I ran in to many bloggers who simply ignore adsense as an income source saying it is not professional to put them in a authority site. I know many professional sites using adsense. What you think? Will it damage your site's image? For me , I am not depending on adsense so I can let it go any time if there are advantageous of doing so. But I enjoy the moderate Extra income I am getting from it. Until today I blended my ads too much with the blog content and I loved the look of it. Yet. I was getting a decent income.Today I changed the background color and the title color to make them less blending and stand out from the content. ( earlier bg color was same as the site body and the title was pinkish red. Same color as my related posts link.) Just an experiment to see whether it will generate more clicks. But now I am bit worried because adsense is too visible for the readers. Should I change it back to blend it more as it was used to be? I am running adsense only on my blog and not in my product sites due to obvious reasons. But I can afford to drop adsense if it is necessary to improve the blog's image. Your opinion is very much appreciated. You can see the placement at, http://www.antharjalaya.com Thank you all for your time.
Not really, even big sites despite have multiple source of revenue display ads and get visitors (for the content they place) I have seen blogs of companies deploying adsense, and individuals who don't mind adsense on their blogs apart from other revenue generating stuff like affiliate links ...
As long as you don't get out of hand with the ads or present them in a distasteful way (gaudy colors, etc) I don't see how they can "destroy" your image. Many big name websites use AdSense.
Personally I don't think adsense looks good if it's a business site. If I go to a site with adsense it makes me wonder 1/ why they would chance sending their visitors to the competition and 2/ why they need to make a few quid on advertising, is their business struggling so much that they need every possible revenue stream? In my opinion a business site has credibility, unless something like adsense makes me wonder, a non business site does not have credibility (after all anyone can publish a blog and say whatever they like) until i read it and form my own oppinion of the author. I hope this helps.
It's down to personal choice. If you are not blogging for money then you probably won't be interested in adsense. But many Bloggers use it to make some income from their hard work and I don't have a problem with that.
I have often worried about this, I used to run a few text links above the content at recession(dot)org but decided to drop them as a few bucks wasn't worth it.
I think there's a tipping point wherein you get enough authority where you can run adsense non-obtrusively and maintain respect. For large-traffic bloggers I would also suggest using publicly acknowledged affiliates. Always be honest with your readers about what is an affiliate though, and try to only promote affiliates that you actually do think are good products/services. Don't ever sell your readers trust, it might work in the short term but not in the long term. In fact I have a blog post about greed in this business on my website.
I would say simply no You host your blog, you make some revenues through Google adsense everyone does that
I actually like how the ads complete the look of my page. Good page filler If you are the authority in the field, more credibility to your customers to click on those ads cos in a way it is 'endorsed' by you. But if you are selling something then don't use adsense.
Most authority sites I frequent do have some kind of advertising. For me what determines whether it looks "professional" or not has to do with how the ads are placed - they shouldn't dominate above the fold or interfere with reading the text. The content to should be front and center. It also depends on the blog's niche. One of the down sides with Adsense is that you don't have much control over what ads are displayed. If you blog about serious finance and business, I think it does look unprofessional to have ads for get rich quick schemes. If you blog about relationships, it's tacky to show ads for mail-order brides. And if your blog is about your business, you definitely don't want to show ads for your competitors. So in some cases I think affiliate or other non-contextual advertising is much more appropriate than Adsense.
Just about every website I've been to has some kind of ads. Often times their business is selling the ads. So seeing adsense on someone's blog doesn't make me think less of them. As long as the ads aren't so numerous and gawdy that they detract from the site I think it's fine.
If you have quality content in your blog, and ads are properly placed, then I think they don't have any bad impression at all. Google use ads in search results, Gmail etc too
ADS, Ugh! Ads were the reason I stopped reading Time Magazine! And commercials were the reason I stopped watching NCIS on TV. When I noticed that my local newspaper had classified ads, I stopped my subscription. I even noticed that my comic books had ads and stopped reading them, too - bye-bye, Bats. And don't get me started about Fox News (well actually, I NEVER WATCH THEM.) You know, 2500 years ago the Greeks painted advertisements on the walls of buildings extolling the virtues of Wine and my ancestors stopped going into those buildings... Valuable content is what is important when it comes to readership. If you loose a reader of your blog because you have adsense on it, then perhaps your content isn't right for that reader.
Main difference between us and pro blogger are only of ads placements . They place ads according to target and we think i will place three ads in top than my be 10% visitors click on them . They target niche posts and keywords to get good ads and we keep posting articles to increase posts on our blog and to receive traffic . Quality is the only difference nothing else .
I have more than adsense in my site. One affiliate network and one simple ad network. And they are making me about 70% of what adsense makes. The thing is I don't trust on adsense as its like a bad gf who can anytime dump you... If you want to keep your site clean then don't use adsense ... or do somthing to get a pro account of adsense so that u can blend it to your site without destroying the site's quality. Even using adsense makes me feel like someone is taking our right of expression with so many terms and condition for bloggers.. like u cant do this.. u can't do that or your acc. wil get ban.. blah blah.. I suggest you use only image ad in your site. Only 1 300x250 with work good somewhere in your right sidebar.
I agree with shawn! AdSense is good, but diversifying is even better. And to answer the original question: I definitely use AdSense on my blogs BUT NOT on my company websites!