What Kind of Tipper Are You?
While reading a great little tip that my friend Char is offering up as an alternative to placing Google Ads on the front page of a multi-topic blog, I decided to see what her readers were saying in response to this tip.
One comment stood out and sent me into one of those deep thought modes.
It gives people who hate ads a chance to read your front page without leaving instantly, and if they like the content they may stay anyway.
Granted, as a former waitress and bartender — I know those people are out there and most likely they’re the ones that leave a $2.00 tip on an $80.00 tab.
For the longest time I took advantage of the enormous amount of information the internet provided. At the end of my fingertips I find helpful advice, tips and support and I acted as if they were all just whipping this information out, hand-over-fist, just for me.
It wasn’t until I began working from home, developing my own sites and blogs and supporting my family with the money I make from these efforts, that I truly began to appreciate other webmasters and bloggers for the amazing amount of time and energy they put into bringing their valuable resources to the web.
I think it’s easy to be able to tell when someone takes their work online seriously and I’d hate to think that the $2.00 tipper is benefiting from the efforts of my favorite bloggers and webmasters only to go on badmouthing them for the “ads” that appear on their sites.
I always try to make it a habit to visit the sponsors of blogs I frequent as a way of leaving an appropriate tip for the services they are providing.
Maybe it’s the waitress/bartender in me from years ago?
I am curious though as to how some of you feel about ads on websites? Do you visit your favorite bloggers sponsors? Do you utilize their links to sign up under them for programs that you enroll in?
What are some of the efforts you make to keep your favorite bloggers blogging by supporting their efforts?
blogging work+at+home google+adsense affiliate
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POSTED IN: MomGadget
3 opinions for What Kind of Tipper Are You?
Homemom3
Mar 23, 2007 at 10:10 pm
I try to visit at least one or two sponsors throughout the week on my favorite blogger sites. I know google watches those click throughs and not to do it everyday.
Phil
Mar 24, 2007 at 12:39 pm
I knew I recognised that comment on Char’s post from somewhere ;-)
It is a shame that there are people out there who don’t like ads, don’t click ads or even take the ridiculously high moral ground that ads are not welcome on blogs. It is, however, hard to justify clicking on links that you are not interested in.
I started using the internet, as I’m sure most people did, when adverts were always annoying flashing banners. Developing blindness to ads enhances the experience most of the time. Now we have much nicer, more integrated ads, but the next important thing is their relevance. As I said above, clicking a link that you are not interested in is not only hard, but adds to the cost to the advertisers for wasted click throughs. If something is relevant, then there is no reason why I wouldn’t click on it. This is the best part of Char’s post, leaving ads off the front page allows for single pages to receive more relevant ads, which in turn improves click throughs.
Ads are not put on blogs so that friendly people click them for you, they are really there to (hopefully) add some sort of value to your page which results in a bonus for you. If we relied on people clicking ads because they enjoyed your site, then no-one would be making much money.
One final point, in the case of schemes that you sign up to, where your favourite blogger has provided a link that would benefit them if you use it, then yes, I will go out of my way to click that link rather than find the site myself. If it is personal recommendation and part of the blogger’s content, then yes, they deserve to reap the benefits and I will help them out if I can.
Wow… that’s probably the longest comment I’ve ever written, it could have been a post! Too late now though! What do you think though, Gayla?
Gayla
Mar 25, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Phil, thanks for pointing out how that must have come across.
I didn’t mean that I click just to be clicking really. If there is an ad that arouses my curiosity, I will check it out. Or if I find a specific topic type ad that I want to explore, I will check out like sites until I find one that I like enough to leave my tip there. Does that make sense?
As an example — If I’m on a mommy business site and I see a work at home ad that I’m curious about, I will go through my mommy business links until I find that same ad to click on. Granted I won’t spend hours doing the search for it, but I do try to take my clicks where they are deserving.
That’s the beauty of networking with like sites. More then likely you’ll be served up with similar ads as a friend in the same niche. You can click their ads to see what is on the other side :)
Thanks again for commenting.
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