Monetising a blog is one of those things that gets you really pumped up, only to leave you watching paint dry. Eye On Silicon has started to earn a small income – enough to pay for its domain registration. Though not much, as I continue to write and optimise the site, the income will surely grow.
So far, Eye On Silicon has returned $1.96 for time invested. That’s not even a minimum wage job! But somehow, earning $1.96 for writing something I’m passionate about provides more satisfaction than any nine-to-five job ever could.
Here’s what I’ve done so far to try and spur on the pennies.
- Advertisements only appear to visitors that arrive via a search engine. After coming up with the theory that search engine visitors are more likely to click ads than any other type of visitor, I researched my theory on the net. Sure enough, others had implemented this theory with great success – they found that their earnings were barely cut, and in fact some found that their earnings increased attributing this to a reduction in ‘smart pricing’.
- I’ve positioned my advertisements, one at the top of the page, one in the middle, and one at the bottom. All of these ads have received clicks, but the bottom ad has a very low CTR when compared to the top and middle. The top and middle ads have an almost identical CTR, but the top ad has earned the most – probably because the middle ad hasn’t been inserted in all posts!
- To insert an advertisement in the middle of a page, I used a plug in called Adsense. It was written by Phil Hord.
- I’ve adjusted the titles of my entries to what I think people will search for. I’ve also excluded the site’s name as I feel it isn’t relevant to most articles; ‘Eye On Silicon’ isn’t exactly an abundance of technical words.
- I’ve added text links from Infolinks. These aren’t earning much though, 47 cents so far!
That’s it so far!
My goal for this month is to bring this blog’s revenue to an average of a dollar per day.
Keep tuned for more!