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In a recent blog post on the Art Biz blog there was a question about whether it’s a good idea to have Google Adsense on your website or on your blog. The reader wrote about the fact that you might be able to earn some money by offering these ads, so wasn’t that a good idea?

Now, in my opinion, if you’re using your blog or website to either promote your work or yourself, introducing Google Adsense has more drawbacks than potential pluses. Here’s what they are:

1. You’re sending traffic away from your site- If you’re busting your butt trying to encourage people to visit your website in the first place, the last thing you want to do is to send them right back out again? By introducing Google Adsense to your website, you’re essentially building traffic for someone else. Not good if the goal of your site is to promote yourself or sell your work.

2. You have no real control over what kind of ads show up- While Google Adsense can be fairly good at provide ads that match whatever content that’s on your website or blog, you may still have a situation where a questionable ad shows up because of something innocent that you post on your website. Here’s an example. I know of one blogger who blogged about her sister being diagnosed with breast cancer. So guess what type of ad showed up on her blog? Ads for breast cancer information of course, but also ads for breast enhancement as well…just because the word “breast” appeared on her blog. This lady is an abstract painter…why would she want to have ads for breast enhancement on her blog?

3. Adsense can totally distract from the look of your website or your blog- If you’ve spent the time and/or money to have a nice attractive website, why muck it up with a piece of content that you don’t have much control over. Besides the fact that to many visitors, running up on a Google Adsense while looking at an artist’s online portfolio is similar to having a salesman come up to you trying to hawk timeshares while you are trying to tour a gallery. Adsense can completely distract your visitors away from the reason why they’re on your website in the first place…to look at your art.

4. You probably won’t make much money…if any at all- People do make money off of Google ads and some people can make quite a lot of money by displaying Google Adsense. But the only way to make real money by displaying ads is to design your blog or your website specifically to gather Adsense traffic and to encourage the people to click on the ads. If you do that, then you will be taking the focus off of you and your work…and if that’s the reason you have a website, that’s exactly what you don’t want.

Bottom line…if you want to make money on your blog or on your website you need to focus more on trying to get leads and trying to sell your artwork rather than trying to get money from Adsense.