One of my goals with OpTempo is to experiment with the way blogs work both from the getting traffic and monetization perspectives. That’s why I’ll go against some trends, like doing a 200 post blitz or using huge sidebar ads rather than the ’standard’ block of 125×125 ads.

One of the nice things about blogging is that you can experiment without investing a significant amount of money like you have to with Pay-Per-Click campaigns or online sales/eBay. All it takes is investing the time.

However, look at Skellie (www.skelliewag.org). She has a different focus. Her style primarily consists of getting involvement from her readers and even with a healthy subscription rate, she is not showing any advertising until I suspect when she has enough traffic to know that she can make enough to live off her blog alone. But while her blog is also targetting people who want to make money online, she focuses on innovation and ideas. As a result, the loyalty and involvement of the fans to her blog is amazing.

It is true however, that as a new blog, its the catch 20 situation where you can’t get advertisers for your blog because of the low volume of traffic, and you can’t increase your traffic because people don’t want to spend time on a new blog.

It comes back to the age old idea that value is the key. As long as you keep providing good value and work on your SEO and blog promotion, it doesn’t really matter what you do as long as you focus on your audience and build on their loyalty. They will be much more forgiving and enduring of times when you are experimenting and give you valuable feedback.

That said, just want to say a word of Thanks to you Frank, for taking the time to review all the different affiliate programs! I know how time consuming it can be and appreciate you taking the time to do it.

Cheers,
Ivy

Traffic is a big factor in monetization but not only quantity but quality. For example, I have some HTML mini-sites that do much better money-wise that either of my blogs but have less traffic. That’s because they have a high level of product orientation and have been around long enough to place well in search, particularly on long tail searches.

When to monetize is a common debate. I think it’s better to try things right from the start but others think build traffic and loyal readers first then introduce ads.

In reading all three of your posts, I think I’m seeing a trend here … blog advertising is usually only effective if you’re getting a fair amount of traffic. What this says to me is, most of us would be better off really limiting the amount of advertising we display (in the beginning) and instead concentrate primarily on bringing in traffic. Am I “hearing” you correctly?