It has been just over a month since I decided to try to optimize the advertising revenue for this site, and I’d have to say that overall it has been extremely successful. But, I know that I’m nowhere near being done (my goal is to have Steve Pavlina like growth for 2006). The optimization has three main parts:
- Create good content
- Find good advertising networks
- Ad Location and format
Without #1, items 2 and 3 don’t really mean much. To that end, I’ve been busy working on all sorts of new content. From more music reviews for the music blog, to more controversial topics on the GrokThis blog, to better quality technical information on the AllThingsTechie blog, all these things make a very big difference for this site’s stats. I try to post every single day to at least one of the blogs, and the entry’s length needs to be at least 2 paragraphs. For a guy like me, where writing isn’t my thing, this can be extremely hard. It takes me a long time to write two paragraphs, but, I’ve noticed that since I started blogging about 3 years ago, the quality has gone up, and the effort has decreased (but both still need lots of improvements). I have a very difficult time deciding what is worthy of a blog entry, and then I can re-write an entry multiple times to get the tone correct. I’m not entirely happy with the tone of some of the recent blog entries, and will try to improve that aspect of the site. Controversial topic may bring lots of readers, but I need to pick and choose where and when to publish those, since they do affect the overall tone of the site (and can become overbearing).
I usually keep tabs on my stats one a monthly basis, but since I started mid Dec. I’ll try to adjust everything for you. Jan. 2005 I had about 8,500 unique visitors and 135,000 page views. Oct. 2005 I was up to 12,000 unique visitors and 240,000 page views (Nov. was down a bit from there, and Dec. back up ). For Jan. 2006, I’m tracking towards about 15,000 unique visitors, and 265,000 page views, which would be my best month, ever (with TechEd and PDC months usually getting the best stats, due to conference traffic). So, the extra (and hopefully better) content has seemed to have a good affect on the stats.
As for good advertising networks, so far this has been limited to Google AdSense. I tried to get Chitka to work, but after a couple weeks on terrible results, I finally bailed on them. I loved the look and feel of Chitka’s ads, but the results just were not there, and with others having problems with them, I decided it was time to drop them. I also tried Yahoo’s Publisher Network, but dropped them after about a week. I replaced my Google Ads on the GrokThis blog with YPN ads, but from the start the ads selected for my site were absolutely terrible, and had little to do with my site. I even tried what I thought would be a cool feature the Google does have, Ad Targeting (where you give YPN a path, and choose the suggested Categories for that path, which YPN should use if their contextual engine can’t determine the content), but that didn’t seem to work. To make matters worse, the reports are only run daily, and the Ad Targeting changes take 24-72 hours to take effect. So in the end, YPN just isn’t there, yet. A few people suggested BlogAds.com but I do not think that this site is really ready for them yet.
Last, but certainly just as important as the first two items is the ad location and formats that you use. This is the easiest thing to play with, but is often over looked. I can’t tell you how may blog sites that I’ve been to and cringe at the formatting or location of the ads. The ads should blend into the layout of the site, and not draw attention to themselves. What, did I saw the ads shouldn’t draw attention to themselves? If the reader does not know it is an ad, there is a much better chance that they will read it, and hopefully, click thru. I’m not saying to deceive the reader, just make your content flow nicely into the ad. You would be surprised how quickly people learn to tune out blinking and flashing ads. On the other hand, if you just plain hide the ads on the right side of the page, or after all of the relevant information, then you might as well not even put ads on your page.
So what are the results (and that is the only thing that counts isn’t it)? Well, by making my ads blend into the page better, moving ads to better places, and adding some additional ads, the results are dramatic.
The total number of “impressions” (the number of ads displayed) doubled, but the click thru rate went up by about 400%, with the total money earned up by 300%. Not too shabby. From here on out, the majority of the increases should be directly related to the page views, but I’ll still tweak the ad location and format. Yes, the numbers sound great, but remember, the starting numbers averaged about 50 cents a day in revenue, so I still can’t go out and get a semi-dedicated server (at around $70 a month) and have the ad revenue pay for the hosting). I’m not anywhere near Steve Pavlina’s $100 a day in Google Ad Revenue, but that is my goal right now. I might never make it there with this blog, but I’m going all out and trying my best. The hardest part is trying not to alienate my tech readers with the growth of the other content. Thanks to the multi-blog style, I’m hoping that will be less of an issue, but I always go back and re-evaluate the site’s overall tone. There have been times recently where I’ve looked back at something and made the conscious effort to add content to make up for the tone of a previous entry.