September blogging advice wrap-up
- Testing some blogging advice, Part 1
- Testing some blogging advice, Part 2
- Testing some blogging advice, Part 3
Lastly I published a quick screen cast showing exactly how to put Part 1 into play.
Well the month is over and the results are in. Success or Fail? Watch the video to find out.
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Website updates, still getting organised
Yesterday I wrote a quick post about trying to get organised, but I forgot to mention one of the biggest, most time consuming, jobs that I was going to try and undertake…
Editing, tagging, and generally tidying up EVERY post I’ve written in the last 8 months!
So far it’s coming along reasonably well. I’ve cleaned up, tagged and re-categorised about 20 articles and I’ve also managed to do a quick redesign on the blog theme itself. Fingers crossed I’ll get most of this completed later this afternoon.
Blog Income May 2008
It’s been a while since I’ve posted an income report on this blog, and to be honest it was pretty well because it was earning next to zero dollars, but this past month I made some changes to this blog and well it’s proven to be quite successful.
So what did I do;
- removed all the Google Adsense code
- signed up with Commission Junction for affiliate sales
- signed up with Amazon for affiliate sales
- added in Google Custom Search
So why did these changes prove to be successful?
Let’s look at the first point. Google is pretty good at targeting the right type of ads to be displayed in your Adsense code blocks on your blog, but there are times where they either get it completely wrong or where the get it right but the advert payments are so low that it’s pointless having the advert. At one stage every advert was for dating websites and other random crap that had no reflection on what I was actually writing, so why on earth would anyone click on those ads and earn me money….
Adsense Adverts earned me $11.93 in May.
After I removed all the Adsense code I decided that I still wanted to have some advertising on my blog, but instead of random junk adverts I wanted things that actually reflected my blog topics, as well as this I wanted to actually advertise things that I used and therefore can recommend to people. I signed up on Commission Junction and got myself an affiliate account. With this I am able to specifically select advertising that is relevant to my blog, and in fact I decided that I only wanted to advertise companies that I dealt with in day to day life like Apple, Skype USA
, GoDaddy
, Moo, Calumet Photographic
, and Last Minute
. What a decision that turned out to be.
Commission Junction affiliate advertising earned me $97.00 in May, with an EPM of $32.51 and an EPC of $692.84.
I’ve actually had an Amazon Affiliate account for a while now but never really used it properly, this month I decided to use on of their widgets in my sidebar to see if it would get any use. It did. I had around 25 searches from it, and 2 purchases were made.
Amazon Affiliate advertising earned $1.57 this month.
For the last 2 weeks of May I installed Google’s Custom Search code into my menu bar, deleting the default WordPress one. This search bar allows people to search my article archive, as well as allowing Google to place targeted adverts in the search results, again this turned out to be a great change also.
Google Custom Search earned $10.05 with a CTR of 73.33% and an EPM of $670.19.
In total my blogging activities on this blog earned $120.55. That’s an increase of around $115 from April which is quite a substantial increase.
I’m not sure whether these numbers will continue to stay like this or whether they will increase of decrease, however I much prefer having the control over what adverts are shown on my blog and will definitely continue on with affiliate advertising as they are proving to be a lot more profitable than the low EPM adverts that Google Adsense was previously providing.
In conclusion, if you’re publishing a personal blog, or one that has a variety of topics, and Google Adsense isn’t earning well for you then maybe it’s time you investigate Commission Junction where YOU get to choose the advertiser and the products that you’re comfortable with.
Find me here