Apr
14
Statistics say that returning visitors rarely click ads, but visitors from search engines love to click them. How can we use this knowledge to our advantage?
Apr
08
If a visitor to your blog doesn’t see something – will they click it? No! If you’re monetising your blog by selling advertising space, make sure the space is visible – it gives value to your visitors, and value to the advertisers bidding for space on your site.
Scared that people won’t click the ads if you put them in a visible spot? Don’t be. Here’s some myths I’d like to dispel:
Mar
22
Google recently announced interest-based advertising as a new feature for AdSense. They also announced that publishers would need to change their privacy policies – and anything that invokes a change to a privacy policy will be sure to get the critics out.
But from a more technical standpoint, what does this mean for publishers, advertisers and consumers?
Mar
19
Landed in the middle? Read my first post regarding what kind of persons clicks ads.
I’ve been spending some time building my user defined variables in Analytics. At first, I made the mistake of believing you could define multiple variables. The truth is you can only define one variable per unique visitor.
This means, that to record the wealth of statistics I am aiming for, I’ll need to merge them all into one string.
So far, I’m recording the following characteristics:
Mar
16
In my previous post, No clicks reported for AdSense in Google Analytics, I provided a fix for a bug in Google’s JavaScript that prevented clicks from being recorded on secondary accounts.
I’d just like to let everyone know that my Analytics account successfully recorded its first clicks today.
Next step: Contact Google!
Mar
13
When I first heard that Analytics could work with AdSense, my virtual computer nipples hardened in excitement! At last, I will know what my content is worth! More than a month later, I am still helplessly awaiting this knowledge. AdSense has been failing to record clicks on ads, so I don’t know which ads are making the money. Until now, I hope.
I did a few tests with the AdSense code to see if it was working properly. Eye On Silicon isn’t the first domain on my Analytics account, and so I have to add additional code to make the link work. The code looks like this, and appears at the beginning of the <BODY> tag on any page with ads:
Mar
12
When I started blogging, I wondered how long it’d be before I was earning billions of dollars. Let me tell you, I’ve still got some way to go.
Since I really started working on monetising the blog, I’ve earned the following:
- $3.74 from infolinks
- $6.47 from Google Adsense contextual ads
- $0.12 from Google Adsense search
That adds up to a whopping $10.33. That means I’ve paid for the domain, but what about everything else? The time I’ve put into this blog is ridiculous, the money I’d be spending on hosting if I wasn’t lucky enough to have a server in the first place would be ridiculous.
Jan
31
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This duck loves money. (I actually remember this episode!)
Are you ready for this, are you standing on the edge of your seat?
I need a break now…
Wait for it…
Almost there…
Keep reading…
AdSense earned me $2.65!
Yes, it’s sad. I had hoped to earn $5.00 by the end of this month, but it simply didn’t happen. Here’s why I think it didn’t happen:
- I didn’t dedicate as much time to my blog as I had intended. I had planned to write a post every other day, or at least every three days. I failed that intention – miserably.
- I believe I’ve been smart priced. My other website – bloopdiary.com – probably got me smart priced. It had such a low CTR, that I decided to remove it.
- I have only been displaying advertisements to search engine referrals. I’ve decided to change this. I want to eventually turn this blog into a major source of income, and to do that I have to bite the bullet on some ideas. Since then, I’ve been displaying more advertisements and have retained the same CTR.
- The site had some trouble in the middle of the month with nameservers, causing it to randomly vanish. But I’ve corrected this now.
Nonetheless, $2.65 is a reasonable figure. At this rate, I work out that each of my post’s is worth a dollar over the period of a year. It’s more than minimum wage, it just takes a long time to pay off… but assuming I was smart priced, each post could be worth more than a dollar. Oh boy, bring on February!
Jan
07
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.
Dec
22
Google AdSense is like driving in snow – just when you think you’ve got it, you realise you haven’t. Trying to nail the best positions to stick ads is a nightmare, but browsing the ‘net reveals many secrets about advertising that some bloggers just don’t take into consideration.
Here’s a bunch of theories for your consideration.
1. It isn’t about making another dollar, it’s about helping the visitor.
I know, it’s a hard concept to grasp for those bloggers constantly plastering keywords all over the page for a little extra keyword density – but advertisements should actually be helpful to the visitor. Given that you can’t force a user to click on an ad (within most agreements at least), the next best thing – depending on how you look at it – is to offer them something they would actually like to click on.
