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.

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.

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!