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?