in 1996, i made a real-life discovery that people with more experience in advertising have known for decades: more ads don’t mean more money – they often mean less.

i was thinking about that because i had a guy contact me. he’s looking for someone to help him find more places to put lots of ads on his adult site.

while many newbs (and some not-so-newbs) have packed their pages with ads, he’s the first person i know of who ever wanted to pay someone to shoehorn more on.

and he wants tons of variety – viagra, sex toys, you name it. since he plans to be traffic trading, i also pointed out that more hits to ads = less hits to trades = less hits to send to ads.

so for any newbs reading this, more ads often frustrate or annoy your surfers and send them away. some guys give up in confusion and hit back. think of how you feel when you’re looking for something and you find tons of unrelated ads. well-chosen sponsors and well-chosen ad placement can make a lot more money than tons of ads, and will also alienate less surfers.

i used to have a tgp with one ad on the top half of the page. it was my adult site of the week, and there was a true explanation that only sites we found to be high quality and good value were chosen for that spot.

our bookmarkers always checked that out, lots joined, and they were so happy with our recommendations that they kept coming back to our site. EVERYONE won – us, the surfers and the paysite owners.