Okay, so I’ve gone and done it.
I’ve added an actual advertisement into my sidebar. It’s the DealDotCom plugin that showcases the product of the day. Naturally, if you buy the product through my link, I get a commission from it. And if you join DealDotCom through the widget, then I get ongoing commissions when you purchase the deals.
I’m not entirely sure whether I’ll keep the widget or not.
On the one hand, DealDotCom has improved the quality of its offerings, and I don’t really want to use up a blog post letting you know when they have deals I’d recommend. So using the widget is a low key way to let you see what the deals are in a way that gives me some benefit.
On the other hand, I’ve always resisted adding advertisements of any type to the blog, other than affiliate links to products that I’ve reviewed. DealDotCom offers products that I haven’t reviewed, so should I really be linking to them?
What do you think? Does it hurt my credibility to have the widget in the sidebar?
yesterday and today product of the day has too big price =))
Well, Internet marketing products are notoriously over priced to start with, so even a 50% discount barely brings them down into reasonable levels. But since the authors make profits at the high prices, they have little incentive to lower them.
I don’t think you’ll lose any credibility by putting that widget on your blog. The majority of us into internet marketing won’t take umbrage on that. Why should we? We are not out to spoil your party. After all, it’s your blog and you have every right to do what you think is best for it — and your reputation and credibility. It all boils down to how we conduct ourselves. There might be some dissenters but they are just a minority (correct me if I’m wrong). Anyway, they should understand that the blogosphere is like a democracy. We, who believe in freedom of speech, don’t go around telling them what’s right or wrong. We just do what we think is right and the world will be a better place for it. Simply put, we don’t bitch. We just get on with job.
I’m probably more paranoid about ads on “make money online” blogs than I should be, but I still remember that Google ad on John Chow’s site that sat right next to the first paragraph of the post body and said, “John Chow Recommends…”, when in fact he didn’t recommend the product.
Finally, the first ad on this ad-free blog. This is your own blog, you can pretty much do what you think is right. Just putting an ad up will not put your credibility in doubt. I’m sure your readers are matured enough to see that.
On my side, DDC isn’t doing any good for me. The deals aren’t exactly rock-bottom. So I’ve not install the plugin to advertise for them on the sidebar. Well, it’s just me i guess.
[quote post=”407″]On my side, DDC isn’t doing any good for me. The deals aren’t exactly rock-bottom. So I’ve not install the plugin to advertise for them on the sidebar. Well, it’s just me i guess.[/quote]
The widget is an experiment for me, to see how well something ad-like-but-not-quite-an-ad works on the blog. I don’t have any plans to expand into regular ads…I still have my bias against other people deciding what links go into the blog. But DDC is borderline, so I figured I’d give it a try.