If you’re trying to monetize your blog with advertisements, then you ought to be aware of “ad blindness”.  Ad blindness, also called banner blindness, refers to a person’s ability to ignore ads on websites.  If your readers have ad blindness, it means they’re not looking at the ads on your blog – let alone clicking on them.

Obviously this is a huge problem if you want to earn money with your blog using Pay Per Click ads or Pay Per Sale ads, etc.  In order for your blog to make money, you need your readers not only to look at your ads, but be interested enough to click on them.

So how to do you combat ad blindness?

Adjust Your Layout

How your blog is organized can have an effect on where your readers look.  You can guide your readers into looking at a particular spot by using elements of your layout, by using color and by positioning your ads in strategic locations.  Ad placement is very important, and as this article shows, the best place to put your ads would be in the top left part of the screen (according to studies investigating where people look the most on the screen).  In addition to placement, you can also use different colors to make your ads stand out.

Write About Them

Some readers can be very adamant about avoiding ads.  They purposefully avoid looking at the ads.  Why do they do this?  They are expecting to be sold on something, but they do not expect that something to be useful or beneficial – just costly.

If you write a post explaining the benefits of the websites your ads go to, you’ll put the readers at ease and you’ll pique their curiosity.  They’ll have a better understanding about what the ads are offering, and therefore will be less skeptical of them.

Limit Your Number of Ads

Less ads can mean more income.  It seems counter intuitive, but think about it: if your page is covered in ads, this is just going to increase the reader’s ad blindness, and could even scare them away from your blog completely.  With less ads, your readers are more likely to see them, and also your site will be less cluttered, meaning you’ll have more traffic and more trust.  Therefore – increased profits for you.

Use Relevant Ads

If you want readers to click on your ads, you need to have ads they’ll want to click on.  If your blog is about cooking and you’re using ads for sports games, then your readers are not going to click on the ads – they just aren’t interested.  The reader is on your blog because they want to know about cooking.  If they want to know about cooking, then chances are they also want to buy something cooking related – a recipe book, a blender, or a butcher block maybe.

So in conclusion, to make more money, you can you can decrease ad blindness and entice your readers into clicking on your ads by using color and positioning, explaining the benefits of the products to your readers, only using a few ads, and using ads that your readers care about.