Comments on: December 6: A Skinned Knee, The Marinara Fiasco & Monetizing the Model http://hundreddollarbusiness.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/december-6-a-skinned-knee-the-marinara-fiasco-monetizing-the-model/ $100 and 30 Days to Make Something Happen Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:40:09 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: hundreddollarbusiness http://hundreddollarbusiness.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/december-6-a-skinned-knee-the-marinara-fiasco-monetizing-the-model/#comment-43 hundreddollarbusiness Fri, 08 Dec 2006 15:39:39 +0000 http://hundreddollarbusiness.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/december-6-a-skinned-knee-the-marinara-fiasco-monetizing-the-model/#comment-43 Johnathan, You are such a good salesmen-- even if you aren't working for Google! ;) I think that I will look into AdSense a bit more, and perhaps try it out? Thank you so much for your explanation! I really appreciate you taking the time to give me more details. And I like your other ideas as well. :) Keep reading and giving suggestions, we love it! Johnathan,

You are such a good salesmen– even if you aren’t working for Google! ;)

I think that I will look into AdSense a bit more, and perhaps try it out?

Thank you so much for your explanation! I really appreciate you taking the time to give me more details. And I like your other ideas as well. :) Keep reading and giving suggestions, we love it!

]]> By: Johnathan http://hundreddollarbusiness.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/december-6-a-skinned-knee-the-marinara-fiasco-monetizing-the-model/#comment-30 Johnathan Thu, 07 Dec 2006 14:02:08 +0000 http://hundreddollarbusiness.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/december-6-a-skinned-knee-the-marinara-fiasco-monetizing-the-model/#comment-30 Hi Carolynn, Johnathan again, of the AdSense suggestion. :) In terms of your other monetizing ideas I think most of them are good, except that since your motivation for going brick & mortar instead of online was to cut down on the online learning curve, things like adding a shopping cart might be a little... curve-intensive. A cafepress store certainly couldn't hurt - but in terms of potential revenue vs. time invested I suspect that one or another of the affiliate ideas will be the lowest hanging fruit. I take your point that you don't want AdSense (or any other affiliation) to cheapen the site, but I will offer a couple counterpoints to consider: 1. AdSense will let you customize the look of your ads pretty extensively - so you can use a smaller ad block, text instead of graphics, matching colour scheme, etc. as ways of making the ads less glaring. Really, internet users are quite good at ignoring them (though see point #3 below) but more importantly I don't think anyone reading this blog would begrudge your using them, as long as they're kept unintrusive. (Just so we're clear, google doesn't do blinking flash ads and popups and the rest of it, if you choose text only, understated text is all you get.) 2. Google will actually only serve 3 ad blocks for a given page. This is to prevent people scamming the system by creating pages with hundreds of ad blocks but for you it means that even if you added one to each post, Google's magic would stop it from becoming overwhelming. 3. A surprising number of people click on the ads. On my own blog I get about a 5% click-through rate which, to me, implies that they aren't particularly hateful things to include. Not that you said they were or anything, it just comes back to the refrain that most readers understand why the ads are there, and many will even use them. This is probably helped by google's ability to make the ads relevant. I'm really not a google spokesperson or anything - I just know that my own hosting bills are paid for a couple times over by adsense, and my blog is just a random collection of thoughts, whereas yours stands to build a regular, daily readership. Hi Carolynn,

Johnathan again, of the AdSense suggestion. :) In terms of your other monetizing ideas I think most of them are good, except that since your motivation for going brick & mortar instead of online was to cut down on the online learning curve, things like adding a shopping cart might be a little… curve-intensive. A cafepress store certainly couldn’t hurt – but in terms of potential revenue vs. time invested I suspect that one or another of the affiliate ideas will be the lowest hanging fruit.

I take your point that you don’t want AdSense (or any other affiliation) to cheapen the site, but I will offer a couple counterpoints to consider:

1. AdSense will let you customize the look of your ads pretty extensively – so you can use a smaller ad block, text instead of graphics, matching colour scheme, etc. as ways of making the ads less glaring. Really, internet users are quite good at ignoring them (though see point #3 below) but more importantly I don’t think anyone reading this blog would begrudge your using them, as long as they’re kept unintrusive. (Just so we’re clear, google doesn’t do blinking flash ads and popups and the rest of it, if you choose text only, understated text is all you get.)

2. Google will actually only serve 3 ad blocks for a given page. This is to prevent people scamming the system by creating pages with hundreds of ad blocks but for you it means that even if you added one to each post, Google’s magic would stop it from becoming overwhelming.

3. A surprising number of people click on the ads. On my own blog I get about a 5% click-through rate which, to me, implies that they aren’t particularly hateful things to include. Not that you said they were or anything, it just comes back to the refrain that most readers understand why the ads are there, and many will even use them. This is probably helped by google’s ability to make the ads relevant.

I’m really not a google spokesperson or anything – I just know that my own hosting bills are paid for a couple times over by adsense, and my blog is just a random collection of thoughts, whereas yours stands to build a regular, daily readership.

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