It still baffles me how so many website owners still tell visitors publicly to click there advertisements, companies haven't become as successful as they are at offering advertising opportunities without finding ways to stop unauthorised clicking, it still seems most webmasters (especially of smaller websites) think if they say 'hey click one ad a day' then they will make money and get away with it, for one telling people to click violates most (if not all) advertising companies terms of service but if the same people click 1 ad each day the advertisers going to pick the pattern up quickly and more than likely terminate your account, its better to look at your account and see in a month you have made $10 than for it to say several hundred then one day that your account has been banned and you get nothing, I mean a few dollars may seem like nothing but that's if you think here and now, yes it will barely (if at all) cover your websites overheads but websites rarely (if ever) gain in popularity at a straight line, in fact theres no set measure which can be used to explain it, some websites start getting popular fast while some are barely getting hits for months/years then suddenly bang they gain a lot of steam, the best description I have seen is that websites popularity increase logarithmically meaning its like a snow ball effect one user links a few friends to your website then each of those friends links more friends and they link more friends and it keeps going. Anyways the point of that little sidetrack from telling users to click ads when the alternative is you make little per month is simple, if you get banned from the company now then your losing a few dollars a month, what happens when your sites big and you want to make money from advertising, sure theres a lot of companies out there but they may not meet your needs (for example I chose bidvertiser because they pay through paypal while most others I saw used cheque.
The point is always look to the future, it may seem like a nice way to try and make cash now but if you get banned then the money you will lose from advertising will sting. I like the idea of advertisements since they can be a nice way of making revenue to pay for the website and (in theory) mean webmasters wont continually put up donate now buttons with every post, although some probably still will to try and get every last bit of money they can, I have donate buttons on
Baby Seal Productions and
Rampant Designs but they are placed on there own page because if someone wants to give me money, I wont stop them but I refuse to pressure anyone to donate money by saying something like 'Save this site', 'Keep this website open' and so on, mainly because I wanted to open the site, the work I do on them is because I enjoy it (same as the webmasters who run there relevant sites on the network) and thats why I continue to do it, yes money probably would make me do more but I am happy with the websites current progress
.
Anyways to just summarise, my tips with ads on your website:
If there pay per click don't tell people to constantly click them at least once a day because it creates an obvious pattern,
Don't tell them on the website with the ads to click the ads to support the site and finally ignore how little your making now and think how much you could be making over time.
This is where I would insert some joke telling you to click my ads but lets not risk violating any TOS just for my crappy sense of humor.
Also expect a new blog soon, this is my 13th blog and I am not superstitious, I just don't want to die.
