Remove hyperlinks

If you remove hyperlinks, you remove options. By removing options, you put more focus on the ads. When search traffic arrives at your blog, they’re looking for something – an advertisement can be a valuable resource, for the split second they spend scanning, making that advertisement one of very few options increases the chance of a click significantly.

Don’t use text link services such as Infolinks

Services such as Infolinks browse the page and underline keywords. When the cursor is moved over a keyword, a small pop-up appears with an advertisement. There can be as many as 20 of these on a page – if you’re not earning much from the clicks, remove the links to earn more from AdSense.

Space out your layout

By spacing out your layout, you push options further apart. Things stand out more, and less appears ‘above the fold’. You can manipulate this so that the few options appearing above the fold include Google AdSense.

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:

1. “PEOPLE WON’T CLICK MY ADS BECAUSE THEY KNOW IT EARNS ME MONEY!”
   Ok, perhaps this one is true for some really stubborn asses out there. But for the majority of the internet population, clicking an ad has nothing to do with you – it is all about what they want. If there was an ad with ‘CLAIM YOUR $1000 HERE’, chances are people would click it out of curiousity. On the same principal but with less extremity, if an advertisement has what the reader wants – the reader might click.
2. “ADVERTISEMENTS MAKE MY BLOG LOOK UGLY!”
   Yes, they do – if you’re entering your blog as an art piece. Otherwise, they are a part of life that people generally accept. If people really don’t want to see them, there are tools they can use to block them.
3. “THE ONLY WAY TO GET CLICKS ON ADS IS TO MAKE MY CONTENT USELESS!”
   Yes, it’ll get you clicks. But no, it’s not the only way. Advertisement should compliment your content, they shouldn’t be your content.

With that said and done, positioning your advertisements strategically is easy. Here’s a list of good positions for ads:

1. At the very top of the page, right beneath the browser’s toolbars. If a visitor plans on leaving your site, there’s a good chance they’ll come across the ad as a last glance.
2. Placing a floating square advertisement inside your content is widely accepted as a good earner. When people start reading, the advertisement is visible as they scroll down the page and is in the perfect location in regards to what they’re focusing on – your content!
3. An advertisement at the very end of your post gives the reader an opportunity to click while deciding what they’re going to do next.
4. A skyscraper on the side menu is visible as a reader scrolls your content.
5. A link unit above your content, but below the header works well.
6. Try to place link units wherever the reader’s focus will go.

Following on from point 6: Eyetrack III. See what readers see when they look at your blog. Understanding a reader’s movements can help you catch them at the right time.

Tune in tomorrow for some more tips.

But from a more technical standpoint, what does this mean for publishers, advertisers and consumers?

The Cons

1. Google will hold more information about you. This is a con, if you care about it or believe that Google is aspiring to build an evil empire. Despite this, the information probably won’t relate to you – and what I mean by relate is Google won’t be able to identify you individually; you are just a cookie to them. I am rating this a con overall because it rarely translate into positive publicity when it comes to Google and privacy.
2. If Google is monitoring for interests, what happens to niche products? It’s possible that interest based advertising could overcomplicate advertising on an overall basis.
3. Interest based advertising, if not implemented well, could actually lower CTR by undermining advertisements that would relate well to the content of the page.
4. For publishers and advertisers, this generally means more money in their pocket.
5. For consumers, there could be privacy concerns.

The Pros

1. If interest based advertising is implemented well, it would likely increase CTR on large community websites where AdSense doesn’t usually perform so well.
2. Statistically knowing that someone is consistently visiting websites that are known for a negative stance on abortion could prevent advertisements such as those for the morning after pill, or birth control.
3. When you receive visitors via search traffic, and the visitor doesn’t find what they’re looking for because the page simply didn’t relate very well, the advertisement targeting could be consideribly more accurate resulting in a higher CTR.
4. By keeping a profile of a visitor to AdSense enriched websites, Google can profile which ads they are most likely to click – which ads perform well, and which don’t. Any statistics that help Google develop an advertising network that performs well, could be a benefit to everyone.
5. For publishers with blogs that aren’t very specific in their content and often display PSAs, interest based advertising could be a big plus.

What are your thoughts?

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:

• Is the user a member?
  An important characteristic – do I get more clicks from those who are part of the community? If they’re not part of the community, then I don’t have any data I can use to streamline my advertising efforts.
• Age range (13<20, 20<25, 25<30 etc.)
  Does anyone have predictions? Just from a few days of watching ad clicks, I can already see that age is an important factor.
• Is the user male or female?
  Will the males click, or will the females click? Is age and gender combined a factor in its own right?
• Is the user trusted by the system?
  The site has a trust system that requires new members engage in community activities before they earn a ‘trust relationship’. I wonder if newbies will be more likely to click ads.

Already, from just a few days of statistics, I can tell that certain age ranges mixed with certain genders have an abysmal CTR and account for barely any of the ad revenue the site rakes in. By removing the advertisements for these groups of people, I may be able to enhance the experience they receive when they interact with the site.

Alternatively, if it’s just a matter of the ads not appealing to these people – perhaps I can find a different ad provider just for them.

In the near future I hope to add other characteristics such as a community involvement rating, size of a member’s readership and possibly the average length of time they spend online in a day.

There’s lots of potential here. Stay tuned. I’ll have to check with Google first, but hopefully I can release some of my Analytics statistics.

I’d just like to let everyone know that my Analytics account successfully recorded its first clicks today.

Next step: Contact Google!

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:

<script type="text/javascript">
window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-#######-2";
</script>

I am lead to believe that the purpose of this code is to make the AdSense or Analytics code aware that this isn’t the first domain on the account, and given that I’m receiving impression reports but not click reports in Analytics, this is the only piece of code I can reasonably presume to be faulty.

I decided to write a test, and changed the code to this:

<script type="text/javascript">
window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-#######-2";
alert("result: "+window.google_analytics_uacct);
</script>

As you can see, after setting the variable I am displaying it in the browser. This test worked fine – the result was UA-#######-2 as would be expected.

I then tried separating the code, and placing it after some Google AdSense code.

<script type="text/javascript">
window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-#######-2";
</script>
**** GOOGLE ADSENSE CODE HERE ****
<script type="text/javascript">
alert("result: "+window.google_analytics_uacct);
</script>

The result? NULL. The code that AdSense or Analytics needs had disappeared, could this explain why my clicks aren’t being recorded? Any time after an external JavaScript is called, it seems to lose this variable. As a temporary solution (and test at this point) I’ve implemented the variable directly into the Google code so that it definitely receives the variable:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-################";
/* 300x250, created ######## */
google_ad_slot = "############";
google_ad_width = 300;
google_ad_height = 250;
window.google_analytics_uacct = "UA-#######-2";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

If I start getting click reports, I’ll be contacting Google to let them know. Wish me luck!

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.

I could have worked at Walmart and made that in an hour or two – but there’s something about passive income that is very attractive. Not having to work another day and instead doing what I feel like doing is the ultimate dream that I hope to one day live.

I have placed ads more prominently for those that come to the blog (but they aren’t present in the RSS feed), because I believe I should be paid for providing useful content. But just a few days ago, while browsing connectedinternet.co.uk, I encountered an ad that sits between pages. When I clicked on a page of interest, I was presented with an ad that would delay my reading for several seconds – and sadly, I won’t be reading connectedinternet.co.uk.

This experience leads me to believe that there is a fine compromise to be made with ads. Advertisements aren’t annoying if the content you’re viewing is useful – they might look ugly to someone with OCD, but connectedinternet.co.uk has an awkward mix of content and I find it hard to find the content that is of interest to me. The Google ads and side ads were not a problem, but having an ad interrupt my browsing for several seconds has put me off completely.

Maybe I’ll go back there if there’s something I recall reading there, but I certainly won’t be a regular reader anymore.

The path to financial freedom is a slow steady path where you must be wary of your own greed, and follow morals indefinitely that you must define at the very beginning to sustain a particular readership.

I have recently separated the posts into main categories, one of the categories is Gaming – but it’s empty at the moment. What do I intend to add? Old games that I enjoy, and perhaps some new games too. As I keep blogging, what I want to blog about is becoming more and more clear. When I started I thought I’d need several different domains, but everything I’m writing about has one thing in common – it all relates to computers.

With that said, I think the domain name covers it all pretty well.

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!

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.

1. 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’.
    
2. 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!
    
3. To insert an advertisement in the middle of a page, I used a plug in called Adsense. It was written by Phil Hord.
    
4. 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.
    
5. 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!

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.

2. Advertisements offer content that might be what the visitor is looking for.

Following on from my first point: when a visitor lands on your site from a search engine, they’re looking for something. What they’re looking for doesn’t matter – what matters is that they find it. If your content isn’t quite what they were looking for, advertisements might offer an appropriate alternative. It’s a win-win situation. Does it mean you lose a visitor? Probably. Suck it up – you win some, you lose some.

3. Sticking advertisements on the side isn’t necessarily worth its while.

So, you feel bad about placing ads? Don’t do it then! If you’re going to place ads, place them properly. Some people have debate with themselves whether or not it is morally acceptable to place ads in their blog – you need to choose which side of the line you’re willing to sit! An advertisement on the side of the page that nobody notices IS AN EYESORE. It blocks out other useful content such as recent posts and comments, not to mention those helpful RSS feeds. Sticking the ads inside the content that it actually relates to is a pretty smart idea, don’t you agree?

4. Advertisements may only be useful to visitors from search engines.

You may find that most of your AdSense clicks come from search engine referrals. You may need to test this theory. But if most of your revenue comes from search engine referrals, why bother showing ads to people that visit your blog on a regular basis? Rewarding these members by making the site cleaner and quicker to load will help your blog in the long run.

5. “Not every dollar makes cents”

As in, not every dollar makes sense. Sometimes we make the mistake of trading a dollar for a friend we didn’t know we had. Not every dollar you earn is always worth the sacrifices it takes to earn it.

And with that, I leave you. I don’t really want to have advertisements on this blog, but I intend to make it my livelihood – so, for the moment, this is my only reasonable option. Perhaps in the future, that may change.