Monetization lessons I’ve learned the hard way
Monetization lessons I’ve learned the hard way
When I first started this blog I figured monetization was as simple as throwing a few ads up and getting a ton of traffic to the site. I was blissfully ignorant of some realities. I’d like to share of few of the things I’ve learned along the way.
- Quality of traffic matters not quanity
- Instead of worry about getting 3,000 visitors per day using methods like Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit and the others I now worry about getting a few hundred focused visitors who are here to read something very specific.
- Use meaningful descriptions
- Use proper tags
- Categorize properly
- Concentrate on focusing specific traffic to specific articles
- Don’t generate traffic just for the sake of traffic
- Content might be king, but design is his wife
- We all know that the power behind the throne is the wife. It’s a balancing act, but all things being equal I’ve learned that a well designed site will help carry you through subpar content.
- A simple clean layout works best
- You can’t beat black and white
- Traditional blue links get clicked on
- For more clicks reign in your banners and put them in a designated area
- Target your ads
- This is probably the simplest change I’ve made but it has had the greatest impact on my click thru rate. This was actually a 3 part change.
- I organized my articles into 10 categories. Before I had over 20
- I’ve designed an ad campaign for each of the categories in adsense
- I’ve further divided my ad campaigns based on the content of the article
- I make use of Adsense Manager to organize and distribute both adsense and other ads within my content
- I stopped putting ads in the content on the home page altogether and focused on the content
- I’ve become more flexible in making changes to ads depending on what is performing instead of sitting on something hoping it will suddenly convert
- Graphics can hurt as much as they can help
- I found the click thru rates on my articles without any additional content related graphics far exceeds those with. I’m not quite sure why and I don’t know if it might be an anomaly but for the moment I’ll use them very sparingly.
- Listen to your readers
- When I made my latest changes to this blog’s theme I asked for reader feedback and was given some great advise. I haven’t implemented everything and some of it I won’t but for the most part my readers brought to my attention several issues I hadn’t even considered. For example the importance of a header/logo and the column widths.
Have you learned some lessons about monetization the hardway? What have they been?
How successful have you been with blog monetization? If you feel like sharing, I’m sure the figures would be inspiring.
Probably none of our business, but most blogs like ours are willing to break down the numbers.
Jeremy – Sure I’ll round them up in the next few hours as I have time and post them. I’ll tell you this it has gotten much better since I made the changes mentioned above and only seems to be improving.
The hard way is always the best…
look like you change your header 
I’m working too on an new design for my main website …
Blackysky – No, the smart way is always the best. The hard way is just… hard.
When you make mistakes and you can recognized them; you grow much faster after that. How do you know the smartest move when you have zero knowledge about a subject? You can study as much as you want but if you don’t live it you still don’t know anything. That’s why I said the hardest way is some time the best way.
I am relatively new to blogging. You hav emade some very interesting points in this post. Some of which I have not even taken into consideration and which I probably need to think about a bit more if I want my blogging experience to become better.
Blackysky – Gotcha
Gerri – I don’t think my approach is a one size fits all methods. I’m just trying as I go, noting what seems to work and what doesn’t.
I’ll have to remember these. I’m not doing well with monetization, so maybe I’ll try a few of these.
Jenny – When you first start out it is really a lot of hit or miss. Good luck!