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I believe that establishing your own advertising philosophy is a very important topic for most bloggers to consider, especially before they get too far into the process of setting things up. It might be easy to move on to other articles without seriously considering this issue. But you will benefit yourself by thinking through your advertising goals first.

1. You are a Publisher. As a blog owner, you must realize you are the Publisher. You publish content and you allow other companies to place ads (like a magazine or a newspaper) to pay for the free distribution of your content. Every publisher who is successful will develop some sort of advertising policy on what ads he will and won't take. Think of this section as your opportunity to develop your own advertising policy which is meant both to keep your readers happy AND make a good income.

2. Think Like Your Readers. This is so important. If you don't put yourself in their shoes, they'll know it. This means: treat them with respect. Treat them just like you like to be treated. Be sensitive to their wants and needs. Give them the best, and they will likely make you very happy.

3. Don't Lose the Trust of Your Readers. One of the most important aspects of blogging is the trust that you will build with your readers. If they respect you as an expert and enjoy your writing style and/or your opinions, it is highly likely that they will often choose to purchase the products that you are selling or recommending.

4. Turn Your Readers Into Friends. Seth Godin made the phrase "permission marketing" famous. The basic idea is that most advertising interrupts people and tries to get their attention. If you are like me, you HATE telemarketers. They always call at the wrong time and I refuse to listen to their monotone spiel while they read their script. This is interruption marketing, and it doesn't really work very well.

Instead, you first want to turn strangers who come to your blog into friends. Once they are your friends, you want to ask them for (or win from them) permission to share your message, and that is how you will turn them into customers. Although you may not be selling any of your own products right now, you do want to develop a mailing list, and you do want to earn the right to tell your new friends about what you have found that works.

5. Keep Everything Relevant. When you keep all of the ads relevant with the content, you add value for your visitors. People are looking for relevant information for their interests. If they like what they find, they will reward you by staying around much longer. The products and services which you select for your blog should fit your own editorial approach to your site's content. This will ensure a flow within your blog and make your readers much more happy.

6. Make Sure Your Ads Complement Your Site. Nothing is worse than ads that just don't add anything to your site. Not that they are bad ads (by themselves), but if they don't add anything on the theme — get rid of them. Beware of selling out your space for "a buck" especially when the ads are only going to be distracting because they don't complement your site. Ads that are irrelevant won't do nearly as well anyway as ads that are targeted to your audience.

7. You Wear Many Hats. Even though you are the Advertising Manager, you are also the Publisher. That means you are where the buck stops. It is your job to make certain that no one uses your blog for their own advantage at the expense of your faithful readers. You need to keep these two jobs in balance.

Google's AdSense does provide you with some control over which ads will be displayed by letting publishers filter out 200 advertisers that may just not be complementary to their content. There are also services like BlogAds which is a text-link clearinghouse which allows publishers to maintain full control of who they are going to let advertise on their sites.

8. You Might Want to Endorse Your Ads. In a real sense, every ad that appears on a targeted authority site will probably be seen as an ad that the site endorses. If you can control the ads that are there, it is wise to actually endorse those ads. (Of course, you can't do this with AdSense by encouraging your readers to click on your ads). But your readers will definitely value your recommendations for other affiliate products and ads. But be sure that you keep to your own editorial guidelines and keep your ethics high (so that you are not just a paid gun).

9. Do You Want To Avoid Display And Banner Ads? Most of us have always thought that display ads must produce the best revenues, or there wouldn't be so many of them. In reality, dollar for dollar, display ads always fall below the classified ads. I learned this secret long before the Internet even existed and very seldom wasted my money on them.

On the Internet this has proven to be even more true. Because every click on an ad can be measured to establish its ROI (return on investment), we now know far more about ads then we did in the past, because we can test what works and what doesn't. It has been found that display ads don't produce at a high rate, so unless they are very cheap for the advertiser, they are a waste of money. The same will be true for you as a publisher. Those ads are usually not worth the space they take up.

For the most part, you won't want to use display ads on your blogs. They tend to cheapen and overpower the content and seldom produce enough revenue to justify giving them the space. Monetizing your blog is all about using what works to bring in the highest income. Because of this, follow the advice of those who have performed extensive testing and avoid them.

The exception to this is where you have a blog that does not work well with AdSense, like a celebrity blog, or a sports talk blog, or a political blog. These kinds of blogs often find that their main income comes from a display ad program like BlogAds.

10. Concentrate on Text Ads. Text ads simply work better. Your visitors came to read your articles, not your ads, so when they see a link highlighted in your text, they are more likely to click on it because it looks like it could be a link to another page on your site. Text based ads are likely to be accepted because they involve soft selling instead of the hard sell, so they come to your visitors under the radar.

NEXT: Your Own Advertising Philosophy Part 2

Is My Advice Helping You?

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If you have lost your job (or are about to), you should understand that the real difference between today and the 1930's will be our ability to communicate with other people and sell products and information throughout the world. If you want to insulate yourself against the worsening financial conditions that mayl continue to plague the planet for some time to come, then learn how to be successful on the Internet!

Throwing Enough Mud On the Wall...
One of the big secrets that you should understand, is that you will probably not make much money if you have just one blog. The real power in building AdSense and affiliate income is having a lot of websites and blogs. This dramatically increases your ability to get traffic and also to get "clicks."