Adding Up AdSense Revenue
So, I’ve been playing with AdSense for a few months now. It seems I earn about $5.00 per month. June was a mere $4.80.
But Google gives me plenty of stats, and I have calculated that I could earn my current salary through AdSense if I can boost my page views to 642 million per day.
I think ratchet would melt under the strain of 7,500 hits per second.
Adam suggested that I could try boosting my CTR (click-through-ratio) . . . it greatly depends on where you put the ads, you see. Google have done research and the AdSense site has a nice graphic showing where ads are most likely to be clicked. I don’t want to be intrusive, and I don’t really have an ambition to live off my blog. (Sometimes people take me way too seriously.) But, I do need to tweak navigation, yet again.
As an aside: different ads yield different revenue on clicks. Google doesn’t give me the details as to which ad yields what revenue, but I suspect the more technical articles are the most profitable.
One thing I eschew is CLUTTER. So, the present incarnation of the web site has a few crucial links at the top. Then there’s a “stumblin’ around” bar on the side. Single posts link to next and previous, and to “related posts” which I think is just fun, and potentially useful, for some topics.
Unfortunately, that side bar doesn’t render in IE 5.5, and in Firefox, on some posts with custom backgrounds, it is placed underneath the content box so you can not see it. Another trick is that if you do read all the way through, you may have to scroll back up top to navigate. Maybe I need to put the “stumblin’ around” at the bottom, which is where I used to have the next / last / related thing.
Or, maybe I can put it top, bottom, and the side. A lot of the clutter found on other blogs has been consigned to the Links page, so I don’t feel so bad if I “clutter” my site with navigation. I could also maybe learn enough PHP so that I can tailor things a bit based on the amount of content in a post. Long posts should have some navigation at the bottom, short posts its probably fine with something up top or on the side . . .
I was also thinking to conduct a “reader survey” . . . I don’t talk about myself so much on my web site any more, so much as I talk about things that interest me. I really am, at this point, writing for others more than myself, I think. Well, I dig the practice. I enjoy writing. But . . . what to write about?
Anyway, some thinking out loud. Feel free to write me or post feedback here. I always love to hear from folks.
I probably should learn some PHP. Writing WordPress plugins would certainly drive traffic, from bloggers, and they like to link around . . .
Thanks,
-danny
