Does no advertisng equal to a successful blog?

I was browsing through the "internets tubes" and noticed a few blogs that were real high on pagerank like 6+ mostly and something struck me about them, they had absolutely no form of advertising whatsoever - a stray paypal donate button doesn't count.

So I was thinking to myself is it easier to build a successful blog without advertising than with? Most people know already that the blogs that are submitted or tagged on popular social sites like digg, reddit, simpy, del.icio.us, squidoo blah blah blah...don't make it to the front page or popular section either because they have ads or simply because they are blogs.

This is mainly hypocritical Internet behavior as some of them do get tagged popular most notably blogs like techcrunch, mashable, readwriteweb, lifehacker, techeblog, problogger blah blah blah...which have a substantial amount of advertising on their blogs.

Now I've noticed some very popular blogs that do get tagged, dugg, have a high page rank/traffic or what have you and have absolutely no ads. The below order is not specific to any ranking system -

1. Photomatt.net - wordpress creator
2. Meyerweb.com - web standard consultant and CSS guru
3. Naill Kennedy.com - technorati, microsoft, amex are some of the companies he's worked for
4. Zeldman.com - Publisher of a list apart, designer, writer, stunt double (that's what he said)
5. Seth Godin - Bestselling author and entrepreneur etc...

I could go on an on but you get the picture what I'm talking about. These guys have huge traffic on their blogs and though some of them market the products they have built like books, software etc...they don't take any third party advertising namely google ads, yahoo or text/banner ads of any kind.

Back to my question now, Is it easier to build a successful blog without advertising than with? Well it depends what your in it for. Some people do it for the pure pleasure of doing so and most do it to make some sort of secondary income, for more and more people it already has become a primary source of income.

The bloggers that are doing it because they just want to are the ones that have achieved success in their day jobs and their careers and feel to just share the information that made them successful. Does that mean that if you place ads on your blog you're a bad blogger. Well no you aren't it just depends on the content that you create and write about.

After going through a sample of blogs, with and without advertising, that had a mix of high traffic, readership, quality of content and more factors it became very obvious that their was one main similarity.

Great Content.

So while advertising on blogs itself may be a deterrent to a few people it is not to most and does not end up being a factor in creating a successful blog.

Technorati Tags: advertising, successful blogs

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