When is the Right Time to Monetize Your Blog

July 27, 2007 | Making Money

I was talking with some people yesterday about when the right time to monetize your blog is. I thought this would be a good time to share my thoughts and get ask your opinion.

There are basically two different schools of thought on this issue. One, advertise right away and two, build traffic and then work on monetization. Those that think it’s best to build traffic before monetizing usually agree that the 1,000 visitor mark is key. Meaning that your blog should be getting 1,000 visitors per day before thinking about monetization efforts.

My Thoughts

My thinking is that if you ever plan on monetizing your blog, then by all means do it from the beginning. Here are a few reason why:

1. You may never reach the 1,000 visitor mark - some blogs will just never have that many visitors and that’s fine. You should still be able to make a little money with a fraction of that.

2. Every penny counts - even if you only get a few clicks or referrals, it’s better than nothing. If I offered you a $1 would you turn it down?

3a. Avoid pissing off readers in the future - if you blog for 6 months to a year and then decide to monetize, you are going to piss off a few readers. Some people are just like that and some of them will never come back. Why work hard at growing a reader base and then piss them off.

3b. Piss off readers now - this one isn’t meant to be controversial, it’s just an expansion of the previous point. If you monetize from the beginning you won’t have to worry about losing those readers in future because of it. Either they will accept the fact that you are just trying to earn a little money for the knowledge and entertainment you are providing to them, or they will just walk away now.

Some Advice

Whether you monetize your blog from the beginning or what until you have an established reader base, use some tact when monetizing and placing ads. Start with one or two and try to blend them into your site so that everything flows well, don’t just splatter them everywhere.

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4 Responses to “When is the Right Time to Monetize Your Blog”

WebGuy | July 27th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

Good question and one I have been thinking about since I just started a site recently. I also agree that if your intent is to use ads at some point, you might as well do it from the beginning. Changing your site after so long will look different to readers anyway so just do it to begin with
dcr | July 27th, 2007 at 11:11 pm

I don’t think you need 1000 visitors daily to monetize a site. I have some sites that get less than that in a month, but I still get some revenue.

In cases where you would be running the site anyway, why not try to monetize it? A little bit of money is better than nothing.

Exceptions, of course, would be situations where you might earn some money, but never reach the payor’s payout amount. But, you won’t know that until you try.
Scot Smith | August 1st, 2007 at 12:51 pm

I wouldn’t want to make my readers suffer on my blog for a few bucks a month — even though if someone offered me $1 I would take it, you have to justify the $1 vs aesthetics/usability/class/etc.

A small ad like you have at the top isn’t bad, though. Just that your readers would have to click through once they’ve clicked a link for you to get a payout, and you may never see them again.

Just a thought.
Nathan Snipes | August 1st, 2007 at 1:12 pm

Scot: I think you can have both “aesthetics/usability/class/etc” and display some ads. The key is definitely to blend them in to your site.

I completely agree with you about readers leaving your site through an ad. Unfortunately unless you go the “Review Me” or “Pay Per Post” route, advertisers don’t like to pay you just for having the ads on your site.

Hopefully the reader will like your content enough to either bookmark your site or subscribed to your feed.