Seems like marketers are always looking to cash in on the next big thing. Some people are saying it’s bloggers. Of course, I’ve been saying it for a while now.
It’s sure as heck not this:
Soon in Japan, it’ll be raining ads – Yahoo! News: “After being bombarded by commercials on the way to work and watching promotions pop up on the Internet, the Japanese consumer could soon be hit by advertisements where they least expect it: on their hands.”
Seems like a bad idea, don’t you think? Your ad will get lost in a stream of other ‘raindrop’ ads.
Web marketing is the same way. How many times have you seen an ad on a site that has NOTHING to do with the content on that site? It’s just not smart. I would never publicize my gaming blog on the same site that my diet site is on. Target your marketing towards the people that are your target audience. Use different sources of revenue too. On the diet site, I use my amazon affiliate links to show my readers books they might be interested in. I also have google ads that are content related. On the gamingandtech site most of my users detest ads, so I have pared down to only offering non-obtrusive google ads. I may decide to put some affiliate text links on there soon, but I am testing to see if they will drive away users. My popularity is growing well there, and I don’t want to send people away.
And, as important as reaching your target market, you must target towards your purchasers, not just your readers. These are not always the same. For my gamingandtech blog, I try to stay on tech more than on gaming. Gaming keywords pay really poorly, but have high-clickthrough (my experience) whereas a keyword related to computer hardware pays well, but has a low-click through. Watch your stats and tailor accordingly. In other words, the tech people seem to buy more than the gaming users, hence the higher paying keywords for the tech stuff. And, if you think about it, it does seem to make sense, since most of my gamers are young and poor and the tech people are usually IT analysts that have excess gadget money to spend. I keep my keywords in tech high so that those are the ads that appear.
Again, don’t write a blog to make money, but you can blog smartly using your know-how to add to your revenues. And, to build traffic, advertise smartly. Don’t place your diet site in a Home Depot forum.