John Chow is an online idol of mine. While I don’t agree with how heavily he monetizes his blog, you have to respect someone that can do so well from their blog. Sidenote: he is a fellow Canadian He recently released a post talking about valuing advertising space on your blog and makes some good points.

Here is a snippet from the article:

The bottom line is Google AdSense can only get you so far. If your prime ad spot isn’t pulling in the kind of money you like then ask yourself what you can replace it with. Can you sell the spot to a direct sponsor? Can you replace it with an affiliate deal? Would the spot do better promoting your own site(s)? Would it be better just to get rid of the spot? The key is to experiment and mix things up. It is a lot easier to double blog income by tweaking than it is to double income by doubling blog traffic.

There are very few websites though that have maximized their potential with Google’s AdSense program, but working on various high level blogs, I have seen situations where this has occurred, and like John, private sales seem to be the best way to attain the maximum amount of money from an advertising spot.

The last thing I would like to say about all this is that bloggers should try hard to balance their need to monetize their traffic with the user experience of the site. I find certain types of advertising really put me off using a site.

Read John’s full article for some insightful details on how you can get the most money for your advertising space.

Originally posted on August 17, 2007 @ 2:08 am