Now, tell me the truth.. How many advertisers do you get for your blog? Are you willing to accept all of them? Are you going to put all of their banner ads on your site? Are you going to accept all of their paid reviews? Now, you need to think twice about this problem.. You need to answer the biggest question.. Are you going to let the advertisers run your blog?
There are lots of people around the world who are seeking to put their ads on your blog. What they need is publicity / back-links. Most of them won’t care about your blog. If you think only about collecting heaps of money.. then your in a big trouble! Accepting all the advertisers will bring you some money, but in the long run it could ruin your blog! So, before accepting an advertiser, you need to consider some points :
Does that advertiser have a good reputation?
Before accepting any ads, always check whether they have a good reputation. What if the advertiser is a spammer? What if its a malware site? What if that company is a scam? Then linking to that site will ruin your reputation as well as your users. Search engines and people who rates web sites like WOT always checks whether you link to bad websites. If you does, then your rankings goes down scaring off your visitors and genuine advertisers!
So, how to know whether that advertiser have a good reputation?
There are several places for you to check the reputation of a site :
- WOT : This is one of the best places to check. Many people rely on the rank given by the famous WOT browser extension before visiting a site. They have a big community.. First the professionals (WOT Team) will check your site and give a rating. Then, the community can comment and give their own ratings! They will not only check the technical side like linking and malware infections.. They will also check various other issues like the quality, ethical issues, privacy policy,etc. So, the first thing you must check is the WOT rank.
- Alexa : Some say that Alexa doesn’t give you an accurate rank. But, to take some decisions, its enough. Some advertisers check our Alexa ranks before they choose us. We also should check their Alexa ranks before accepting them!
- Webutation : This is one single place where you can get ratings from WOT, Google, Website Antivirus, Alexa, Page Rank and also ratings from their own community. I think this is the best place for you to check whether the site have a bad reputation.
Always think about the quality of your blog without aiming for money!
Some people get completely insane when they see money.. They’ll accept any advertiser if they are ready to pay big bucks! But, does that advertiser match your site? If a person comes to advertise a real estate business on your Tech Blog, what will you do? It will be a disadvantage for both of you.
When speaking about quality, never fill your site with ads! Your content must come first. Then you should go for ads. Normally, people don’t trust websites which are full of ads. Personally, I will never go near a site which have ads all over it. So, always have a limit!
Do not subscribe into too many ad services
There are some sites which are specialized in ad services. They have everything, paid reviews, Adsense ads, Adbrite ads, Info links and many other advertisers. This will not only make your site ugly, but will also slow down your site throwing away more readers. So, choose only a limited number of ads services which suits you the best!
Do not give too many links
Several months ago, one of my friends got some bad ratings on WOT. When we asked WOT, they said that the site had too many bad links. My friend did everything he could to remove all the links but still some links are there.. He have used so many tools to add links to his site, now unable to remove them! Not only that, for SEO also, its not a good idea to add too many dofollow links in one page! So, this effects both your reputation and the SEO.
Do not write too many paid reviews
I have seen some blogs which run mostly by paid reviews! There’s nothing much on those blogs for a normal reader. Yes paid reviews are another way of getting money from a blog. But for that also, have a limit! Do not post paid reviews very often. Keep a good interval between two reviews. In that way, your readers won’t even recognize that your writing a paid review!
Control your ads
I think this is more than enough for you to control your advertising. Always try to have a limit in everything! If you chase behind money, then your advertisers will ruin your blog and you’ll loose both your money and your readers! Still your not late.. Try to put some limits and choose wisely!