Is It Time For A Blog Advertising Revolt?

I read something recently, cannot remember where, sorry, but it was about the latest complaint amongst publishers about Adsense revenues. Smart pricing was part of the problem, but the crux of the issue went beyond that in my mind. It is really about the hassle of pay-per-click advertising that we have all come to know so well.

Pay-per-click is always contentious among publishers and for that matter advertisers. It maybe one of the only advertising mediums that requires an action on the part of a reader or viewer before the advertising host is paid.

It is rather unique to web advertising. Let's face it, billboards, television advertisments, radio advertisments, newspaper advertisements and even flyer advertisements have are paid on circulation rates, or the number of viewers etc.

None of the above require the publisher to do anything other than get the potential customer to see the advertisement. As bloggers, we get hundreds, if not thousands of people to see the advertisments everyday, but with the ppc programs, like Adsense, but not just Adsense, we are not paid until the viewer does something, that is, clicks the ad and visits the advertiser's site. So you might expose the advertisement to thousands of your readers, but you won't get paid unless they do something.

Imagine how long the advertising business would last if the only way the billboard or television company was paid was based on the number of customers they were able to send to the company. Not many would last very long, I assure you.

It is not much unlike affiliate sales, you don't get paid unless the viewer, your reader, buys the product you are promoting. It's that action requirement that makes it difficult to make money at this business.

You can have the very best site, and get loads of traffic, but if the ads are not well written, they may not get the reader's interest, and therefore no click. The same holds for affiliate product sales, although, at least with those, you have some control over your destiny as for many of them, you can write some of the advertising copy. You cannot do that with pay-per-click programs.

Eventually, the poor pay may result in many of us removing those ads from our blogs, it may even result in many of us giving up blogging for money altogether. Afterall, we are writers and in many cases, very good writers, just not well paid.

I think it's time we moved back to more of the traditional advertising methods, banner ads that don't require clicks, the advertiser has to be happy to get his or her company name out there, never mind taking it to the next level. How we do that I don't know. There are still some advertising companies who do that, or pay with a combination of the two, Adengage is one of them, providing ads at a flat rate should advertisers choose to sign up for a particular site. They also offer pay-per-click for publishers who haven't sold ad space on their blogs or websites.

Personally, I would like nothing better than to see the web world move to a pay per space model, based on the sites readership numbers and topics etc. I could then concentrate on buiding a readership, and getting traffic to my blogs. It would also give me a feeling of control over my destiny and perhaps, maybe even more money. I think it would also weed out the blogs and websites that are designed for ppc advertising and really add little or nothing to the content of the world wide web.

Unfortunately, it might also mean a lot of folks who make a little pin money from their blogs through ppc programs might not make any, or not much. Let's face it, no matter what happens this is a pretty competitive business, in fact we are competing with each other, all over the world. How easy it would be to sell ad space in such a competitive market, on a small website or blog with not much traffic remains to be seen. I suspect it would be very difficult....

I doubt that is anywhere close to happening, let's face it, pay-per-click does have it's advantages, mostly for advertisers, only sometimes for the rest of us. It is certainly one of the most accepted ways of monetizing a blog or website, and in some situations has been more lucrative for the publisher than just selling ad space, but that is rare. I think we would all do better in a competitive market where ad sales were based on reader volumes and site content.

I am not advocating some kind of blogger revolt, so let's be clear about that right from the start. I am advocating that we come up with better ways to be reimbursed for our efforts more along the lines of publishers and broadcasters who don't have the same kinds of restrictions on how they get paid. It might just mean we are paid what are writing is worth to the world, not just on our ability with good ad placement.

How about this for an idea, the blog providers sell the space based on the circulation of individual blogs. There could be space set aside on blogs that sign up for the program that allow the blog company to place an advertisement or two or three, taking part of the revenue as commission and part for the blogger. I dunno, might work. What do you think?