[billydean]

Not really worth the time to read, same stuff that's been said before. Showing a user an ad while they're searching for something works amazingly well -- any other time it's a crap shoot.

For the foreseeable future I think the best way to advertise any web app or other online service is with a blog and as many helpful, informative, thought provoking posts as you can find the time to write. There are plenty of examples of successful companies that have used this model -- building a brand and a network simultaneously -- and there's no reason to think it's going anywhere.

[critic]

> There are plenty of examples of successful companies that have used this model

Do you mean they used their blog as the main marketing effort? I'd like to hear more about those.

It seems if the users are looking at your blog, they've found you already. Or perhaps those companies created thousands of other blogs that were only used for search engine optimization (linking back to their money blog)? That I can understand.

[brc]

You're assuming that a purchase is done the instant a company/person is found. What a blog does is build trust, familiarity and credibility in a particular field. So there's two scenarios : one is a reader becomes familiar with you and purchases a new offering (creating a channel and selling into it), the other is a reader finds your product, skips through some of your blog posts and decides to purchase based on the fact you appear to know what you are talking about. (creating credibility)

Of course this only works if your blog posts are related to your product offering.