Keep Ads Off Your Personal Website
Personal Promotion August 2nd, 2008
If you look closely you will notice one thing very different about this website from the other website’s I run like Novo Emporium and One by Thirty. The primary difference between this site and the other’s is that there are no advertisements or endorsements of any kind on this website. Why? It’s quite simple really. This is my personal website and blog and I want to use this domain of mine for personal opinions and thoughts only. I do not want it compromised by endorsements of products that I may or may not agree with.
Many of you may be reading this and completely disagree with me, and I think that’s great. That’s the whole point of a personal blog. It’s an opinion. It’s my opinion. It doesn’t have to be your opinion. Even in a scenario where I love a product or service and believe that it is valuable to people, I would not place an advertisement or endorsement provided by that company. What if the product changed and I no longer liked it or felt it provided great value to people? Sure I could take the ads off the site, but people still may have remembered seeing the ad on the site and thought that I still believe and endorse the product.
Now this is not to say that you shouldn’t talk about products or services you love or believe in. By all means do so, I do all the time. I clearly state when I love a product and when I hate a product. Again, this is the point of your personal website, it’s your site, it’s your opinion. This is not intended to create a war of ethics or anything, and I do support people that put ads on their personal sites if they believe it’s the best thing to do. This is just my personal choice, for my personal domain. Nothing more, nothing less!
Chris, I agree with you, ads can also take away the message you are trying to send to your readers I feel also. I guess it all comes down to why someone has their personal blog, some, it is a form of income, and for others it is for the sheer pleasure of sharing abit of oneself with others out there.
You have a good point here, on my personal blog I have put some ads but after reading this I might actually remove it. Personal blogs should be clean and ads makes it looks as if you are trying a little hard at something. But then hosting and buying a domain does cost- but again its not really that expensive….
I am in total agreement. The site is clean, refreshing and easy to read. The reader is not distracted or side tracked.
I have always admired your style and approach to business and was quite impressed that you can find the time to run your own blog site..respec’