How Should You Use Ads For Your Site?

The question of when and how to use ads in your web based business is such a tough one! I have struggled endlessly with it myself over the last few years. I have read what other blog owners have to say about the issue, and I've found that there are many schools of thought on this. After considering all the angles, it seems to me that nobody is really wrong. It really all depends on what works for you and for your site, and you can't figure that out until you try a few things, can you?

I have heard from people who think it's best to start with lots of ads, right from the very beginning.

Some readers don't mind that at all, realizing that the blog owner has to finance the blog somehow

Some readers don't mind that at all, realizing that the blog owner has to finance the blog somehow and that ads are a necessary part of that. Unfortunately, I have noticed that quite often these readers also have sometimes trained themselves to completely ignore the ads, and will certainly never click on them or consider a donation to the blog. 

Other website owners think that it is worth skipping the ads completely in the beginning because they are afraid of running customers off. Well, I do understand that way of thinking and it is quite true that some people will see one ad and run. However, if you begin with no ads at all and then suddenly put them on your site, it can drive customers away equally as quickly. Starting off with no ads will not work too well in my opinion, because after all we all need to make a living!

I have found that a good way to deal with the question of ads is to use them, but to do so wisely and at a measured pace. Of course plastering your site with ads from day one will be a bad idea, especially when you think about the fact that we all want our sites to be inviting and friendly. My favorite way to do this is to put just a few select ads on my site, choosing the more unobtrusive ones in the beginning. I have found that 
partnership ads, or "sponsor" ads, are a really good way to dip your toe into the blog ad pool without having to dive in all the way. You could even consider putting up a few reviews or slight inline links that your blog readers are well suited to.

Another way to get financial support for your site is a donation button, accompanied by brutal honesty. 
I think that a donation button that just says something like "Please help defray my costs with a financial contribution" is not the tone that most readers respond to. For one thing, it is a little boring. It is also not that personal, and as most site owners know, it is really important to have a connection to your readers. When your readers feel as if they are your friends, they are much more likely to offer financial support. Maybe a brightly colored donation button that says something along the lines of: "I need money to feed this blog - it has taken over my life!"

"I need money to feed this blog - it has taken over my life!"

Another great little trick to get some quick income is by making it relevant to your readers.
After all, they come to your blog for your unique content. Maybe you can tell readers that you will be able to provide more content and options if they contribute one dollar per month. I know, you are thinking it is not enough to really help. But, before you say that a dollar is not enough to accomplish anything, consider the volume of customers the web offers. A brick and mortar business may have 1000 customers who are regular buyers. With the Internet, that number is usually tripled or more. Those small donations can really add up when you are dealing with thousands of customers.

It can be a little bit tricky to determine exactly how to use ads with your site. I know that it took me a while, but I finally got there. If you can hit that middle ground, you will get the same results that I do: Happy customers who donate regularly, and a popular site.

The new CSS3 will provide many features that were not available with CSS2 and older applications. While some of these features are still being developed, there are others that are working right now as well.

One of the new features is called "substring matching attribute selectors". There are three additional attribute selectors provided for matching substrings in the value of an attribute.

*[att^=val]
Represents an element with the att attribute whose value begins with the prefix "val". The selector does not represent anything if "val" is the empty string.

*[att$=val]
This will represent an element with the att attribute whose value ends with the suffix "val". Again if "val" is an empty string then the selector doesn't represent anything.

*[att*=val]
Represents an element with the att attribute whose value contains at least one instance of the substring "val". Just as in the other two, if "val" is the empty string then the selector does not represent anything.

Another feature of CSS3 is the ability to manipulate borders. You can play around with border color, border image, border radius, and box shadow applications to customize borders.

**Border-color
At the moment this is only available to those using Mozilla/Firefox browser. By using the CSS code available you can change the color of the border around a boxed set of text. Want the border around your message to be blue, just use the CSS code. Red,yellow, gray, or whatever color you want can now be used to give your borders more style.

**Border Image
This currently works in Firefox 3.1 and Safari. This feature is split into two categories which are border-corner-image and border-image. Instead of using the normal border of any element, you can now just use this feature to change the images around the border. You can change the corners or the whole box if you wish.

**Border Radius
This can be used on Safari 3 and Mozilla Firefox. This function allows the corners on a box to be rounded. You can choose to round off just one corner, or round off all corners of the box.

**Box Shadow 
This can be implemented in Firefox 3.1 and Safari 3+. Color is one attribute you can alter as well as three lengths that can be used. 
1. Horizontal offset of the shadow means that the shadow will be to the left of the box if using a negative offset, or will be to the right of the box when using a positive offset.
2. Vertical offset puts the shadow on the bottom of the box with a positive offset and the top of the box with a negative offset.
3. Blur Radius means how blurry you want the shadow to appear. A setting of zero will mean there is no blur and as your setting goes up the blurrier the shadow will be.

There are also other features for CSS3 that deal with colors. A feature that can be used with Mozilla, Konquerer, Safari 3 and Opera 9.5 is HSL colors. HSL stands for hue, saturation, and lightness. The colors and tunes are now available in a much wider spectrum than they were previously.

**Hue is a degree on the color wheel. The basic values are green is 120, blue is 240, and red is 0 or 360. Different shades are represented by the numbers in between.

**Saturation deals with a percentage value with 100 percent being the full color. 

**Lightness also deals with percentages, with black being zero percent and 100 percent being light. 

HSLA sets the opacity of an element and is currently only available for Firefox 3 beta and Safari 3.

There are also features you can use that apply to user interface. These include box sizing, resize and outline. 

**Box Sizing
Can be used with Firefox and Safari 3. Changes the behavior of the browser in calculating the width of an element. By using the border-box setting the browser will render the box with whatever height and width are specified while also adding the border and the padding within the box.

**Resize
Allows user to specify if a box can be resized. You can resize vertically, horizontally, or both.

**Outline
Currently works in Safari, Firefox and Opera. Offset can be rendered away from the specified element, and the outline will be another box surrounding the border. 

These are only some of the features available with the new CSS3. There are also newer features that are presently in the works as well. 

Take a look at your toaster. Now your DVD player. Next, your coffee machine. They have some solid gold advice for your social network.

It might sound crazy, but all of these appliances have design standards, and the Web is no different. Consider the 'play' button on your old VCR. When users know what that button is, they can recognize it on their DVD players, MP3 players, online videos and more, and instantly know how to use them. 

Changing the Web standards of your network is like forcing your user to learn a new language.

It asks them to give up on ideas that they are familiar and comfortable with, and that means they spend more time learning how to interact with your site and less time actually interacting with it. 

Take a look at your page stats over at crazyegg.com and your Google analytics - You may be shocked at how impatient your users are. No one wants to buy a toaster they don't know how to use. On the Web, that means going over to another site. 

How do you apply these standards to your site? 

- Prioritize.
Your toaster has one giant button to push the toast down and to warm up the coils. That's the first priority. The other controls are for advanced users - those who want to control the darkness of their sliced bread. 

Prioritize your site and think about what they'll most likely be looking for (or what you want them to be looking for) on every page. Make sure that option is highlighted in an easy-to-find way. Let users fine-tune if they want to, but make access and interaction as fast and simple as possible. 

- Stay traditional, even if you don't.
We talked about that big green triangle on the DVD players, the universal signal to users that "this starts the movie."

Design a DVD player without that triangle somewhere and you're guaranteed to confuse

people. 

You may have the next killer site that will take the world by storm, with new ideas and a new architecture all its own. That's great. But it won't matter if no one knows how to use it. If you can use a button, use a button; if you can use a text field, use a simple text field. 

If you have a stunning, simpler idea for how these things can work better, try them out, but do so carefully. Once you understand what users are looking for, you can play with the rules, or present them in a new way. But you must learn what works for your users first, and work to those expectations.


Hopefully all this talk has left you seeing your toaster, and your Web site, in a way that leaves you hungry to improve - or, at least, hungry for some toast.