Website- Advertising for E-Collars and the likes

[carrie_02]

Hello everyone. I am quite new to positive training and am definitely not an expert dog owner, but I would really like to start a website where I write about living with and training my dogs. Obviously I won't pretend to be an expert, but I think I might be able to connect with a few new dog owners or people thinking about getting a dog, and hopefully they'll see positive training in a positive light and will find new ways to have fun with their dog.

Anyways, here is my quandary. I am really low in money. I always have been my whole adult life, I have a low paying job so I'm good at budgeting, BUT, I budget very seriously because I must. I'll have to be paying to host my website and those costs, which won't be very much, but enough for me to have to slightly rearrange other costs a bit. For that reason, I'm thinking that it would be smart to have advertisements on my website (like, Google Adsense ads). I know I won't make a fortune at all, but any bit I can recoup would be important.

But, with Google Adsense you can't control what products are advertised on your website. You can block certain URLS / Companies, but obviously I couldn't block all of those with products I don't agree with (products that completely contradict what I say on my website) like underground fences, e-collars, and other aversive products. So I have to think: do I want to recoup some of the costs- even though it probably won't be much, it would be the smart thing to do considering how little extra money I have- while kind of SACRIFICING my moral beliefs, or should I leave out the ads and not make any of the money back, but at least know I'm not supporting any bad products? What would you do? What do you think I should do?

I appreciate hearing any of your opinions. Thank you.

[JudyN]

Have you considered a blog as opposed to a website? As far as I know many of those are free and don't use advertising.

It's almost impossible to avoid adverts for companies that supply anything you don't agree with. Pets&Home sell positive tools as well as aversives, and Amazon, of course, sell everything! I don't think anyone would consider you were selling your soul if adverts for either of these appeared on your site. And even firms you would love to endorse might have one or two items you're not happy with, or investments in military or tobacco companies, or whatever.

It's another matter, of course, if ProngsRUs suddenly popped up on your website, but if you had a clear statement somewhere that you don't approve of any aversives and would never endorse them, but at this point you need to fund the website and have limited ability to control the adverts, I wouldn't have a problem with that. If the website took off, you could look at taking advertising from selected companies and not using Adsense or similar.

Actually, it would also be worth looking at how much money Adsense & similar are likely to raise - it may be so little at the outset that it really won't make a worthwhile difference.

[carrie_02]

Have you considered a blog as opposed to a website? As far as I know many of those are free and don't use advertising.

It's almost impossible to avoid adverts for companies that supply anything you don't agree with. Pets&Home sell positive tools as well as aversives, and Amazon, of course, sell everything! I don't think anyone would consider you were selling your soul if adverts for either of these appeared on your site. And even firms you would love to endorse might have one or two items you're not happy with, or investments in military or tobacco companies, or whatever.

It's another matter, of course, if ProngsRUs suddenly popped up on your website, but if you had a clear statement somewhere that you don't approve of any aversives and would never endorse them, but at this point you need to fund the website and have limited ability to control the adverts, I wouldn't have a problem with that. If the website took off, you could look at taking advertising from selected companies and not using Adsense or similar.

Actually, it would also be worth looking at how much money Adsense & similar are likely to raise - it may be so little at the outset that it really won't make a worthwhile difference.

Thank you for your timely reply, Judy!

[emmabeth]

I honestly wouldn't bother - really, you'll only make any worthwhile revenue back if your content is supergood and your website getting many many hits - for a new site and one produced on a budget, it won't be that .. so you would end up with adverts for products you do not want to endorse, for little to no revenue at all.

My website costs me around £30 a YEAR, and it has a blog function on it, and I am about as poor as it gets really and manage that without advertising on it. (I also have a couple of free blogs and couldn't get adsense on them because I swear too much...!)

I realise that sounds a bit doom and gloom and I certainly don't mean to put you off from having a website or a blog - its just the reality is you are unlikely to earn more than a few pence per year from advertising on it.

[Shalista]

also the downside of using a website vs a cookie cutter blog is you might need to know a little bit of html to make it look good. Maybe you've mentioned if that's a skill you have and i missed it. Even running something simple like this forum needs some coding skillz.

It could be helpful to just start a free Wordpress blog account. Do a couple months of content just to get in the swing of things, organize your thoughts, see if this is something you really want to do, or something you want to do consistently. Decide on a posting schedule, every month? every week? whenever you feel like it? Share it with friends and family and see what they think of your content. Unless it's banned on terms of use maybe you could post a link here for our feedback?

Then when all that's settled you could think about getting a decent site and, if you didn't share the free Wordpress account TOO widely, you have a couple months worth you content you can post at your leisure which is a nice buffer in case you get sick, decide to take a vacation, or just don't feel like posting that day.

[ChristyLynn0506]

wordpress.com is free.

[carrie_02]

Thank you everyone for your replies!!