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?
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:
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!
Something that has bothered me for a long time is this obsession with knowing who is clicking the advertisements. And when I say who, I am speaking stereotypically. Are clickers in their 20s, 30s, 40s? Male or female? Is there a super demographic that separates clickers from drifters?
The theory is that every age range has its own CTR – if surfers over the age of 50 don’t click ads, why bother showing them? They’re just dragging the overall CTR down, and as evidence suggests this could incur smart pricing. Not to mention it’s a waste of space, I could put some real content in place of the ad – it’s not all about dimes and dollars you know.
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:
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:
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.
It’s a rather simple concept – but adding pictures to your blog makes it all the more interesting to read. Finding a good picture can sum up your entire post, encouraging visitors to read on.
The picture of the light bulb to the right is an example of bad illustration. I used it because I consider this a “good idea”, but it doesn’t really sum up the idea at all. What would be more appropriate? Maybe someone painting a picture of a lightbulb – evidently, finding the right picture could take some time.
The point is though, that to make your blog more interesting and entertaining to your visitors, you should definitely use illustration to improve the visitor experience.
Use Google Image Search to find appropriate images, just beware of copyright!
Update 0.1.2 for PostLove has been released. There was a bug in the plugin activation that prevented the PostLove statistics table from being automatically created.
You can download PostLove here.
It’s official, PostLove has been accepted by WordPress.org. The official URL is: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/postlove/
I’m very excited to see people download it! I feel like a little geek.
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…
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:
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!
