I Could Plaster Ads All Over This Site. Here's Why Smart Creators Are Walking Away From Them

I’ll be honest: I could turn this site on for ads tomorrow. It would take an afternoon. Sign up, drop in a script, and watch the pennies start rolling in.

I’ve done it before.

More than once.

I’ve run Ezoic. I’ve run Journey by Mediavine. I know exactly how easy it is, and I know exactly what it pays. And after all of that, I decided this site wasn’t getting them.

Not because ads are evil. Not because I’m above making money. I want this site to earn, same as anyone building something on the side.

It’s because when I actually sat down and looked at what ads gave me versus what they took from my readers, the math just didn’t work.

I’ve lost faith in ads as a truly useful way to monetize a website, I want you all to trust me and ads don’t bring trust they bring “penny pinching” to mind. Instead I want to offer smart and useful things to you, my reader, when they make sense and can help not to turn the site into a commercial.

The Math Nobody Shows You

Let’s start with how ads became the default in the first place.

Display ad networks made it ridiculously easy. You don’t have to build products, sell products, or even think about your reader. You just give up some space on your page and get a check. So almost every blogger, recipe site, and hobby creator did exactly that, because that’s what everyone else was doing.

Here’s what that check actually looked like for me.

When I ran ads, I typically made $12 to $18 per 1,000 visitors.

Sit with that for a second. A thousand people. A thousand real humans who came to read something I wrote, and the whole group of them earned me about the price of a lunch while consuming commercials I have no say in.

To make even $500 a month at that rate, you need somewhere around 30,000 to 40,000 visitors. Every month. And that’s before the networks change their rates, before the slow season hits, before an algorithm update cuts your traffic in half overnight.

Now compare that to one honest recommendation that actually fits the person reading.

Just as an example, say I recommend a product that pays out a $30 commission. If only 10 people out of those same 1,000 visitors buy it because it genuinely solves their problem, that’s $300. Same thousand readers. Twenty times the money.

Or a small digital product, something focused and built for exactly the person who lands on that page. Sell a $25 guide to just 1% of those 1,000 readers and you’ve made $250.

I’ll never try to sell you just to sell you, and I hope my reader here will feel this in their soul, especially if they run a blog or website. Embrace your people, stop trying to commercialize every aspect and you will grow better.

In other words, a single well matched affiliate option or a focused digital product for my actual visitor will almost always make more than plastering ads everywhere.

And it does it without making the site worse.

What Ads Really Cost: Speed, Trust, and Readers Who Leave

Here’s the part website owners don’t consider or see when they look at that ad check: what it’s costing them on the other side.

We’ve all been there as readers. You search for something simple, click a result, and the page loads in pieces. Then it jumps. Then a video starts playing in the corner. Then a banner slides up from the bottom. You scroll past three ads looking for the one paragraph you actually came for, and halfway there the whole page shifts and you accidentally tap an ad for a car you’ll never buy.

Most of us just hit the back button and I don’t blame them.

That’s the real true cost that’s lost on website owners.

Ad scripts add weight to every page. They slow down load times, they cause layout shifts, and they can drag down the page experience signals search engines pay attention to. A slower, jumpier site can mean fewer people ever find you in the first place.

But infinitely larger is the cost of your readers’ trust.

When someone lands on your site and it feels like a billboard, they stop seeing you as a person and start seeing you as someone who wants their clicks. And once a reader decides you’re just another ad farm, they don’t tend to come back. They don’t join your email list. They definitely don’t trust your recommendation when you actually have something worth recommending.

You traded their attention for pennies, and lost the thing that could have made you real money.

I’ll Be Fair Here: Big Sites Do Make Money on Ads

I don’t argue that ads work for some people. They absolutely do.

Huge sites pulling in hundreds of thousands or millions of visitors a month can make serious money from display ads. At that scale, even a modest rate turns into real income. Some of them have built entire businesses on it, and good for them.

And I get why site owners like ads. They’re basically zero effort for some consistent, relative income. You set it up once and forget about it. For someone juggling a full time job, a family, and a side project, that’s tempting.

But that’s exactly the trap.

Most of us aren’t running a site with millions of visitors. We’re building something smaller, something personal, something we want people to trust. And for a site like that, chasing ad money first is putting the cart before the horse.

You’re trying to monetize the reader before you’ve given them a reason to stick around.

What Smart Creators Are Doing Instead

The creators I see actually winning aren’t squeezing every pixel for ad space. They’re building around the reader first and the money second. And honestly? The money tends to follow.

Here’s what that looks like:

Recommending things they actually use. Not a top ten list of products they’ve never touched. One or two things they’ve used, tested, and would tell a friend about. Affiliate income from honest recommendations holds up because the reader trusts it.

Building something for their exact reader. A guide, a template, a course, a checklist. Something focused that solves one real problem for the person who keeps showing up. You don’t need thousands of sales. You need the right ones.

Owning the relationship with an email list. Ads rent your reader’s attention to someone else for a moment. An email list lets you keep showing up for them, on your terms, without an algorithm in the middle.

Offering services or sponsorships that fit. If you know a topic well, people will pay for your time or partner with you directly. One good sponsor who fits your audience can beat months of ad revenue.

None of these are as easy as pasting in an ad script.

That’s kind of the point.

They take work. They take actually knowing who your reader is and what they need. But that work builds something that compounds, instead of something that pays you $15 per thousand people and quietly drives them away.

How I’m Handling It on JoshKoop.com

So here’s what I’m doing with this site.

No display ads. Not on the health posts, not on the hustle posts, not on the technical posts.

When I recommend something, it’s because I actually use it or have tested it myself. My post on the smart scale I use to track body fat is a good example. Same with the over ear headphones I wear at the gym. If there’s an affiliate link in there, it’s for something I’d recommend whether I earned from it or not.

I do hope to build more here that’s truly helpful to my readers, digital products on building side hustles that actually work, creating an email list to let those interested stay in contact with me and what I post. This is all in the future though as I hear from you all and learn what I can help with, I used to do that with WordPress and niche websites but want it even better now.

Will it make money as fast as flipping on ads would? Maybe not at first.

But I’d rather build something slower that people actually trust than something fast that people can’t wait to leave.

So, Are On-Site Ads Dead? My Honest Answer

Not completely. And I won’t pretend otherwise.

If you’re running a massive site with huge traffic, ads can still pay the bills. If you’ve got a site you don’t plan to grow or care much about, ads might be the easiest way to squeeze a little out of it. That’s a fair call to make.

But for most of us building something on the side, something personal, something with our name on it?

Ads are dying as the smart first move.

They pay too little, they cost too much in speed and trust, and they push us to chase pageviews instead of serving the people who actually show up.

If you’re running ads right now, I’m not telling you to rip them out tonight. Pull up your numbers. Look at what you actually earn per 1,000 visitors. Then ask yourself honestly whether one great recommendation or one focused product for your reader could beat it.

My guess? It already could.

Put the horse back in front of the cart. Build for the reader first. The money that comes from trust lasts a whole lot longer than the money that comes from clutter.