Monetizing Trust, Not Tricks

Photography: Trapeze by Hillary H

Advice on ways to make money through your website or blog is monopolized by webmasters talking to webmasters, bloggers talking to bloggers.

One vital part of the equation is often ignored, and that’s the perspective of the target – the readers whose clicks are generating money for others. It’s impossible to browse the web and not be exposed to ad-supported content. Monetization is aimed at all of us.

In this article I want to look at monetization from the perspective of the reader: what works, what doesn’t, what annoys me, what makes me want to click an ad. My thoughts are divided into two areas: tricks, and trust.

Tricks

When a site owner places pay-per-click ads on their site they ask themselves the question: how can I encourage people to click on my ads? We’ve all seen the following strategies employed in various places to achieve that result.

Ads over content

The site owner decides to ‘balaclava’ their site by allowing only necessary links and content to show-through and pack the rest of the screen-area with ads. The thought process here is that if you fill up a space with ads it’s impossible to interact with that space and not be confronted by them.

The opposite is the case. Sites like this only encourage ad blindness, a mechanism employed by the brain to filter out unwanted visual stimuli. Our eyes will focus on the content alone and not take in anything else. Readers only get better at this as ad supported content becomes more prevalent.

If I have to work too hard to steer around ads just to consume the content I want then the site is going to leave a negative impression on me.

Ads disguised as content

The thought process behind this is that people click on links to content, therefore they’ll click on ads disguised as links to content. Maybe we will if our guard isn’t up, but that 2c will come at a price: the loss of all my trust in you and your content.

Unmarked affiliate links

Don’t write content that masquerades as objective and include unmarked links to affiliates. Lately I’ve started mousing over links I suspect are unmarked affiliate links and checking the URL.

If I notice a webmaster or blogger doing this it casts a long shadow over their intentions when discussing products, other sites or services and I’m unlikely to trust their objectivity in future.

Every reader tricked is a reader taken advantage of, and a reader who won’t come back.

Readers who trust you are going to return to your site again and again.

They might not click an ad the first time, but chances are that through repeat visits they will eventually see something that takes their interest. They’re more likely to consume advertising in an environment they trust and when they are fully aware they’re clicking on an advertisement.

Trust

Place your content on a pedestal

Business Week recently published a feature called How Top Bloggers Earn Money. These are the blogs believed to have the highest per-month advertising revenue in the world. What do all these blogs have in common? None of them use pay-per-click ads embedded in content.

On the most successfully monetized blogs content is ‘placed on a pedestal’, allowing visitors to consume the content and content alone if that’s what they want. Advertisements frame the content and are used sparingly in the bridging space between content items, but readers aren’t confronted with jarring ad interruptions to content.

While the Business Week article referred to blogs alone these same principles would apply to any website.

Separating ads from content shows visitors that your primary focus is providing them with something useful for free. When ads disrupt content you’re forcing your readers to put up with something negative in return for consuming your content, significantly decreasing their perception that your primary aim is to benefit them, not yourself.

For most of us (I hope), this is the truth, but be mindful of whether your site sends a different message to your readers.

Be transparent about affiliate links

If I like a blogger or webmaster and the content they create then I’m going to trust them as long as they don’t try to take advantage of that trust. There’s nothing wrong with affiliate marketing or selling via reviews as long as this is done transparently.

Don’t present your review as objective and then include unmarked affiliate links in the conclusion. When I see this, particularly on sites I read frequently, I feel that my trust in the author is being exploited. When affiliate links are used well, though, I think they can be one of the best forms of content monetization because the product sale benefits both author and reader, rather than just the author.

A quick guide to trustworthy and transparent affiliate linking

• Explain to your readers that you will profit from sales of the product or service via your links in the post.
• Explain to your readers that you are reviewing or recommending the product because you believe it has the potential to be truly useful.
• Explain to your readers that buying the product via your affiliate links will both benefit the reader and support your site.
• Write objectively. Don’t focus only on the positives or your content will sound like a sales pitch. Even if you love a product or service nothing is perfect. Point out things that might make it unsuitable for certain readers.
• If readers trust you enough to click an affiliate link due to your recommendation and end up with a product that’s not suited to them or sub-standard, they will blame you for it. You might make a few dollars but in the process will end a relationship between the reader and yourself that might have included many sales in future. The more objective you are in your recommendation the greater the likelihood that readers will buy from your affiliates again.

Ads are ads, don’t pretend otherwise

If I’m fully aware that I’m clicking on an ad when I do so then I’ve made an informed choice and have no-one to blame for it. Designate ad space on your site and separate it from content space. If I want to click an advertisement I will click it. I’m far more likely to consider clicking on advertisements in an environment I feel is not trying to aggressively sell things to me.

Monetizing trust

The sites featured in Business Week’s list are not profitable because they are the cleverest advertisers or display the most ads but because they have involved traffic and lots of it. I use involved traffic to mean loyal readers with a lot of trust in the site and its content. Even if such sites had only one small ad on the main page they’d still they’d still make the kind of money sites crippled by eye-sore ads can only dream of ($5,300 a month, in fact).

The key ingredients to making money through your web content are more readers and more trust. How do you get both? Great content. When advertising impacts upon the readability and usability of your site, or casts doubts over your trustworthiness, you’re irreparably damaging your earning potential.

When the gain is an extra few dollars a day and the cost is so significant, why would you pay the price?