Time and again I’ve seen perfectly good blogs turn into nothing more than ad generators as the blogger gets hooked on the profit they make from sponsored posts. Like most people I couldn’t help but be turned off by these blogs. However, having friends that make a healthy profit from consumer-generated ads I couldn’t turn a blind eye on the benefit it brings to the many bloggers that participate in these programs. So instead of shooting them down I will be outlining some suggestions on how to make sure that your blog doesn’t turn spammy. Here’s my advice. 1. Resolve to stay true to your blog’s initial purpose. Of course if your initial purpose was to make money through then this skip this number. ^_^ 2. Realise that you will lose readers if your blog turns spammy. This means that you will also lose inbound links if your readers link to you and this also means that you will lose potential profit from pay per click and pay per impression ads. 3. Determine the approach you want to take in making posts that mention ads. You can make posts that are meant solely to mention the product/service you need to review. You can make regular posts and dedicate a section of that post to the product/service review. 4. If you wish to post reviews as a “stand alone” blog entry you should remember to:
- determine the frequency of your normal/ordinary posts each week/month
- determine the maximum number of “ad posts” that you publish without your blog turning spammy (This is where it turns tricky because what might be OK to you might not be to your readers)
- intersperse the “ad posts” between the ordinary posts putting as much ordinary posts between “ad posts” as much as possible
to be continued…
Originally posted on April 7, 2008 @ 11:03 pm
