I decided to try my hand at my own website, and I moved my WordPress blog to my own personal website hosted by Lunarpages. I have really liked the service so far, and everything has been pretty easy to setup.
The problem is that I was counting on the website paying for itself. I need at least $6 – $8 per month for it to pay the hosting fees charged by Lunar pages. I was reading articles like this that claim that AdSense can easily cover those costs. My thought was to create ads in a similar format to the GMail interface. They have small ads on the top and a few text ads on the right. That interface isn’t too intrusive and sometimes provides interesting ads.
Then, I read this article about Displaced Guy’s experiences. I like the tip about being active in the community and sharing the love. I have already found that to be true as far as building traffic on my WordPress blog. That is how I attribute the 200 – 300 per day traffic to my PSST0101 blog — just commenting on other’s blogs and sharing the love as far as information.
From reading this article, I am begining to learn that technical topics are not the best for making money. He mentioned the statistic of $2.14 per 1,000 visits. If that is the case, I am looking at needing about 4,000 visits per month. That would be about 133 visits a day. I don’t have more than 2 months of data yet, but I am currently looking at 1300 hits and $8 of revenue.
Then, I read an article from Chase Sagum that addressed the ad blindness of technical readers. That article suggested that Amazon ads tend to do better with technical readers. So, I might try that.
Veera Sundar writes another article about technical readers. I agree with his thoughts regarding placing ads only around the edges. I really hope I don’t have to place them in the posts because I want it to look professional. He also talks about good content and page rank. I need to do some research to see if I can learn what my page rank is. (I am going to try this plugin.) Reading a little further, I found a good tip about Adsense Section Targeting.
Next, I stumbled upon an interesting series of discussions relating to Guy Kawasaki, first at Blog Republic. That article mentions switching from a technical topic, but I want to blog about what I enjoy. It doesn’t make sense for me to change my topic! Chris Anderson’s article appears to be one of the big articles in these discussions, and here is the original post that started it all.
Writing for your wealth discusses more about technical readers. Again, the suggestion is to switch topics, but kind of ruins the fun (which is important to me). The article does point out the AdWords Keyword Tool, which might be a little helpful.
The I’d Rather Be Writing seemed to experience the same thing that I am seeing. After only a month, he only earned $8.53. I thought it was interesting that mentioned Guy Kawasaki making more money off his blog. Anyway, his take on the solution was to switch from AdSense. I did click through to John Chow, and he did have some encouraging advice: “don’t quit”.
Finally, since some of the articles suggested trying something other than AdSense, this article was interesting. The Kontera option looks like it might be a good option.
So, this is a lot of rambling and not many answers here. Can anyone add anything in the comments? Any suggestions? Anyone else had success with technical readers?
Resources
- Easy monetizing of your blog with AdSense
- DisplacedGuy – Adsense Stats & Ugly Secrets of Making Money Online Series Part 3
- ChaseSagum: When to Use Amazon Affiliate Ads Instead of AdSense
- Veera Sundar: Adsense and my Blog
- Blog Republic: Don’t Be An Adsense Idiot Like Guy Kawasaki
- Writing for Wealth: How Reader Demographics Affect Earnings with Adsense, Chitika, and Other Pay-Per-Click Programs
- I’d Rather Be Writing: Integrating Google Adsense into this Blog
- MakeUseOf.com: 3 Contextual Ad Alternatives To Adsense
2 Comments
Rich (aka DisplacedGuy) · March 29, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Hi Stephen,
First of all thank you very much for the mention and linkback to my blog. This is proof, in fact that being active in the community builds traffic. I found your site because this page linked to my article. You are doing a good job learning the ins-and-outs of making money blogging so don’t get frustrated. Each month you will know more and more and you can’t fast forward to success without going through learning process. For example, I have been learning better ways to maximize adsense revenue on my techical blog while at the same time traffic is growing so it is a double positive. The most exciting thing is that I just started my third (for profit) website and in the first two weeks I am on track to blow away all records made on the first sites. Your experience is valuable. In two weeks on my new site I’ve got adsense click through rates between 2-3% which isn’t too bad. The highest I’ve gotten with my tech blog is just over 1%. The new site is already profitable with revenue that pays all hosting costs and looking very good. Part of this is that I’ve learned to pick better niches, part is that I’ve learned what type articles pay, part is that I’ve learned which ad types work, and where to place them. You get the idea. I didn’t really want to publicize the site I’m talking about but Im going to share it with you, I’ve got less than a days worth of effort into this site, wrote a few articles, used my favorite word-press plug-ins and just wrote a silverlight application last night that Im anxious to see how it does. I’m seeing CTR around 3% or better in the second week and revenues of $1-2 daily, it took me several months before I saw adsense revenue on a consistent basis like this. Email me, we can help each other. Another tip that you probably shouldn’t spread around too much… people like reading about your real world experiences; and when you show poor adsense statistics in a sincerely “oh jeez this is hard but i’m not complaining and eventually I’ll learn this” type attitude you will get a noticeable bump in what I like to call, “sympathy” clicks. I hope that these are clicks the user has an interest in so I don’t get banned but I can prove that the more articles you share of lackluster details, the more “sympathy” clicks you will gain. It isn’t anything huge, but has brought displacedguy.com from .5% CTR to almost 1% CTR over six month period. You didn’t hear this from me. And keep on staying active in the community. I you notice *one* ad click on the same day as a comment from a friend you might want to remember that friend and show some love back but make it sincere love, click through somthing pertinient to you and give the advertiser a valid shot at getting your business or you will be doing your friend harm.
Take care,
Rich
Rich (aka DisplacedGuy) · March 29, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Hi Stephen,
Well after all that babble I never told you the name of my newest website, the one that is ramping up traffic faster in week two than month two of my other sites. And I’ve put in a fraction of the work. This one is profitable already, so if I duplicate this process a couple dozen times over the next year I’ll have a real internet marketing business generating enough revenue to make a difference in my life; and potentially enough a few more years down the road to consider blogging for a living as a primary source of income. Six months ago I thought it was too hard, but now I’m seeing that the difference between success and failure is a very fine line so stick to it and outlast the crowd. You are doing a good job.
My new site is http://www.subotex.com/ it’s a knock-off of a Suboxone site (mis-spelling)
Sincerely,
Rich (aka DisplacedGuy.com)