Advertising / paying the bills

I'm considering adding Google advertising to the hotjoe site. The only way I've found to get new folks to join the site is with Google adwords. But I'm paying a fair amount for the ads. I doubt that I'll make as much as I spend but it will help offset the costs some.

I'm really not a fan of the "donate to my paypal account" type of fund raising and don't think I'd want to implement that.

What do you think? If you vote in the poll I'd ask that you comment on this too.

stdunbar wrote:I'm considering adding Google advertising to the hotjoe site. The only way I've found to get new folks to join the site is with Google adwords. But I'm paying a fair amount for the ads. I doubt that I'll make as much as I spend but it will help offset the costs some.

I'm really not a fan of the "donate to my paypal account" type of fund raising and don't think I'd want to implement that.

What do you think? If you vote in the poll I'd ask that you comment on this too.

I didn't vote in the poll yet because I don't feel strongly either way. Ads are pretty much part of surfing the web. Aside from the occasional ad with a hot babe, i don't even notice them anymore. Of course firefox blocks pretty much any popup I get so that’s helpful.

Anything that offsets your cost and generates traffic is bound to be a good thing. I haven't researched website ads so i don't know a lot about them. Do folks have to click on them to help offset your costs, or is just having them up enough to do so?

Devshed has a few non intrusive ads for registered users, for unregistered users there are about a billion highly intrusive ads

Even javaranch has a few ads. Sun's java forums don't, but that's kinda a no brainer. So all in all, i don't see them as a problem.

Another option is for you to write a book then plug hotjoe in it

tfecw wrote:I haven't researched website ads so i don't know a lot about them. Do folks have to click on them to help offset your costs, or is just having them up enough to do so?

This link explains what Google AdWords is.

Ok, well I've added a banner for now. I may experiment with the layouts some but I don't want it to be too intrusive. Any feed back good or bad is welcome.

Yeah, I think the idea is a good one, but I really don't find the banner appealing.