I've seen a few hosting companys with google ads at the top/bottom of their support/community forums. These google ads obviously read the content of the website and are advertising other hosting companys too.

Is this not like shooting yourself in the foot? Oddly, these companys seem to be doing rather well also.. .

What's your thoughts on this? I'd have thought it gives the impression that all you want is the customers money?

Yes I don't believe google ads are the way to go on any company page.

You're just setting yourself up for a loss of a sale.

:) in my opinion of course!

With careful tweaking you can filter and control the content of the ads Ciaran ;) Give me a shout on msn if you want to know more :)

Even when you do filter, IMHO it still isn't professional.

It depends how *attached* your forums are to the company. Whether they are the brain centre, or just a community where staff, long term customers and regulars to hang out...

Having ads on a site that sells a service pretty much says that you aren't making enough money with just the service alone.

Which sends bad signals to potential customers.

Having ads on a site that sells a service pretty much says that you aren't making enough money with just the service alone.

Which sends bad signals to potential customers.

I don't agree. You are looking at it from the point of view of someone net savvy, but hey each to his own.

Yes, with careful tweaking and knowing how to use Google Ads they are a fantastic source of extra revenue/income

As a customer, I find it rather tacky when a hosting company has ads on their website.

I wouldn't ever buy hardware from an online vendor with banner ads all over their pages, I would assume that most other people approach this the same way (if the vendor needs to supliment their income with banner advertising [which produces very very very small revenues], chances are they're not a professional vendor, and thus somebody I dont need to deal with). Selling hosting, at least to me, is lumped into the same category.

It says a lot about your income if you have ads on your BUSINESS website / forum.

this is interesting to see -I would agree, having ads on your hosting company's site seems to send out the wrong signals. Isn't this though what Office Live hosted domains and (I'm assuming) Google have lined up as free-everything offerings in the hosted space? I'm curious to see if hosters feel equally comfortable in defending their products using the same line when it comes to selling space to companies, who'd otherwise have their free site 'sponsored' by their competitors (based on the contents of their pages)? I heard a lot of providers talk about the oncoming entrance by Office Live and Google, but this makes me think hosters will have a good defense -strictly talking about the low-end shared offerings of course, above that any hoster should be able to compete.

Any thoughts?

regards,
Vincent Rais

I wouldn't ever buy hardware from an online vendor with banner ads all over their pages, I would assume that most other people approach this the same way (if the vendor needs to supliment their income with banner advertising [which produces very very very small revenues], chances are they're not a professional vendor, and thus somebody I dont need to deal with). Selling hosting, at least to me, is lumped into the same category.
I completely agree!

It says a lot about your income if you have ads on your BUSINESS website / forum.
Well said!

jmweb, I don't mean to sound condesending, but it looks like you're just trying to whore your post number up... those last two posts could have been VERY EASILY combined and you didn't really contribute anything with either.

I've seen a few hosting companys with google ads at the top/bottom of their support/community forums. These google ads obviously read the content of the website and are advertising other hosting companys too.

Is this not like shooting yourself in the foot? Oddly, these companys seem to be doing rather well also.. .

What's your thoughts on this? I'd have thought it gives the impression that all you want is the customers money?

Yes. It is basically shooting yourself in the foot.

But then again, look at some ISP's (http://wanadoo.co.uk, http://aol.co.uk etc.)
They are using ads, just not google ads, and im pretty sure they can afford to go on without the ads.

I think it depends on how much volume your site gets. But if it is simply a webhosting business, and not a community, you are shooting yourself in the foot for sure.

I do use google ads on my site, because I offer a community forum where regulars to my gameservers hang out, and also some gameserver statistic programs people browse.

The way look at it is if you are getting a somewhat large volume of traffic, and you do not have ads, you are losing out on whatever revenue it produces. So there is a tradeoff, but for 1000 views with google ads, I usually make just over a dollar. Sometimes it is higher, depeding on the day.

Dan

I agree that if it is a hosting company or some service where you *should* be making enough from clients and you have ads that are showing competitors, it does say something about your company.

Now if you were providing free hosting or it was a general forum (webmaster, etc), as pointed out before, ads may be appropriate.

I think it depends on the type of ads. If you are a web host and you have 1-2 ads about SSL certificates or internet merchant account, it is acceptable.

However, if it is dynamic ads like Google Adsense, it is a big problem.