How should you Advertise on your Blog?

Again I find myself reading a chapter of the interesting book by Jeremy Wright called Blog Marketing. This time the chapter is about advertising on your blog. This is a topic that I think is a very interesting one for most bloggers, because we all want to earn at least a few bucks a month from our efforts as bloggers. I am not saying that we all want to become rich, but it would be great if we could at least earn enough to be able to pay our monthly expenses.

According to the author:

one of the best ways to advertise anything in blogs is not to advertise it at all

Isn´t that an interesting thought?

Remember that all blog ads ultimately need to be grounded in respect. If you can both respect your audience while bringing value to your company, your blog-based advertising will be a success

You should not advertise at all and your blog ads should be grounded in respect. Advertising on your blog seems to be a complicated story, or maybe not. He explains in details what your main concerns should be, and this is (I am not going into details here, but I will comment on a few of them):

• Don`t distract from the content
• Why not write a post about it?
• Don`t use ads in your feeds
• Place the ad well
• Give people a reason to click the ad link
• Give customers ownership
• Don`t advertise
• Be passionate
• Have a cause
• Interview the person behind the ad

Why shouldn`t I use ads in my feeds? Well, I think that this relates to corporate blogs more than a personal one. A company that wants to gain trust should probably not earn money from ads in their feeds, but I am not sure if I agree 100% though. To me, the most important part is the contents and as long as the ads are not distracting and as long as the ads are not hidden (undercover marketing), I think it`s ok to advertise in your feeds. I prefer ads at the bottom of my feeds, like the ones I get from FeedBurner… I am not sure how I would feel if the ads were placed in the middle of my posts. It would probably be a little distracting.

I have done a few posts, where I have written about the ad instead of publishing a banner. It works great if you are an amazon affiliate, and it might work great for other products as well. It takes time, but I think it`s worth it. I like the review part of a post, where I tell my readers what I think about a product.

I have actually never thought about doing an interview with the person behind a product. I think that this is probably the best way to advertise “without advertising”. If I did an interview with the creator, I would get the story behind the product, the story of the person behind the product and I think I would get a very good post and an affiliate link that would probably get more clicks than any banner on my blog.

Now, it`s time to find a person to interview.