Monetizing Your Blog: When Is The Right Time?

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When you start a blog, there is always a big question of how to monetize your blog. Before that, there is an even bigger one - when to monetize it. Some experts recommend focusing on your content and increasing your reader base before monetizing while others disagree. I am one of the “others” and believe you should not wait too long. Most bloggers blog to make money online and if you are one of them, you might as well start earning from the beginning. If you do not figure out ways to monetize you blog when its new, it is going to be hard to find ways when you get more traffic. When new, you can experiment with your ad placements, change the layout and the whole design of the blog to maximize views and ad click through rates. You have the opportunity to find what works and what does not. You do not have any readers at that moment so no body is going to care that your blog looks different than before. But, if you try to monetize only after you get loads of readers, you will have difficulties:

1. The layout, colors and the design of your blog is the brand of your blog. People recognize it as yours. But, if you want to place a banner at the top of your blog and your sidebar or whatever and the current layout does not let you do it, then you risk losing your brand image if you have to completely change the look of the blog to place the ads in the right place.

2. If you monetize before having lots of traffic, that means people will accept your blog for what ads it has, but if you suddenly add ads to the clean ad free blog they are used to seeing, it might have a negative impact on your readers.

Of course, I would like to hear from anyone who has views different than mine.