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.
Ch ch ch changes!
As of today you’ll find a number of changes happening here at Mathew Packer dot com.
The first thing you’ll notice is that I’m working on a new theme, and call me insane but I’m going to be working on it live! No one in their right mind would work on their website live while it was still getting hits, and normally I wouldn’t as I wouldn’t want to negatively effect the advertising click potential of the site, however I’m willing to work on it this was as I don’t care about the advertising clicks on here as I’m ditching the advertising!
So as you just read the second big change is getting rid of the advertising on this website. As of about 2 weeks ago my subscriber count has risen from 20 people per day up to 75 per day, this is a pretty huge increase but my click rate on the advertisements has not risen at all. This has lead me to the conclusion that people actually enjoy what I write enough to actually subscribe to the RSS so I figure I would do everyone a favour and serve the site sans advertising.
Over the Christmas period last year I was all about ‘making money online’. Pretty well every post was about some form of revenue generation and blah blah blah, it’s all a bunch of ‘me too’ content that was being said by every second blogger out there. Looking back now I can clearly see that I was just jumping aboard the copycat express with everyone other sucker out there.
A month or so ago I started supplementing my MMO articles with real life articles, the couple of recipes I’ve posted bring in more traffic than any other ‘insert big affiliate marketing website name here’ article that I was writing as has the Lite n Easy Diet progress articles that I’ve written. This is the direction I now want to take my blog in.
From here on out I’ll be writing various posts on things that are happening in my life, around home, around work, etc. I’ve got plenty going on with all the happenings at I’m With The Band, launching the new targeted pain relief device Pain Gone, getting my ‘how to start a business’ website together at A Business Is Born, the medical news website that I’m helping work out with Medical News, Stat! , and I’ve even had a few emails from people in the last week asking me if I could develop blog themes for their websites as they saw me advertising myself as Freelance Matt.
All these changes are effective immediately! As soon as I hit the ‘Publish’ button I’ll get started on the theme changes, it’s going to look a little different around here sometime in the next minute or so..
Oh and for those of you who are still interested in Making Money Online, and Making Money Blogging, I’ll still publish the odd article about how I’m doing this as I’m concentrating my advertising and what not on the other websites I own, I may even still publish income reports……
Cheers, Matt
Income Report - February 2008
Time flies! Hard to believe that February has ended and that summer, in Australia at least, is over. Where has all the time gone?
This month has been pretty well a write-off in terms of this website. It’s almost been in a constant state of flux with the design changing dramatically as well as dropping a couple of advertising channels and completely changing the focus of how I monetize this website.
You’ll notice that I’ve dropped Bidvertiser and TTZ Media, basically they were earning nothing for me on this website so I dropped them from the adverts being served and instead have just kept the Bidvertiser referral button as I do have a couple of referrals and they’re basically the only income generators for me on Bidvertiser.
The other big change you’ll notice is that now I’m selling my advertising space through AdToll, and if you’re looking to place some advertisements on this blog I suggest you do so now while it’s so cheap! $0.40 for a 125px button, you cant beat that.
Voice 2 Page, more commonly know as Pay Per Play, went live this month. They had a lot of teething problems, in fact I still think they are having the odd issue with people gaming the system, but have started serving the odd audio advertisement to this website. Apparently they’re only serving a small number of websites at this stage, calling it a ‘controlled release’ but hopefully this website will start to receive a few more adverts this month.
This month I’ve also seen an increase in traffic, page views and even RSS subscribers. This is a big success for me as my subscriber level sat quite low for months and months and to increase around 400% in one month is huge, obviously I’m writing content that people are wanting to read.
Here’s the raw numbers as I didn’t get a chance to do the graphs before we jumped in the car this morning!
- Adsense - $8.88
- Bidvertiser - $0.05
- TTZ Media - $0.60
- Voice 2 Page - $0.33
- AdToll - $0.25
Total earnings from advertising - $10.20
Bit of a drop from last month’s income, however considering all the changes around here I’m not suprised.
Anyway, I’ll add the pretty graphs in as soon as I get back from the road trip as I know they’re the only reason you really read this report..hahaha
Cheers, Matt
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