Yup. There are ads on New Music Strategies.
No… those aren’t them.
I did this once before. I tried putting ads on New Music Strategies. It was an experiment to see how difficult it was to set up, what sort of revenue could be gathered by drawing an audience and placing advertising in front of them, and whether this was a viable revenue generating stream for independent music business.
It was an interesting experiment – though for the life of me I can’t remember what the results were. Not the most scientific process, then. But I did struggle with whether to leave them up or take them down. In the end, I decided that this was not ‘that sort of website’ and I removed them.
And now I’ve changed my mind again. For a number of reasons.
Google Adsense is pretty much ubiquitous these days. Most regular internet users just kind of filter them out. And yet they have proven to be a strong generator of income for people with a regular readership.
But there are a few good reasons that they work — and even more compelling reasons why I’d like to get a bit of extra pocket money for doing this. Not the least of which is that I’d like to try some of the strategies out for myself, work with some independent artists, release their music and promote it using the techniques I discuss here on the website.
It takes a bit of tweaking to get the balance right – a couple up the top? a handful at the bottom? images in the sidebar? a search bar on the static pages?
I’ll figure it out – and you’ll notice the ads come and go as I tweak.
I’ll try not to make them too intrusive — but in the meantime, I’d be interested in your thoughts. How offended are you by blogs that have advertising? Is it a deal-breaker? Are they showing up in the RSS feed? Is that a problem?
I’m not as anti-advertising as some people I know, but I’m more suspicious of them than most. It is genuinely uncomfortable having them there – but if it helps me get some music projects off the ground more quickly, then it’s a discomfort I can probably live with.
Can you?
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9 Comments
I’m sure you have plenty of friends/musicians in mind, but if you’re interested, I’d love to be an experiment for “New Music Strategies”. I’ve been making steps to creatively utilizing the internet for the past couple of years using my blog, photography, and music as the focus. Hoping to have a website for that soon.
I have lots of ideas, I just have trouble rounding them altogether.
More than being about the music, I want the point of my band to be about bringing people together — either on the internet or at a house show.
That’s my pitch. Let me know if you’re ever interested.
I thought about ads for my site. I think if bands used some with related music genres (ie: the ads http://www.pitchforkmedia.com) it wouldn’t be that bad.
I draw the line at ads that move. They get the AdBlock treatment in seconds. Text ads are fine, but you might want to investigate the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin to display ads to new users but not to repeat offenders.
http://www.richardkmiller.com/blog/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do
Haha this is funny because I’m actually setting up adwords campaigns for my clients – 30c a lead cant hurt, so next thing we could have kiwi bands adsensing it on NMS!
Probably a better bet than the work from home get rich quick stuff staring at me now. Maybe Google knows me better than I think.
But the whole thing is I’ve actually been working – and I reckon it is working – on the model all you blogger types pointed me towards – y’know if I keep my blogs updated with valuable free content and sound like I know what I’m talking about people are more inclined to pick up the phone and offer me money to help them.
What goes around . . . I mean come on Dubber it’s gonna take a lot of adsense to get you and your t-shirt back to new york again . . .
I mean uhhh . . . wicked new self titled album from top NZ hardcore act http://www.thebleeders.net drops November 12 subscribe here to be the first to see the killer new single “Black Widow Creeps” as soon as it drops!!! http://www.youtube.com/bleedersmedia
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Hi mom!!!
Context is all. On this site you’re sharing your professional expertise. The quality of what you write is generally very high. At the risk of gushing, as a music obsessive of 35 years and a net-head since 1993, I’ve learnt an awful lot in the short time I’ve been reading. Even when you cover ground that I’ve previously encountered, you do a killer summary. I’ve already pushed a couple of musicians in your direction, hoping they’d get as much out of the site as I have.
So, it seems entirely reasonable that you should try to bring in a bit of revenue for your efforts, in a way that might be less appropriate if you were blogging about your cat, or the Indian takeaway that you had last night. Just try to avoid fugliness please. I’m a little bit more hardcore than Pete in that I don’t like graphic ads at all. Adsense is fine though. As you say, it kind of becomes invisible after a while, though I’m not sure Google would want to hear that…
Think the question I’d really like to find out Andrew is how much revenue these ad’s actually bring in and what are the variables on this?
If you are willing to post the information of course!
All the best;
Anthony H
Boy Wonder Records
Do it. If you’re going to test some of your ideas and theories then advertising has to come into it. You’ll soon learn whether and to what degree it works.
I just added ads to my site again even though I don’t get a lot of traffic, the occasional click helps. If I ever get enough clicks to actually get a payment from Google, $100, it will be enough for another year of site hosting, or a couple bottles of Gin, whatever I’m in the mood for.
I read your site all the time as a subscriber in Google Reader, which I started using because of your article.
I’m going to turn off Adblock for your site, and click on a few ads to help you out.
Andrew,
It’s a worthy experiment. I introduced ads to GarageSpin.com last year, but tried to make then as inobtrusive as possible by 1) keeping them out of the RSS feed, and 2) keeping them off the home page.
A vast majority of my traffic is made up of 1-time visiters that visit for a few seconds based on a random search result, then bounce out. If you can find ways to capitalize on non-reader traffic, without annoying your readers (or potential new ones), I’d say go for it. Earning a small passive income that pays for hosting is a good thing. :)
-M
The low conversion rate of adsense makes it a hard one to earn from without larger readership. That said though using adsense to gauge where and when to place ads is a great way to experiment. Along those lines once you have decided where and when look into affiliate advertising and operating your own random affiliate box.
Admittedly this is too much work for me so I stick with adsense at this time.