On Advertising
I was thinking about advertising today. As a rule I don’t like it – tv ads are avoidable but Youtube ones send me batty, and I think Google ones (the Adsense ones that appear in websites) look trashy and cheap. However, I have been scouring finance blogs over the past few weeks just to get a few ideas for content, layout, things that they do, and importantly, things that they don’t do and that I could do better.
One blog in particular caught my eye, Dividends Down Under: https://dividendsdownunder.com/ . I’m not sure who they are, but they run a blog about saving money and investing for life to retire much sooner than 65 etc etc. Good content. But the thing I thought was really cool was that they are actually making money from Google Ads. Obviously that’s what people do when they have advertising on their site, but I didn’t really think about that.
So they are able to defray some of the costs of hosting and so on via advertising. And somebody bought something from a Google Adsense ad that was linked to their site, so in between that and their views (i believe you get a few cents per view) they’ve made nearly $100 since they started the blog. I’m not sure how long ago that was, maybe it was like 5 years ago. But the point is that $100 would pay a goodly part of a year’s hosting.
Now, I am still not keen on advertising. I think that good content is its own drawcard and doesn’t need to be cheapened by ads, and also, dilligaf about pink diamonds? (you must have seen the pink diamond ads getting around on Google). However, websites can be a bit of a financial drain- pretty cheap really, given what you can do with them, but it does add up, especially with some of the plugins I might get for security, to track my portfolio, integrate with Excel etc ($100USD a year, for one of them). While I am not including ‘administration costs’ (eg this blog) in my portfolio experiment, I take the view that I should be, which means I am considering ways to reduce expenses wherever possible.
So if there was a way to find a couple of tasteful ads, or ‘partner’ links (maybe to fund managers I respect?) that would bring in a few cents here and there without cluttering the site or cheapening it, then that is something that I’d consider. If any readers with their own blogs happen to have 2c worth of suggestions or opinions, I’m all ears.
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