Feed advertising with class
By AndrewBoyd • Sep 19th, 2007 • Category: Blogging tipsI mentioned that I’d given up on one famous blogger’s RSS feed because it was too full of advertisements - they were too intrusive, too noticeable, and they got in the way of what I wanted as a reader (the information in the posts).
There is an imminent laptop upgrade in the wind for me, and I’m thinking about a MacBook Pro. Because Mac culture is new to me, I’m reading a lot of different Apple-related blogs. One of them is Daring Fireball. Daring Fireball does have feed advertising, but does it with class - once a week, there is a “this week’s feed is sponsored by…” post - clearly marked [Sponsor] so that there is no mistaking it for what it is.
I like it - it is unobtrusive, it’s one post a week, it doesn’t offend me. Even though I don’t even own a Mac, I clicked through to the Zengobi Curio sponsor site because I use similar tools (sticky notes, mind maps) in my consulting work on PCs.
Feed advertising can work. Just do it with class.
AndrewBoyd is a consultant by day and blogger by night. He loves good food, good wine, and discussing faceted classification schemes with friends.
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This topic has been discussed a fair bit in recent times and provoked some heated arguments so it’s interesting to hear bloggers views as readers.
I advertise in one of my feeds by way of a small banner at the foot of each post - I publish full feeds so they appear as a divider between entries which I hope doesn’t interfere with the content too much. Nobody has complained to me directly about it, so presumably it’s not too big a deal for them and I do try to ensure that the ads are relevant to my readers interests.
Hi Maurice,
thank you for your comment.
The trick is, and I say this as someone who is genuinely interested in you retaining as many readers as possible, is that you will never know if people leave your feed because they’ve moved on in their lives or that they are annoyed at the ads. Some people don’t like ads. But people need to make a living - I think that the comfortable middle ground is to have the ads but don’t let them interrupt the content.
Best regards, Andrew