velospace blog

Up until today velospace has only dabbled in advertising. About a year ago I ran a small direct advertising campaign and had a few ads run on the site for about six months. The ads did well, both companies are now thriving, and everyone was satisfied.

But my advertising model was cumbersome: I had to reach out to potential advertisers, negotiate the details of the ad contract, and manage the ad copy and measure the performance of the ad. This took a fair amount of time and effort.

I resisted using Google AdSense because I believed that there were not enough advertisers using the service to be interesting to velospace users. I was concerned that a lack of quality advertisers would cheapen the site. But several things have changed over the past year that helped me change my mind: 1) interest in bikes is growing, as are the number of advertisers, and 2) I can integrate the ads into velospace in a thoughtful, non obtrusive way.

As of right now ads appear in two places on the site: 1) at the bottom of content pages, before the comments, and 2) on the sidebar on bike pages. Everyone sees the ads at the bottom of the content pages. The colors and layout of the ad blend in well with the flow of the page, it is a non disruptive setup. Only visitors not logged-in to velospace see the ads on the sidebar of bike pages. This helps to keep the clutter of ads down across the site and will act as an incentive to get more visitors to sign up and log in while using velospace.

If you have any suggestions about the placement of Google ads on velospace please let me know, thanks!

- Greg