For those who are regular visitors to our forums, you’ll know that we did experiment with Kontera ads on WhyDoWork. During the time we ran the trial, the site was getting about 260k page views a month, the ads had a great click through rate, and they brought in thousands of dollars.

But wait….

Where are the ads now?

Exactly. The ads are no more on WhyDoWork. If you checked out the link above, you’ll see a few complaints; we had about 20 more private emails sent complaining about the ads from users as well. But should users always dictate what stays and what goes on your site? - It’s an interesting question for any site owner to ponder.
Back to Kontera for a second. If you don’t know what this program is, Kontera ContentLink is a contextual advertising based on finding relevant keywords within your website content and automatically turning these into ads targeted to your audience. These keywords are then double-underlined and when the user hovers their mouse over the link they will see a small box appear with the text of the ad and can decide whether they want to visit the advertiser’s website. You can run ContentLink alongside other advertising programs that you have and it will not interfere. Simply put, Kontera is a great way to supplement your existing income, and many popular blogs like John Chow’s use them religiously.

Dealing with Kontera was always a pleasant experience. If we needed to turn the number of ads per page down, ask a question about targetting, or heckle about revenue sharing they were always quick to help and kind in their replies. For us, it all came down to customer satisfaction. WhyDoWork.com is a community website, and thus it is approached as a democratic society. If the majority of our mini-society don’t like something and the concern is legitimate, it’s been the case that we will always change to reflect their wishes, even if it means sucking it up financially.

This all goes back to my question:

should your user community dictate what you put up on your site?

One particular blog I enjoy, DoshDosh does a great job of creating a sense of community by avoiding an in-your-face advertising style of many other blogs. The author of that site did run the ads at first with decent results, but later decided it wasn’t worth the aggravation to readers. In the case of WhyDoWork, we are set up in a manner that encourages users to come up with how the site should be run, designed, what features to include, and even what advertising to run. That, in my opinion is a true online community.

Many bloggers are in the habit lately of promoting themselves based on their monthly income - not a wise idea in my opinion. If you tie your reputation, respect, and success to a single number you report at the end of the month, you’re either going to end up an advertising wh*re, or eventually falter and watch your earnings (and subscribers) decrease. If your audience is always expecting to see a bigger number, they may no longer perceive you as “successful” even if you plateau and are making a great income.

Always keep in mind that a returning visitor is a happy visitor, and keeping visitors happy should be at the top of your list for long term success.

What do you think? - Would you ever let your users tell you what, and what not to post on your site?

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