Speed up blog by reducing advertisements

I published lot of advertisements on my blogs in order to make more money. The more the merrier. However, most of the advertisements are in JavaScript format. And JavaScript will slow down your blog because it block parallel downloads. Browser need to finish process it before continue to the next one. If that particular JavaScript ‘hang’ somehow, same apply to your blog. Therefore, I promised to myself to reduce advertisements on my blogs once I reached certain amount of revenue. I reached it and it’s time to delete those non-performing advertisements that slow down blog.

I tried Malaysia advertising companies like Advertlets, Admax Network, Innity Performance Network and Nuffnang. Only Nuffnang performs well compare to the others. However, Nuffnang has a serious slow loading issue on its ads. My blogs can’t even load when Nuffnang leaderboard ad on header ‘hang’. It needs to wait for several minutes until it is timed out then my blog can continue loading. Therefore, I removed both leaderboard and rectangle ad. Left only 1 skyscraper ad on sidebar. Why? My blog right sidebar is the second last component to be loaded (the last one is footer). So readers don’t have issue to read the article even when Nuffnang ads ‘hang’. Nuffnang ad will be gone from JayceOoi.com if it is still slow from loading. Besides, its revenue cannot catch up with JayceOoi.com traffic like Google AdSense and Vibrant. Does it worth to continue publish?

During lot of testing and optimizing blog with WebPagetest, Nuffnang ad is not the only one that slows down my blogs. ContextWeb ads slow down too. Therefore, lot of ContextWeb ads had been axed too. I published 7 ContextWeb ads in 1 page last time (yes, I know that’s a lot. What to do? I want more money. 😛 ). And reduced to 3 main types of ads (rectangle, leaderboard and skyscraper) now. Will further reduce it if ContextWeb revenue does not meet my target (now still don’t). Cut cut cut…

Reduce advertisements on blog == decrease in revenue. But I am willing to take it as readers like you and me don’t like to wait for long for 1 page to load, right? By removing those non-performing ads, it might increase other ad companies’ revenue due to faster loading time. Why? Vibrant In-Text Ads will only be loaded after everything is loaded (Ad script at footer). If Nuffnang ads ‘hang’, Vibrant ads will not be able to see the day light anymore. Do you get the point?

Is your blog filled with lot of advertisements? If yes, it’s time for your blog to keep fit. 😉