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Banners, Banners and More Banners

As you probably noticed I have a new sponsor, Al Ghalia Group who are based in Bahrain. This means I now have a total of 5 banners on my blog which I won’t deny is a lot. I have tried my best not to clutter up the blog too much with banners and this is honestly the best I can do.

Like you I would rather this blog had no banners at all but the banners are there for a reason… they provide me with extra income. I understand these banners decrease the aesthetics of the blog but the money is actually pushing me to continue blogging.

Blogging daily is difficult, its a lot of pressure and it takes time. I currently try to post a minimum of 3 posts a day so I could remain consistent. If I didn’t have the income coming in from the banners I might have stopped blogging ages ago or at least I would have stopped posting as often.

Now money usually is not a comfortable subject to discuss but this is a blog and I think its important for me to be as open as I can with my readers.

How much money am I making? Well I have decided to share with everyone a PDF file I send to people who request information on advertising on the blog. Its my rate card and you can download it by clicking [Here]. I wasn’t sure if I should make this information public or not but I figured if I was a reader I would be curious to know how much money this blog is making the same way I am curious to know how much money engadet or digg make. Well as you can see from the rate card this blog is currently making nearly $3000 a month. This is a good chunk of cash and I hope now everyone understands why I have so many banners here.

I have not sold out. Just because I am making money from the blog doesn’t mean I have sold out. All I am doing is cashing in on my 15 minutes of fame. When something sucks I will still say it sucks and when something is good I will still say its good.

Anyway it feels awkward sharing this information but I hope everyone especially my long time readers understand the reason for all these banners. Thank you!

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update: If anyone has any questions you can ask by leaving a comment below and I will reply to it.

One reader, Biohazard asked an important question which is Can I bash a sponsors product? The answer is simply no. When Alghanim Automotive were my sponsors I told them that if a cars they lent me to test drive sucked then I would post negative stuff about it. So what they did was just lend me their best cars. Now though what I do is tell my sponsors that if they lend me a product to try out and it turns out to suck I will just not mention the product at all. This way they aren’t afraid to send me more stuff to try out.

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update 2: I changed the location of the new banner because of complaints. If you prefer the new location over the previous one please leave a comment below. In case you missed it here is a screen shot of the previous location. [Screen Shot]

47 replies on “Banners, Banners and More Banners”

I’m a dial-up user, so usually I’d be pissed if there were too many banners in the main page but they load fast, so I’m pleased.

Speaking of the money, that’s like 280KD, right? That’s a so-weet figure for just writing about your daily adventures and stuff(I know it’s not easy to come up with entries but still..). Good for you for taking the advantage really, I would do the same.

Question though and I don’t expect an honest answer but I’ll still ask..

Are you willing to bash a product if its manufacturers are one of your sponsers?

Biohazard, no, its a lot more then 280KD

About your question, no I am not willing to bash a product if it belongs to one of my sponsors. I make it clear to the sponsors that if they give me one of their products to review and it sucks then I won’t post about it or mention it.

Well, my currency figures are way off.. I think they’re based on the 80s but whatever..

How much is it in Kuwaiti Dinars? And if you were to split it with us, how much would I get?

I totally understand what ur goin thru mark , blogging gets really boring after a couple of days from starting a blog so money is a good motivator , i just have 2 things i wanna shed some light on:
… You stopped reviewing stuff , where are the shawerma reviews, the electronic reviews , that kinda of thing, the only thing you’re giving attention to is cars , and its pretty boring
…I’m totally with you on the ads , its ur right to put them but couldn’t you find a different place for the one at the top, the ones on the side blend in, but the one on the top sucks , can’t u put it somewhere else ? you’re blog used to start with this bright magenta banner , now its just wierd

Wow, for a moment I thought that Mezzaluna was coming to Kuwait. It’s a nice restaurant (they all are – my favourite is Monsoon).

Eddy: I don’t have any figures on how many people click the banners, just on how many people view the banners

MiRoOoOo: Thats because I am on a diet 🙂 just joking, I will try to diversify my reviews more. About the location of the banner I am going to try it out for this month but I am working on finding another location for it. If I can’t find another location it will have to stay there, sorry about that.

yo-ghurt: yeah I heard that their restaurants are good, all their restaurants were actually recommended to me by my readers when I was looking for things to do when I went down to Bahrain.

isnt this illegal ? i dun think a work visa allows u to make profits out of these ads?? If its the company ur working for then fine…but these companies clearly arent……so wats ur say ??
wat if someone decides to snitch ??

MiRoOoOo I just changed the location of the banner. Need to get client approval though. Can anyone using Windows and Internet Explorer telle me if the blog looks ok?

Well its your right to do this, and I was like “DAMN THATS A COOL LOOKING RESTAURANT, WHERE THE HELL IS IT” then I realized it was in Bahrain.

I really like finding out new information about things happening in Kuwait! Thats cool!

I never saw nor knew these ads existed, thanks to a little gem that only now i found how awesome and precious it is.. Adblock Add-on for Firefox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1865/

Also, honestly speaking, with the amount of money ur making from this blog, it doesnt show ur making much effort with the lately below-par posts, nor do the posts show that ur having a difficulty in writing them or that you are under pressure. And if it would make any difference, ur blog was alot better when i started reading it some months ago, and before there were so much ads.

I know that i dont see these ads in the first place, but common sense says ur blog should be better considering the financial factor. Please don’t take this so hard, this is not a personal attack. 🙂

mark good for you 🙂 and the best thing is that your getting paid for everything u like to do 🙂

you made it all the way alone to reach 30,000 impressions per day! and that’s al lot! you deserve more for this popularity. you keep people busy and informative including me and every visitor. this can’t be for free! good luck with more cash Mark!

New location is better, doesn’t disturb the look of your banner, however if you plan on going with a new theme or template design you could use the new space more evenly I guess.

Hey mark,
you dont have to be apologetic about making money from your blog. Its only fair that you receive some compensation for the time spent writing them. Although i must tell you i miss the reviews.
ps. the banner looks better in its current location

Booooo! You should be blogging because people want to read about what it is you have to say, not because you feel obligated to meet a quota of any sort. I’m a fan of the blog, Mark – but to try to defend yourself as not being a sell-out when you admit to censoring your own blog’s content… I don’t know if I feel too good about that. Maybe you should be asking yourself if you blog for money or to have your opinion heard. Sure the money is fine, but you should ask yourself whether or not it’s worth compromising whatever opinion you might have. That said, I appreciate your transparency.

Mark do what you do, no one is going to hold it against you for cashing in on something you enjoy doing! It’s cool that you’re explaining yourself to your readers, but we don’t any kind of explanation, they’re just ads, it’s not like they’re going to harm us. Your blog is neat, the ads seem to blend in quite well, so it’s all good.

Good for you Mark! You wouldn’t have been able to profit from this had your blog not been so interesting and unique. And your honesty about the amount you are making is appreciated not to mention the fact that it might inspire others to do the same.
The new location of the banner is much much better, both aesetically and from the point of view of the sponsor as it is more noticable when reading the latest post.

You always have interesting things to say, why not take a little cash if someone wants to hand it to you? $3000 is a nice chunk of change – hope you’re investing in a beautiful place in the mountains.

Ignore any criticism. The blog seems to be the same as always – you obviously have your good days and bad days, but whoever said you only write about cars is clearly unfamiliar with Marzouq’s blog and motorbikes… (sorry M 😉 just couldn’t think of another blog I read).

I like the fact that the tortoise-humping internet hardware from MTC is still advertised despite not a single person having a good thing to say about it… shows integrity of some kind.

The only thing I find odd… is why on earth a Barhrani company would want to advertise on a Kuwaiti blog. Now if you were in Saudi and the advertiser was a Bahrani nightclub with cheap beer and hookers, then I’d understand.

heyy..where’d the rest of my post go?! =S

Anyways..the missing part of my post said “i agreed with Carl’s 2nd paragraph, this blog seemed way interesting when i first started reading about a year ago.”

But seriously good for you Mark.. =)

New location is much better ..

I am still laughing at the illegal comment; I have a feeling a Kuwaiti agency will pop up overnight and claim responsibility if anything like that happens. 😉

i think YOU SHOULD post negative reviews when the cars suck, if you will only post positive reviews from now there is no need to read them anymore i just know that you liked this car since you posted it here and skip the review , it wont make sense to only post positive reviews of cars , if they wont send you there cars that’s there lose that means that they know that there cars suck anyways , i don’t mind the banners but don’t sell out like that and hide truthful reviews from you’re readers just because you want to try stuff out!

mark…………that was such a sincere act from ur side to show the readers on ur monthly income from this blog….
i dont think anyone would talk abt the income he gets….

tahts great mark……..u rock !!!!

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