Pretty humbled.
Wow.
I am seriously-humbled by the response to my journey into monetizing this blog. Can I say a big THANK YOU to this community? Ah, I’m not sure I can shout it loud enough!
When I announced that I was going to start offering select advertising on this blog as well as begin experiments into using advertising systems like Google Adsense you can bet that I mulled it over in my mind (and heart) for quite some time.
Even though I’ve been monetizing my other blogs for years I felt that this community was a bit different – really something special – so much so that it would hurt a bit more than normal to hear negative responses to my announcement, even though I had shared historically that I would wait to earn the trust of my readers.
And that’s what I did. I waited almost a year (10 months) before dropping the first advertisement on the blog and felt it was the right time to start the experiments.
But again, I knew there was the potential to rub people the wrong way (and I was prepared for it for sure) – there’s always the risk of offending your community the moment you throw up an advertisement on your sidebar or change the format of the content to slot in a big banner ad.
Sure I was a bit nervous...!
For many bloggers who jump into advertising after waiting for a bit it’s a simple test of their grit and the quality of the community that they’ve developed. One needs to engage with the risk-and-reward tension that exists and one can never quite find the balance; in fact, I’m not sure there is one now that I think about it.
And so with bated breath I published the announcement post and you can bet that I monitored the traffic and the response with eager anticipation (and a bit of trepidation).
Heck, I even launched the campaign and change during a holiday weekend to limit the amount of potential pushback as many people were traveling and might not have time to read the blog, thus giving me a more expanded and thinned-out-over-time number of responses.
But man, was I humbled to see an overwhelmingly positive response to my announcement, via the comments on Facebook, the blog directly, and Twitter.
I’ve highlighted some of the comments here that really warmed my heart:
Matthew Snider said:
Congrats brother on the new monetization!
Greg Herman said:
I really have to be more faithful to reading your blog. I learn something new with each visit. Thanks for the great content. Be sure to let us know your results with this experiment.
Jorge Silvestrini said:
New beginning for ads – it’s all good! Let us know how everything goes!
James Brooks said:
Exciting! I genuinely hope that this is fruitful for you. You deserve it. The content here is awesome, and you deserve to be rewarded handsomely for the good that you are doing.
John said:
Once I turned of AdBlock Plus I could see the ads. Will leave it off to support your site.
Benny said:
This blog provides so much value I’m sure the majority won’t mind seeing the ads!
Calvin Koepke said:
Nice! I’m actually pretty glad to see you start advertising, and just so you know, I admire that you waited so long to do it.
Dustin Stout said:
Man, it’s about time!
Travis Kristin Spencer said:
Saw the advert spaces on the blog today
And more. I couldn’t believe how many people came and dropped a comment supporting my efforts! I was completely blown away.
I mean, could anything be more satisfying than knowing that the time and investment in developing the community around good and compelling content was worth the wait for monetizing and adding advertisements? Although I knew that I would wait I wasn’t sure how long that wait would be – 10 months later it was time to begin and it all paid off in spades.
I can say with confidence that I’ve earned your trust, earned your respect, and worked my tail off to provide an abundance of valuable content including free tools like WordPress Themes, double-digit WordPress plugins, and even neat SEO Spider Tools that we’ll use specifically for the SEO Blog Post Series.
You’ve entrusted me with your blogs and I’ve taken that charge and responsibility as seriously as I could, giving you everything that I’ve got so that your blogs could be better.
And when I announced my advancement into advertising and monetizing this blog you guys paid me back with positivity, support, and encouragement that would make other professional bloggers jealous. Love it!
Earn the trust of your readers.
How Did I Earn The Community’s Trust?
Of course I want to share some specific and practical elements that I feel may have contributed to this overwhelmingly positive response so that you can do the same with your blogging community.
Remember that each community is unique in it’s own right and that you’ll have to take great care and with wisdom apply these contextually to your own blogs:
- Wait to Advertise - I firmly believe in the power of waiting to monetize and advertise on your blog so that you can put your best foot forward proving, through action, that you’re blogging to provide them value and not to make money off of them.
- Create Amazing Value – Your content needs to be the best that it can be. It needs to be compelling and exceptionally helpful. Review my series on creating amazing blog content and you should be on the right track.
- Give Away Tons of Stuff for Free – I consider the art of giving stuff away for free to be a top strategy for me. In fact, it’s the strategy that I employ day-in and day-out. And go above and beyond just the content – give stuff away via contests and giveaways and promote other people’s content as well.
- Listen to Your Community – Are you truly listening to your community? Are you responding to their needs? I have found that providing multiple avenues for engagement and actually responding to them has been a serious boon for this blog and the community in return.
There are four elements that I feel have helped me but you might have another opinion, which I’d love to hear!
How have I served you in the past 10 months? More importantly, what can I do better? What areas can I improve?
And finally – Thank you guys so much!
[Image via Creative Commons, terry.]
John, great stuff! I have been blogging in youth ministry circles for nearly 3 years now and just recently added ads to my site. I greatly appreciate some of the thoughts you have about keeping trust. I will look to giveaway a few more things too.
I do have a question about how I can add an ad to the bottom of my posts like you do. I have Standard theme. Can I do this as “standard”?
phil,
you have to ad this code in yourself. in single.php is possible.
This is good stuff. I am 8 weeks into my new blog, and am employing a lot of these techniques. Which is not surprising, you have been a huge inspiration for what I am doing.
sweet darrell! thanks for your support!
Great stuff man! I’ve been wondering how/when/if advertising was a good fit for my blog. I respect how you went about it and will be pondering your Jedi like ways before I make my decision. I love blogging as a therapeutic way to express myself and I’ve struggled with if it should make any $. Thanks again.
sure thing dustin! take your time, no rush!
Trust and community is everything.
I found your blog on accident and now I come back each and every day. That’s trust.
You’re bookmarked on my bookmarks bar!
Great advice as always man.
P.S. sweet related posts plugin you got there, or is that hard-coded?
accident? how so? i’m curious!
I am honestly not worried about monetizing my blog at any time right now. I view it as just icing on the cake if I ever go there. I am going to blog no matter what, because I need to. But you are an inspiration because I trusted you from day one. You post from the heart and are not afraid to share secrets. I believe you genuinely want to help other people be better bloggers and I can see it in what you post and the way your write.
To watch you monetize your blog simply gets a, “Good for you!” from me.
Chris — I enjoyed that last line.
i agree with this!
chris,
i love this attitude.. you’re on the right track, for sure.
I recently started reading (and subscribing) to your blog John – ans I LOVE it!
Congrats on the monetization. It’s always been my feeling that as long as you are providing great, valuable content – monetization should be accepted without thought.
Great job on building a solid, trusting, faithful community – it ROCKS!
thanks frank for being a part of this community! i really appreciate it.
I hope you do very well from your monetization. You deserve it.
I think community is key. I would imagine that an audience like yours is probably very open to you advertising, because we’re all bloggers ourselves. The results might be totally different if a blog had a different community – which is why your advice to listen to the community is absolutely dead on.
i think you’re right about this loren, it really does depend on one’s community and who they are.
I find your insights invaluable. The fact that you give this to us for free without us having to jump through marketing hoops makes it so nice to visit the blog everyday! Your 4 tips for building community are the same principles I take to heart with mine. I’ve been building slowly but my audience provides so much value with what they share with me. I am working on ways to connect with them more and provide content that will rally help them in their journey.
awesome susan! are you going to start advertising (or do you already?)?
Obviously, all the info you provide on here has helped me quite a bit, but I think the fact that you reply to comments and emails speaks volumes. It shows that you want your subscriber to succeed. So, why wouldn’t we want YOU to succeed in making some money of us?
I truly appreciate you and this blog!
Feel the same way. I’m just getting started in blogging, but have learned so much from this blog. I actually come here before Google when I want to learn something about blogging – thanks for so much free, consolidated, understandable to a newbie information!
kim, wow, that’s huge! let me know if you ever can’t find something!
ah….. jenni, thanks so much!
Q1- You’ve provided a template for successful blogging.
Q2- Nothing comes to mind right now.
Q3- Nothing comes to mind right now.
hmm… time to fill in some gaps…!
One reason that the positive response should not have surprised you was because of the demographics of your readership. We’re all a bunch of bloggers ourselves who can’t wait to effectively monetize our own blogs and thus are very receptive to the idea.
you never know though, right?
When my husband and I started reading your blog today (we have been out of it for a few days due to illness) I thought, “What bewitchery is this?” when I saw our facebook account on there, and then I realized that it was a screen shot… lol. We really love your blog, and we totally support what you are doing! Glad we could encourage you, and thanks for the tips on earning trust
really good things to think about.
hehe! really appreciate the support from you guys!
Great stuff John. I too support your choice to monetize your blog. As you know… we’ve monetized geekfori.com already. We didn’t wait long. There are very limited ads on it at this time and I think that’s a good thing. Maybe someday we’ll have some money to put an add on your blog.
haha! how are you guys doing with it?