Comments on: Are Third-Party Advertisers Needed?

By: Brandon Hopkins

Brandon Hopkins — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 23:03:17 +0000

Needed? Absolutely! I don’t want to, or have time to, find advertisers and change text links and contextual ads every month. Especially when you have a lot of sites, this becomes VERY tiresome.

By: Leroy Brown

Leroy Brown — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 19:06:14 +0000

Exactly - now you’re thinking! I work with guys who complain every single payday about the ridiculous amount of taxes they have to pay each time. I say, most people would LOVE to have the problem of seeing a $3 or $4000 deduction on their paycheck for taxes. Some problems are good problems to have; it’s all in how you look at it.

By: Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:31:06 +0000

Haha, yea I suppose. Figuring out how to best squeeze money out of my thousands of visitors would be a great problem to have.

By: Leroy Brown

Leroy Brown — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 17:26:30 +0000

Today 10 visits, next week it could be 10 thousand. At least now you have a plan in place for when your traffic goes through the roof. You’re one step ahead of a lot of people.

By: Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:57:45 +0000

Touché. I’ll look forward to that, but I’m still trying to average 10 visits a day.

By: Leroy Brown

Leroy Brown — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:53:54 +0000

Adam:
I think once you get to be at the top of the web publishing world, you’ll likely have a dedicated advertising rep, who handles all of your ad deals. An ad rep would likely cost you much much less than the ad networks slurping up their 50% share. So you get to be lazy, and still make more than you would with the ad networks - win win.

By: Everyday Weekender

Everyday Weekender — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:31:24 +0000

yeah i think your right on with this one. They’re not really needed but no doubt they are useful.

By: Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:02:33 +0000

While I do agree with you in theory, a lot of it simply has to do with what you want to do, and what you have time to do. Some people just don’t want to deal with finding advertisers, even if it’s as simple as responding to an email or inserting a graphic into your layout.

It remains easier to plop the TLA code in your sidebar and let them handle the rest. And of course, a benefit to being a big name with lots of money is that you can afford to give half of your ad earnings away to make your life a little bit easier. When I’m rich, I’ll probably never mow my own lawn. It’s the same reasoning.

By: Alex Goad

Alex Goad — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:33:17 +0000

Smack on.

Are they needed? No. Nothing of the sorte is really needed. Are they useful. For sure they are.

As you so eloquently put it, the small and medium sized publishers can benefit from extra revenue without having to do much work to solicit advertisers, and that’s definitely a strong positive.

When you get “a-list” status and your blog numbers are insane, there’s no reason no to cut your own deals, the advertisers will probably flock to you anyways…