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 quantity

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?