If you happen to have hit my website recently (instead of reading it thru an RSS Reader) you will notice some changes in the advertising on the site. When I first started with Google Adsense I just slapped the ads into the pages, not giving much thought towards placement. After reading up on the different optimization techniques (both on the Google Adsense site and even buying an eBook on the subject), I finally broke down and decided it was time to start utilizing the techniques. I moved all the ads that were on the right side to the left side, and then added advertising at the top of every page, and at the bottom of the single post pages. I also changed all the formatting to blend in with each page. I’m still waiting for more data (to get a more accurate average), but about 10+ days into the new design I’ve double the number of ad impressions (due to more ads), but I have about 5 times the number of clicks! I’m not earning 5 times as much, but at least this is a step in the right direction.
Besides Google Adsense, I am also now using Chitika for some of my ads. The cool thing about Chitika is that you can use it without the contextually-targeted ads (like found in Google Adsense), which means you can actually use Chitika and Google Adsense on the same page (Google does not allow you to place their ads with other ads if they both use contextually-targeted algorithms). The downside is that you have to come up with the keywords and then place them in the ad’s code, ahead of time. You can change the keywords as much as you would like, but you have to do all the work (like researching the keywords that will get ads relevant to your site). Because I’m just trying out Chitika, I have only put their ads on the main page and the music area of this site. I haven’t found a decent amount of keywords that I like, yet, but I’m still trying. I’m definitely not making the same money as from Adsense, but then again, these ads are buried on pages that are not hit as often as the others (which was the idea, try it on the lesser viewed pages and see how I like it before rolling it out everywhere). So far, it seems like I get a consitent price per click, which although lower then some of the Adsense clicks, Chitika seems to average higher then the Adsense price per click. It might just be the keywords I’m using, so I’m still going to reserve judgment.
What really got me motivated to pay attention to my ad income was this post by Steve Pavlina (which I found while reading Wesner Moise’s Successful Blogging post). Steve mentioned that in Jan. 2005 he had 36k page views and made $10 from ads. Because of Steve’s optimization efforts in Nov. 2005 Steve had 1.2 million page views and made $4700. I’m currently getting about twice as many page views as Steve did back in Jan (and making twice the money he did), and I don’t consider my blog much different then Steve’s blog, a blog focused on a specific group of topics. Once I saw that an “average” blogger could make decent money with just some conscious effort tweaking both content and ad selection/format, I knew that making money off what I already do for fun wasn’t really that ridiculous. My end goal is that by the time my oldest daugther starts college (in a year and a half) to bring in enough money from my site to pay for her college. Seeing what Steve has been able to do, with a lot of effort I just may be able to accomplish that goal. It would be nice to be able to pay for her college without having to take the money we saved for her school, and not have to borrow any money if she decides to go to a private university.
But, the problem is that I do not want to adversely affect my core readers, which are the Microsoft oriented developers. From the beginning I knew that I wanted a blog that I could split up my posts into major categories, so I could talk about whatever interested me, without forcing people that were only interested in certain segments of my posts to have to wade thru lots of “noise”. A good example is Robert Scoble. I know he reads my blog, but I also know that he is only interested in my technical posts. He could care less about my music posts, or the stuff I put on the catch all section, GrokThis (which is where this post was published). The readers of my tech posts give me all my Google juice, so I do not want to alienate them, which is why I’ll always have full RSS feeds with no ads. The people that accidentally find a page on my site thru a search site, well, they are different, and they are forced to “pay” for not reading my site on a regular basis thru a RSS Reader by being exposed to advertising. Hopefully, if I do my job right, they will see ads that interest them, and they will click thru, thus helping to support the site thru money (rather then thru loyal readership, aka subscriptions). That is how the publishing industry works. The magazine or newspaper advertisers want to know how many subscribers a publication has, not how many total copies are sold (which includes sales at newsstands). With websites the concept of subscriber is replaced with Google Ranking (or something similar), so having lots of bloggers reading my site and then linking back to it helps me sell advertising on my site.