I tuned in to the Blog Trends chat for the first time this week and honestly? I am SO glad that I did. I’m going to take a moment and get really honest with you here, just like I did in the chat.
I haven’t paid for advertising for this blog in over 6 months.
Now that doesn’t mean I haven’t worked my butt off advertising the blog in other ways. Guest posts, interviews, ad swaps, social media, emails – I made sure to promote my blog in plenty of ways for those 6+ months. In my mind, plenty of the right ways for myself and my blog.
Sure, it would have been much quicker to hand over the money and send over the button, but it never really worked for me. The amount I’d pay for the views I received, and even more so the amount of true readers or customers I received, never made sense to me. So I stopped doing it. Yet I continued on with paid advertising on my blog.
And thinking about it now, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
How could I decide to not do something and yet still offer it to other people? If I didn’t believe in it enough to do it myself, am I really the right person to be asking someone else to do it? I don’t feel like I am. Not at all.
Even more so, remember when I talked about writing more like it’s a journal? I never rented space out in my journal. It was for my eyes only. And there was no price anyone could put on it. I know for a fact that I can’t write like it’s my journal if I’m focusing on who’s willing to hand over the cash for a spot on my sidebar.
So for now – and probably a long while – ad sales are completely non-existent.
Instead I’m going back to when I was a much smaller blogger, focusing on the relationships I can build with other people and focusing on the content I know I’m capable of writing. Focusing on rebuilding the fundamentals of why I started blogging.
Everyone that has paid for advertising will get what they paid for, but from this point forward – I’ll be focusing on ad swaps. If you’d like to see more information, you can check out the advertising page. Otherwise shoot me an email if you’re interested in swapping ads!
And for those of you that do charge for advertising – I’m not judging. This is purely a personal decision with no right or wrong answer. This is what works for me right now, nothing more.
Two dogs, one cat, and an urge to live remarkable lives. This is our place to share our dream to travel the country through RV living and running our business on the road. We've got crazy ideas and a will to take on the world.
I love this idea, because for some reason, I have always been weary about shelling out money for someone to read me. Like I was buying friends, in a way? I’d love to ad swap with you, and when I click the link to email you, nothing comes up? So I figured you’d still see a comment. :)
Also, I can’t wait for the big/little blog assignments! :)
Love,
Megan @ thememoirsofmegan.com
I totally hear you. I haven’t yet felt like my blog is at the point to host sponsors myself, but I have participated in ad swaps or just buying advertising on other blogs outright. It’s funny, because I feel like I get more out of the swaps because most ‘pay-to-sponsor’ blogs do nothing but put a button up and without the option to guest post or be introduced, I feel like there’s no meaningful connection to someone’s sponsors. Swaps or even the paid ads I have done that offer something extra seem to create more meaningful and productive partnerships and introduce quality readers to my blog.
But yeah, long and short of it, advertising doesn’t make sense to me a lot of times. Go you!
awe big news for you!! I am so excited. someone asked me yesterday why I dont offer up paid spots and I just feel like y would I when I am not paying to put my blog out there – but like you – i have been doing guest post, giveaways, tweeting, making friends to help promote it all!!! thank you so much for this post.. alot of helpful information!!!
I completely get that! A lot of my spots are swaps too, but I work really hard promoting anyone that advertises with us, so I hope they feel they’re getting their ‘moneys’ worth swap or paid ad…
Good for you Ashley and I totally understand. I offer both paid & swaps on my blog and the whole “paid” thing is new for me so I’m gonna try it out for a while and see where it leads. Like Kassi, I really do my best to share and promote whoever took the time to advertise with me. But everyone is different and I totally respect your choice.
This is so great! I’m happy for you :) I’ll definitely be interested in swapping with you again in the coming months – if you’re interested in keeping that going :) xoxo! eliza
Kudos to you! I’ve been fiddling with this idea myself. I still want to have sponsors because I love highlighting my favorite shops and blogs but I’m thinking I may just invite certain people to sponsor vs. having them pay for spots.
I’m not sure how it’ll work yet but I agree with you, I miss how things used to be, back when numbers didn’t matter so much.
I ttoally just blogged about this same kind of thing! I love that we’re on the same wavelength! And good for you ;)
I’m so happy for you with this decision! I have thought about doing the same thing for a while but I guess just haven’t bit the bullet. This gives me a little more of a push :)
Great post! I’ve totally understand what you mean. I never gave much thought to sponsorships, mainly because everyone is doing it. But when and if my blog gets to the point where I could have paid sponsors, I’ll have to really give it some thought. And I was thinking about paying to sponsor some blogs, but now I’m thinking I should just work like crazy to advertise.
I think this is great. I just recently started a paid sponsorship program. I don’t know how long it will last – but I figured that I needed to give it a shot at some point in my blogging career. I don’t think it’s something I plan to do forever. Congratulations for going back to basics.
oh i totally agree – sounds like a good plan!
id love to swap with you, will email you shortly!