For years, writers have placed ads on their blogs to make money. There’s nothing wrong with that. And in some situations, it might be the easiest way to monetise your blog and the wisest time investment.

But before you put ads on your blog, you should at least be aware of their downsides…

They can slow down your site

If you want happy visitors and more readers, the load speed of your blog is crucial.

Nearly 50% of internet users tend to leave a site that takes more than 2 seconds to load.

And read this:

If your blog loads in 10 seconds… the risk that a visitor bounces off your site increases with 123% compared to if your blog loaded in 1 second!

Do you want less visibility on Google?

Website speed is an important factor when it comes to ranking your website on Google’s search results. The slower your site is… the further back in the results it will go. You don’t want that, do you?

Making your reader wait

Ironically, putting ads on your blog from networks like Google AdSense, can make you rank worse on Google. And lower your readership.

When you place an ad on your blog, you are inserting a piece of JavaScript code on your website. When a visitor loads your site, this JavaScript has to make a call to your advertising network’s server.

The JavaScript code asks that server for advertising data it wants to display on your blog. Ad headline, ad copy, links and images.

Finally, it goes back to your site and shows the ad content on the page.

All of this happens while your users are loading the site. And it can take time. Sometimes not a lot. Sometimes an eternity.

Want to check how fast your blog is? 

Enter your blog URL into Google’s free page speed tool and get an overview.

Ads confuse and annoy your readers

“Is this a part of the post? Or is this an ad?”

That’s one of the many questions your readers might ask when your blog is stuffed with ads.

Advertising also leads to a bad user experience, leading to an annoyed audience. You know this yourself, don’t you?

Let’s say you visit a site that automatically plays a commercial, fills 90% of your screen with display ads and sneaks in an AdSense link section every second paragraph.

Would you have a nice experience? Would you want to visit the blog another time?

Ads risk hurting your brand

Although it depends on which advertising network you affiliate with, some of the ads that show up on your site can be quite.. shady.

Russian dating sites, fungus medication, get-rich-quick schemes.

And if you take blogging seriously, you want to maintain a decent reputation for your blog. After all, each blog has a brand and it’s critical for attracting readers.

The alternative

You have other, less harmful monetisation methods at your disposal. The best ones, where you maintain total quality control and maximise your earnings, are when you create your own product.

Some examples are writing your own eBook or paid newsletter. Others are online courses, physical products or software.

Generally, the easiest products to create are paid newsletters and eBooks, since these only require your time and words. Others require more serious investments of money, time and effort.

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