good content and get CPM (cost per thousand impressions) advertising - the ad-blind contribute to revenue anyhow just by looking at the post
Best regards, Andrew
Hmm, I’ve been thinking about placing a couple of ads, hoping just to cover the cost of my hosting because money is pretty tight for me, but I’m not sure how they would work on my site.
I agree with Meg, as long as the content is the main focus of the page, monetisation doen’t bother me. When ads dominate, however, I’m outta there.
I’ve been considering the BlogHer ad network because I think they are tidy and suit my niche but I’ve read some complaints about their load time. Overall, because it’s a personal site I just worry that it might take away the sense of community I trying to build.
Hi cerebralmum,
thank you for your comment. I think that Meg hit the nail on the head - as long as the ads don’t get in the way, they are OK. Where they do get in the way is when there is more advertisement than content (see John Chow’s RSS feed for an example - short articles are actually shorter than the ads in between them) and there are hidden affiliate links - i.e. you expect the linked text to take you to a related article rather than an ad landing page.
Load time is an important consideration - and I think that this is an example of the ads getting in the way. This is certainly the case with some templates that are set up (basically the code order) to load the left hand ad-filled sidebar first - in other words, you don’t get to read the content before the #$%^& ads. This comes across as rude to me - while there is a basic understanding that the reader puts up with the ads to see the content, waiting for a sidebar widget to load can be very offputting. It is where I believe that Susie Bright went wrong with her RSS feed.
I think that it is possible to have a community with advertising, as long as it is done with a little class.
Best regards, Andrew
That’s a good point. I just double checked the BlogHer sites I know and the content does come up before the ads load. You can select no flash, too. I might go and finalise my application. That’ll give me a month to get a second sidebar.
Thanks for the links. Very helpful.
Hi Cerebralmum,
thank you for your comment.
The load order (sidebar-with-ads vs main content area) depends on the theme as well as the external site that is serving the ads up - that said, if the BlogHer blogs that you’re reading have no problems, then chances are that there are no problems
Getting a second sidebar with the base K2 theme is easy, as is widget management. All K2 blogs look pretty much the same out of the box, which works for some people and not for others. There is a chicken-and-egg question in themes - if I leave customising the theme until I can afford to pay for the customisation, my blogs may never get popular enough to fund that customisation. For now that is a chance I may have to take.
Best regards, Andrew