Advertising on Blog Sites

Regardless of whether or not you have a pets, news or personal blog, advertising on that blog seems to be an issue that makes some bloggers and blog readers quite hot. Consequently I thought the subject worthy of discussion today. To preface this entry, let me say that I believe the acceptability of advertising on blogs is like anything else in life, it all depends on how and why you go about it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. When I started A Pets Blog a few months ago I wasn't sure exactly where it would go, I was, and still am hoping to let my visitors and participants dictate the direction. However, there were and still are three things I know that I want for sure. One, I wanted to share my vast pets related experiences with others. I've always been an animal lover and in the last 40 years of my life I've had all kinds of wonderful pets including dogs, cats, parrots, ducks, rabbits, horses, goats, fish, even newts. I've made some mistakes along the way, but I've also had some great experiences too. In other words, through experience, research and the eyes of others I've learned a lot. My friends and family have told me for years that I should share my experiences with others, sometimes to help, sometimes to inspire and sometimes simply to entertain. A Pets Blog is an avenue to do just that and more. Two, I've entered pet photo contests off and on for years, always heartbroken and of course shocked when my pets weren't chosen. In response, I wanted to create a venue where individuals could show off their pets for all the world to see, simply for the joy of sharing, without having to win a competitive contest. Consequently, we do our best to include as many submitted photos as possible. Which photos make the home page is somewhat limited simply due to available space, but we do our best to get everyone's pet into the proper photo gallery even if it does not make the home page. We do ask that photos be of high visual quality, not too small, blurry, grainy or dark. We want to keep the overall visual quality high. And last but not least, I like to think the site can make at least a small difference, in a positive way, in the life of others and their pets. If having your pets photo posted on our site brings a smile to your day, then that brings one to mine too. If you learn something new that will improve your relationship with your pet and improve it's quality of life then that improves my quality of life too. It sounds corny, but I like to make a difference. Something else that I think needs to be examined here is this - what is a blog? The definitions I've found are all a little more general than some bloggers would like to admit. They don't say that a blog is ad free or even non-commercial. One thing that does stand out is that most offer reverse chronologically ordered posts on home webpage in a format that changes frequently. Some have single authors, other multiple, some are merely personal thoughts where others are sophisticated corporate campaigns. In my opinion, what makes a blog a blog, is the intent of the blogger to "share", whether it be personal experience, thoughts or findings. The beauty of the internet in all this is that it gives the ordinary person the ability to "share" with millions of people who are interested in listening, whereas in the past, the only way to "share" was to be published in books or magazines. Another thing that I think is important for a blog to be a blog is for it to be ever changing, evolving and fresh, and then to have those changes listed chronologically and/or archived for others to explore. We think small, personal blogs are great, however, at A Pets Blog .com we wanted our blog to be that plus just a little bit more. Consequently, you will find personal observations at A Pets Blog .com, but, you'll also find a fresh, frequently changing parade of magazine style articles designed to help improve your life with your pet. We also like the idea of being an online community open to participation from others as well. So where does advertising fit into all this? The cold hard fact is that fulfilling the above goals does take a lot of time, and since I'm not independently wealthy, the site has to generate some income to compensate for the time it takes. For me, time is money, literally, and my pets have to eat too after all. However, I'm a big believer in compromise and a win win enthusiast too. Our compromise involves several philosophies that I think all fair individuals will appreciate. First, we don't do blind advertising, taking ads from just any source that wants to pay. We limit our ads and affiliate promotions to products and stores that we would use and/or buy from ourselves. Period, no exceptions. We also try to limit our ads to only that which would be of interest to pet lovers. In addition, we do not limit our discussion to products, sites and services to those which we can benefit financially. If we think you'll like it, we'll tell you about, whether we make money off it or not. Period, no exceptions. For example, in our Top 10 Gifts for Pet Lovers piece we chose our favorite 10 gift items for pet lovers. We receive a small commission from the pet stroller people should you decide to buy one. It just so happens to be a coincidence. However, we do not receive anything financially from the rest of the items on the list. We chose our top 10 favorite picks based solely on what we thought you would like. Period. And last but not least, we do our best to keep the ads as subtle and non-annoying as possible. You won't see obnoxious animated banners or pop ups here. We also try to place the ads at the bottom of the information as not to disturb your reading and viewing pleasure. You may have also noticed our new dog breed directory and developing dog breeders directories. We are limiting these ads to breeders only, once again, in an attempt to bring you only those ads that are helpful. So is advertising on blogs okay? Sure, in our case, if we couldn't advertise we couldn't afford to devote the time to the site that we do and ironically quality, quantity and availability to outside participation would diminish. You might even say that there are times when advertising on a blog is actually a compromise for quality rather than against it. If you want to advertise on your blog, just make sure your blog has something worthwhile to offer in exchange, be sincere in your purpose and always avoid being annoying.