You may have noticed ads on this blog. They are Google ads, served through AdSense, and they are there on purpose. We are not going to pretend otherwise or bury them behind a cookie banner and hope nobody asks.
So here is the honest version: why we run them, what they actually earn, what they cost us, and how you can decide whether the same move makes sense on your website.
The Short Answer
- The blog pays for itself. Hosting, writing time, and photography are real costs. Ad revenue offsets part of them.
- It keeps the content free and gate-free. No email wall, no "download the guide" trade, no signup to read a how-to.
- We are testing what we sell. We advise clients on monetization and traffic strategy. We run it on our own site first so the advice comes from data, not theory.
- It proves the traffic is real. Ad reporting is an independent measure of whether anyone actually reads what we publish.
Reason One: A Blog Is Not Free to Run
Every post here takes real hours. Research, writing, editing, photos, internal linking, technical setup so search engines can read it properly. That is time that could have been billed to a client instead.
Most small businesses quietly abandon their blog for exactly this reason. It costs money and the return is invisible for months. Ad revenue does not make a blog profitable on its own, but it turns a pure cost centre into something that partially funds itself. That changes how long you are willing to keep publishing, and consistency is the entire game in content.
Reason Two: It Keeps Everything Free to Read
The usual way to "monetize" a business blog is to hide the useful half behind a form. You want the checklist, you hand over your email, you get five sales emails you did not ask for.
We would rather you just read the thing. Ads let us keep every post open, ungated, and free, including the ones that tell you how to do the work yourself without hiring us. If a reader takes our guide and fixes their own Google Business Profile, good. That is still a person who now knows who we are.
Reason Three: We Test What We Recommend
We tell clients things like "your content should earn its keep" and "traffic without a business model is a hobby." It would be a bit rich to say that while running a blog that has never been asked to earn a dollar.
Running AdSense on our own site means we know the unglamorous parts firsthand: how much a page view is actually worth in Canada, how ad placement affects page speed scores, which layouts annoy readers, how long approval takes, what triggers policy issues. We do the same thing with our Etsy shop and our own website builds. Practice before advice.
Reason Four: Independent Proof That People Read This
Anyone can claim their content performs. Ad impression data is a separate, third-party record of how many humans landed on a page and how long they stuck around. It tells us which topics genuinely pull search traffic in the Okanagan and which ones we should stop writing.
That feedback loop shapes what we publish next, and it is far more useful than vanity metrics from a social platform.
The Honest Trade-Offs
Display ads are not free money. Here is the other side of the ledger:
- Revenue is small at small scale. A local blog with modest traffic earns coffee money, not payroll. Anyone promising otherwise is selling something.
- Ads cost page speed. Every ad script adds weight. We limit placements and keep them out of the reading flow for this reason.
- You do not control what appears. Category blocking helps, but you are renting space to a network.
- Too many ads cost trust. A page smothered in ad units reads as low quality, and search engines increasingly treat it that way too.
Our rule is simple: ads sit around the content, never inside the middle of an explanation, and never in a spot that pushes a call to action off the screen.
Should You Put Ads on Your Business Website?
For most small businesses, the answer is no, and it is worth being clear about why.
Ads usually do not belong on a service business website. If your site's job is to turn visitors into booked calls, a competitor's ad in your sidebar is a leak, not a revenue stream. One booked client is worth more than a year of display revenue.
Ads can make sense on a high-traffic content section. A blog, a resource library, a recipe archive, a local guide. Somewhere people arrive from search with no intent to buy from you today.
A rough test: if a page's visitors are likely to become customers, keep it clean and focus on conversion. If a page's visitors are there purely for information, ad revenue is fair game. Our service pages carry no ads. Our blog does. That split is deliberate.
What We Would Fix Before Adding Ads
If you are thinking about monetizing your traffic, do these first. They are worth far more:
- Make sure you can be found. A complete Google Business Profile and proper local search setup beats ad revenue by an order of magnitude for a local business.
- Make the site convert. Clear offer, obvious contact path, fast load. Traffic you already have is the cheapest traffic there is.
- Publish something worth reading. Ads on a thin site earn nothing and signal low quality.
- Own your platform. Domain, hosting, and analytics in your business's name, so the audience you build is yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does BoostBC have Google ads on its blog?
To offset the real cost of researching, writing, and photographing posts so the content can stay completely free and ungated, and so we can test monetization and traffic strategy on our own site before recommending it to clients.
Do ads on a blog hurt SEO?
Ads themselves do not hurt rankings, but excessive ads do. Heavy ad scripts slow page load, and layouts that push content below stacks of ad units are treated as poor page experience. A small number of well-placed units alongside genuinely useful content is fine.
How much money does Google AdSense make for a small business blog?
At local small-business traffic levels, display advertising typically generates a modest supplementary amount, not a meaningful income stream. It is best treated as a way to partly offset content costs rather than as a revenue plan.
Should a small business put ads on its own website?
Generally no on pages designed to convert visitors into customers, such as service and contact pages, because ads distract from a far more valuable action. Ads are more appropriate on informational content like a blog or resource library where readers arrive from search without buying intent.
Is it unprofessional to run ads on a company blog?
Not if the ads are limited, kept out of the reading flow, and the reason is transparent. What reads as unprofessional is a page where ads outnumber the content or interrupt it mid-sentence.
What is the alternative to putting ads on a business blog?
Using the blog purely for lead generation: publishing content that answers customer questions and directing readers toward a consultation, quote, or signup instead of an ad network. Many businesses do both, splitting ad-supported informational pages from ad-free conversion pages.
The Point
Ads on this blog are a small, deliberate decision that keeps the content free and honest about its own economics. Nothing more mysterious than that.
If you are weighing up how your own website should earn its keep, whether that is ad revenue, better local search visibility, or simply a site that converts the visitors it already gets, book a free 15 minute Coffee and Clarity Fit Check. We will tell you straight which one is worth your time. No obligation, no follow-up spam.
Related reading: get a free website audit or see how Build and Boost pricing works.
