I didn’t mean that I click just to be clicking really. If there is an ad that arouses my curiosity, I will check it out. Or if I find a specific topic type ad that I want to explore, I will check out like sites until I find one that I like enough to leave my tip there. Does that make sense?

As an example — If I’m on a mommy business site and I see a work at home ad that I’m curious about, I will go through my mommy business links until I find that same ad to click on. Granted I won’t spend hours doing the search for it, but I do try to take my clicks where they are deserving.

That’s the beauty of networking with like sites. More then likely you’ll be served up with similar ads as a friend in the same niche. You can click their ads to see what is on the other side

Thanks again for commenting.

It is a shame that there are people out there who don’t like ads, don’t click ads or even take the ridiculously high moral ground that ads are not welcome on blogs. It is, however, hard to justify clicking on links that you are not interested in.

I started using the internet, as I’m sure most people did, when adverts were always annoying flashing banners. Developing blindness to ads enhances the experience most of the time. Now we have much nicer, more integrated ads, but the next important thing is their relevance. As I said above, clicking a link that you are not interested in is not only hard, but adds to the cost to the advertisers for wasted click throughs. If something is relevant, then there is no reason why I wouldn’t click on it. This is the best part of Char’s post, leaving ads off the front page allows for single pages to receive more relevant ads, which in turn improves click throughs.

Ads are not put on blogs so that friendly people click them for you, they are really there to (hopefully) add some sort of value to your page which results in a bonus for you. If we relied on people clicking ads because they enjoyed your site, then no-one would be making much money.

One final point, in the case of schemes that you sign up to, where your favourite blogger has provided a link that would benefit them if you use it, then yes, I will go out of my way to click that link rather than find the site myself. If it is personal recommendation and part of the blogger’s content, then yes, they deserve to reap the benefits and I will help them out if I can.

Wow… that’s probably the longest comment I’ve ever written, it could have been a post! Too late now though! What do you think though, Gayla?