The Writer’s Coin

I wrote before about why I placed an ING Direct ad inside the text of my content about a month ago: I really believe that it’s the first step in taking control of your finances. I wanted to place and ad there because there’s no way a reader can ignore it—it’s primo space. But no one clicks on it. After some consultation with some experts, they told me that no one clicks on things that look like ads. Well, the ING ad looked like an ad.

So I’m getting rid of it today. Instead, whenever I mention ING I’ll just refer to the referral page (where I get a commission and new account holders get a bonus for signing up—I got my first one the other day) or I’ll link to the page the ad used to link to.

Wither way, the change means I’m streamlining the site and continuing to push the idea of helping people get started with their finances while trying to make me a buck or two at the same time. So far the money isn’t rolling in (or trickling in, for that matter), but I like where the blog is going so that’s OK.

Hopefully, the readability of the page improves without the ad and I won’t get tempted into putting a Google ad up there, cause I tried that and it looked horrible.

Tags: bonus, ing direct, referral