By Jim Farmer

At one point or another, all bloggers — gay or straight — face one crucial decision: whether or not to incorporate advertising and advertorial content into their site. The potential revenue increase is obvious, but when advertorial text starts to read like a blatant advertisement, that's when it runs the risk of driving away readers.

The number one key to maintaining a good balance between editorial content, advertising, and advertorial is to know what similar sites are doing. Stephen Bucaro of Bucaro TecHelp has a practical solution to this problem. “One way to find the balance is to observe your own reactions to someone else's site,” offers Bucaro. “If you're thinking you don't have time to ferret out the information that’s hidden by advertising, something is wrong. Do the visitors to your own site ever have that same kind of reaction?”

Bucaro believes site administrators should keep a few things in mind before writing advertorial and advises, “Readers are always thinking, 'What's in it for me?' If the advertorial content doesn't solve a problem, you're wasting your time and reducing the relevancy of your site. Readers can smell an advertisement a mile away. Every product or service has good points and bad points. You need to reveal some bad points in order to give the illusion of providing honest information.”

Stewart Tongue administers a dozen plus adult sites, including The Tongue, and feels that strong writing is the key. “A good writer can transition seamlessly from advertising to editorial content such that the reader is never quite sure which is which,” he observes. “A good writer can convince an entire country to go to war. A bad writer can't get his own mother to give him one dollar for an ice cream cone.”

Jack Shamama, of Gay Porn Blog, likewise believes that sincerity is the best approach when writing copy. “If I want to promote something because I like it, that's more effective than doing it because it's gonna make me money. If you are reviewing something and honestly like the product, people can tell.”

Mark Kliem runs the hugely popular Lavender Lounge Blog. His approach is all about piquing people's interest. “It's important to have unique text, something that leads a reader to a destination which can lead to making money,” he says. He believes many bloggers don't take the process seriously due to simple laziness. “Just cutting and pasting a studio press release onto your site doesn't really work.”

While there is no magic potion for advertorial content or ad placement, all administrators have their own particular opinions about successful execution. “A web page should be designed so that the useful content is in the center and ads are arranged around the perimeter,” says Bucaro. “Easy access to the useful content causes the user to exit the superhighway, slow down, and park on your webpage.”

Bucaro also recommends displaying ads unobtrusively and letting readers make the choice to further investigate advertising. It's all about not shoving your advertising down your visitors' throats.

Butch Harris created Mannet. As a general rule of thumb, he doesn't include advertorial text on his site, saying, “You run the risk of making someone distrustful of you,” he says. In a nutshell: ads should be run at the top and should not take up more than 25 percent of any page.

Tongue trusts the customers, allowing them to choose. “Getting their feedback is the only way to satisfy their desires,” he says, adding that one hundred percent of the web page should be advertising, but that zero percent should appear to be advertising. “If it looks like an ad, it's a bad idea. If it looks like content, it's an excellent ad.”

Tongue states that porn blogs don't require any special bells or whistles. “Selling a car, a vagina or a can-opener relies on the same formula for success. Quality content, an appealing look and feel, and a sense of community - those are the things you need. What you sell is far less important than how you sell it.” He elaborates, “For a long time people in this business thought it was all about sexy pictures and SEO (search engine optimization) tricks. Now they are starting to see that the text is just as important.”

Shamama agrees, saying, “People think porn sites will always have lots of flash and big pictures, but we try to work against type and to focus on content.”

Like the old saying goes, “Content is King!”

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