Written on April 29th, 2005 at 01:04 pm by Darren Rowse

Yahoo! testing Dynamic Image Ads

Advertising 2 comments

In a big week of changes to contextual advertising Jen posts that Yahoo! are now adding dynamic image ads to their contextual advertising line (original source of information). Things are certainly hotting up in terms of competition between Yahoo and Google in advertising - hopefully publishers will be the winners).

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Written on April 29th, 2005 at 02:04 am by Darren Rowse

Adsense Workshop - Gizmodo

Adsense 3 comments

A couple of days ago I looked at How the Most Highly Visited Blogs Earn Money and then yesterday I reflected upon why only 8 of the 30 I analysed use Adsense as an income stream.

Over the next few days I’m going to take a quick look at some of the 8 highly visited blogs that do use Adsense and reflect upon what I think they do well and how I’d improve their approach.

You see as I analyzed the use of Adsense in these popular blogs I have to say I felt quite uninspired by the strategies employed - perhaps they could do with a little consulting to boost their earnings.

I hope the owners of these sites don’t take offense by this series of posts - that isn’t my intention - rather I’m hoping we all learn a thing or two about Adsense Optimization - and perhaps I say something that might help improve their earnings. Lets start with Gizmodo.

Of the 8 blogs, this is the one that I suspect has the highest potential for earnings from Adsense. I say this for a copule of reasons:

• it has the very high traffic levels
• its technological/consumer electronics topic should attract more valuable ads than the others whose topic is largely politics (see my last post for more reflections on this).

As you’ll see from the adjoining screen capture (click to enlarge) - Gizmodo has a 468 x 60 adsense ad directly underneath the content of posts on each of its individual archive pages (highlighted in red in the screen capture).

What I like - The positioning of this ad at the end of a post is good. Readers come to the end of reading a post and they are at the stage of asking ‘what do I do now?’

Positioning an advertisement here gives readers an potential action to take (especially if the ads are relevant) - ‘Click’ (and a few cents go into your Adsense account.

Whilst not the best position possible in my experience - its one of the better ones.

What they could improve - There are numerous things I’d suggest they do with these ads that I would guarantee would improve Gizmodo’s Adsense earnings. Let me mention a few of them (I won’t go into them all) :

• Remove the Borders - One of the simplest strategies that they could take here would be to remove the grey border around this ad block. This can be achieved by making the border white (the same as the page and ad’s background color). It is generally accepted by Adsense experts that this increases Click Through Rate in most cases as it blends the ads with the rest of the site. It also creates ‘white space’ around the ad which is proven by studies to draw attention to it.
• Fix Alignment Issues - It could be just that I’m viewing their page on a Mac, but the ad seems to disappear under the skyscraper ad to its right (I see this on three different browsers). Whilst this might not drastically improve the ad’s performance it would look more professional and less cluttered - again making a little ‘white space’.
• Blend Colors - Most publishers these days tend to go for a blend approach rather than a ’stand out’ approach. There is always debate over whether contrasting colors draw attention or not - but my approach is always to attempt to match the ad’s title color with other links on the blog. Currently their title is Brown which doesn’t really match anything else I see on the blog except their ‘visited URL’s’ color (although that is a lighter brown).
• More Ads - My experience with technology blogs is that there is rarely a shortage of ads in Google’s supply. For this reason I’d recommend they add a second and even a third ad block to their pages. Of course they may simply not have enough room for a second or third ad block (if other ads earn them more they will of course take priority) but if we’re talking purely about increasing Adsense earnings this would be an obvious strategy.
• Ad Size - Whilst the 468 x 60 ad in this position is a reasonable choice - another approach would be to choose one of the rectangle/square ads which tend to be pretty profitable. These ads do best when they are inset into the content with content aligned around it.

These are the first five things that come to mind as I look over Gizmodo with relation to Adsense. Keep in mind that I’m not privy to the ins and outs of the site’s design or the reasons for their choices. There are other consideration that I’ve not spoken about here, including the ethics of placing ads inside content (or even blending it with content) which could explain their current approach.

What would you suggest Gizmodo do to improve their Adsense earnings. Share your thoughts in comments.

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Written on April 29th, 2005 at 12:04 am by Darren Rowse

How Frequently Should You Post?

Pro Blogging News 11 comments

There is a great podcast over at View from the Isle - The Inaugral Business Blog Roundtable - on the topic of ‘how frequently should you post’ on your blog.

It think its a great idea for a Pocast - in a sense its taking the idea of niche blogging (one theme - Business Blogs) and breaking it down into niche topics (posting frequency) and really fleshing it out with some quality business bloggers and consultants.

This week’s participants are Tris Hussey, Toby Bloomberg, Stephan Spencer, Wayne Hurlbert and Paul Chaney - all of whom would be worth talking to one on one - but whom when you put their heads together spark some interesting conversation.

Here are a few paraphrased comments that stuck out to me as I listened in:

• Tris Hussey - has an editorial calendar to set targets/schedult of what he’s posting on which blog each day
• Wayne Hurlbert - recommends 3 posts per week as a starting schedule and once a rhythm is established up it to 4 or 5 times per week
• Stephan Spencer - too many posts can overwhelm your reader and create an unfocussed blog
• Toby Bloomberg - encourages clients to break up the length of the posts that they are doing - a short post one day, longer one the next
• Paul Chaney - How frequently do you want people to visit your blog? If its once a week - post once per week - if its every day post every day.
• Wayne Hurlbert - posts once per day but experimented with more than that and found his traffic doubled over night
• Stephan Spencer - series of posts are good but don’t break them up into too many short pieces because the Search Engines need more than a paragraph to index it properly (they decided that 250 or so is a good length for a post).

I’m sure there is more wisdom in it than that - but I’m only three quarters of the way through it and its time for bed! Will check out the rest later on. Well done Tris - great podcast - looking forward to more like this.

So what’s the answer? How often is often enough for posting on your blog?

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Written on April 28th, 2005 at 02:04 pm by Darren Rowse

Text Link Pricing Criteria

Advertising 1 comment

Search Engine Journal has a good post on how to work out how much to charge for text ads on your blog. It comes at a perfect time for me as I’ve had a number of emails recently from webmasters asking how much I charge for links. The article suggests the following criteria might be helfpul to keep in mind as you consider how much to charge:

1. PageRank of Site (poor measurement, but probably still worthwhile)
2. PageRank of Page
3. Site Position in Top 50 Results for Primary Term (TLD)
4. Page Position in Top 50 Results for Primary Term (Page specific)
5. Number of External Links on Page
6. Site Flavor from Google (shows theme)
7. Date of Cached Snapshot of Page (shows spidering frequency)
8. Primary Topic of Page Extracted via Yahoo! API (Then conduct C-Index with target term)
9. Alexa Rank (again, poor measurement, but probably worthwhile)
10. External Links to Site (Using Yahoo! LinkDomain Search)
11. External Links to Page (Using Yahoo! Link Search)
12. Internal Links to Page vs. # of Internal Pages
13. Type of Link (customizable text, directory listing, banner/image, etc.)
14. Location of Link (content section, advertising section, navigation area, footer, etc.)

Read more at Text Link Pricing Criteria

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Written on April 28th, 2005 at 01:04 pm by Darren Rowse

Where’s the Content?

Blog Design 7 comments

Sometimes its easy to get so carried away with earning money on your blog that your content can become secondary to everything else.

I’ve had (and probably fallen for) this kind of temptation myself - but think its probably the blog and your readers who suffer most for it.

I was just surfing by this blog and was struck by the layout there (screen capture above - click to enlarge).

The screen capture is of an individual archive page that I surfed into from an RSS feed. When I got to the actual site I found myself asking ‘where’s the content?’ (it reminded me of one of those ‘Where’s Wally/Waldo books’). Perhaps its just my screen size (15 inch) but as you’ll see from my screen capture the content’s heading was the only part of the content to show above the fold - the rest of the page was almost completely affiliate links (hidden as recommended reading), cross promotion to other parts of the network and ads.

Once again - I too feel the temptation to smother some of my blogs in ads and on some of them could be accused of similar tactics - but I wonder what it does for building a loyal repeat readership? To be honest coming to a page like this doesn’t inspire me to come back - not because of the content (they often have good stuff there) but simply because it is so hidden amongst the rest of what the page has.

My recommendation to bloggers is always to work on content - provide relevant and useful information for your readers - put it in a clearly identifiable and easily found position and don’t fall for the temptation of the quick easy buck.

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Written on April 28th, 2005 at 10:04 am by Darren Rowse

Why Adsense is Not Suitable for All Blog Topics

Adsense 24 comments

One of the most striking things that hit me in my analysis of the 30 most visited blogs at Truth Laid Bear was the small number of blogs using the Adsense program. Only 8 of the 30 (26%) had any Adsense ads on their pages - most instead opting for BlogAds as their income stream of choice. A number of you have also emailed me or commented on this after my previous post (remember these 30 blogs are not THE most visited blogs - just the most visited ones with sitemeter stats tracking them).

As someone who uses Adsense extensively in my blogging this was initially a somewhat shocking finding. My Digital Camera blog is down at the bottom of the list at number 30 with 12518 daily visitors - I use Adsense extensively there and make over $200 per day from doing so on that blog alone (it is my highest earning blog to date). It would be easy to assume that a blog like Daily Kos with 35 times the daily traffic should earning 35 times the money if they used Adsense ($7500 per day).

This would be a false assumption.

Why? Its simply about Topic.

The majority of the blogs in the list have a political or news/commentary theme - I’d classify 22 of the top 30 this way. Of the 8 remaining 3 are tech related, 4 are gossip/celebrity focussed and 1 is a metablog covering all of those themes (ie tech, politics, culture etc). This last blog is BlogCritics who I’ve spoken with the owners of and asked why they don’t use Adsense - the reason is that they have many contributer - some of whom use strong language in their posting and comments which doesn’t fit with Google’s guidelines.

Political Blogs - Whilst they generate some massive traffic, Adsense is never going to be the income stream of choice for these bloggers for a number of reasons:

• They have no control over which ads do and don’t appear - You can just imagine the variety of ads that could be served to a piece written on George Bush. I don’t know too many political bloggers who would be happy to have an ad that they are opposed to running on their blog. Adsense has no way of telling if your blog is pro or against him - so it will randomly serve ads (if there are any). For instance if you check out Washington Monthly you’ll see an example of a political blog running adsense in their right hand sidebar and notice the variety of ads that are shown there from page to page.

• Low earnings per click - Political ads just don’t pay much. Whilst during the election there might have been a bit more competition between advertisers as there was more at stake, in general ads about politics (which there is no real product to sell) don’t tend to generate high bids from advertisers.

With these factors in mind - a better business model for such sites would obviously be a system that gives the blogger a choice about which ads appear on their blog and that are tied more to impression level or relevant ads than to ‘click value’. As a result BlogAds tend to do well on them.

Gossip/Celebrity Blogs - Again blogs of this nature have the distinct advantage of generating a lot of impressions due to the inquisitive nature of human beings who want to know others business and who have a fascination with celebrity. However they have the distinct disadvantage of not being big earners with Adsense. Once again this comes down to a lack of earnings per click. I run a number of celebrity blogs which at times generate very high traffic - but their CPM (earnings per thousand impressions) is generally the lowest among my blogs. This again is largely due to the fact that there is no high value product associate with celebrities. Sure there are a few books, DVDs, concert tickets and movies - but advertisers are not willing to shell out big dollars to get you to buy these lower ticket value items.

It is possible to make some reasonable money from celebrity blogs - but the rate of return per visitor will always be lower than other topics of blog - to make it big with Adsense on a gossip blog would require a lot of traffic and the fact is that they can probably earn more with other types of ads (impression based ones or site sponsorship deals would be more suitable).

Tech Blogs - whilst there are not as many of these in the ‘top 30′ list they are perhaps the best suited ones to using Adsense. This is largely due to the fact that they specifically focus upon items that can be purchased - some of which can be of a high retail value. In terms of ‘click value’ - these sorts of blogs do generate a higher return than political and gossip topics - but they are not the highest earning topics out there. In fact my Digital Camera Blog may be my biggest earner (total earnings) but in terms of click value its in the middle of the pack and perhaps even trailing the field a little. It is still well worth doing though as the combination of a slightly higher click value and some reasonable traffic pay off nicely.

I am a little surprised that the other tech blogs in the list don’t use Adsense as prominently as they could. I would have thought that with their higher traffic levels and profile that it would have been worthwhile to do so. Having said this it is probably due to them having better alternatives for their ad space.

Take Home Advice - So the take home advice is that not all blogs are suitable for Adsense. Other topics that will always be an uphill battle include:

• Religion - similar problems with politics - ie low click value and difficulty in serving ads that relate tightly with your perspective

• Adult Content - Google simply doesn’t allow ads to be served on pages with explicit content (same story with gambling I’ve heard)

• Sport - Similar problem to the celebrity blog - with no real high ticket value product attached to these keywords you need a lot of traffic to make much from these blogs from Adsense.

I’m sure there are others. Feel free to leave a comment below and let the rest of us know what you think. What topics have you found don’t work too well on Adsense? Which ones do?

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Written on April 28th, 2005 at 08:04 am by Darren Rowse

Google AdSense for RSS running at Weblogs, Inc.

RSS, Adsense 2 comments

Jason writes that they have been accepted into the testing program of Google Adsense ads in RSS feeds. Lucky things!

I’m not bitter though after my own rejection - sniff sniff. Well not too bitter.

thanks to Mike for the tip

Update: in spotting some of their ads in their Engadget feed I’m wondering about the relevancy of the ads - all I see to see is ads for filling in surveys (below) which don’t seem to have anything to do with the content. Perhaps Google has a few bugs to weed out still.

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Written on April 28th, 2005 at 07:04 am by Darren Rowse

Fastclick add Text Ads

Advertising 2 comments

Yesterday Google announced it was going into CPM advertising and expanding opportunities for advertisers to use banner ads - today one of the big banner ad providers, Fastclick, add to their website that they are getting into Text Ads.

Found via Thread Watch

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Written on April 28th, 2005 at 01:04 am by Darren Rowse

How the Most Highly Visited Blogs Earn Money

Pro Blogging News 48 comments

Yesterday I spent the afternoon wading through some of the most highly visited blogs going around at Truth Laid Bear’s Traffic Ranking page which ranks those blogs with Sitemeter statistics. I quite often head over there to keep track of who is doing what. Whilst it doesn’t track all blogs it does give you a hint at what blogs people are reading in terms of topic.

Today I was surfing through the top 30 of these blogs and I started to keep track of how many of them have some sort of income stream (whether it be ads, affiliate programs, donation buttons, merchandise for sale etc). I did the same exercise informally about 12 months ago and found that just over half of the top blogs had income streams. This year I found that things have changed - the Blogosphere is becoming more commercial (or at least the most highly visited blogs are). I’ll outline what each of the top 30 are doing to earn an income below - but let me first share some initial findings:

• All blogs in the top 30 have an income stream. Only one blog had no advertising or affiliate programs (it did have a donation button though).
• The most popular Income Stream on these Blogs is BlogAds - 23 of the top 30 have them.
• The next most popular income streams were donation buttons and Amazon links (mainly to books).
• Also popular were AdBrite text ads.
• Only 8 of these blogs use Adsense.

There are plenty of other observations to be made from what I found but I’ll let you chew over them a little and make your own remarks below in comments. Here are the notes I took on each of the top 30 blogs in the list:

One note of explanation - I deleted two of the blogs listed in Truth Laid Bear’s Traffic Ranking page due to them being duplicated in the list. The numbers below are their daily visitors (averaged from their last 7 days traffic).

1) Daily Kos - 443841 visits/day - Runs Blog Ads (15 currently running) ranging in price from $13000 per month for the premium position down to the classified position at $500 per month)

2) Gizmodo - 175706 visits/day - Runs a variety of Ads including an Affiliate program with CNET, a variety of private sponsorships and button ads, text ads using AdBrite ($400 per four week campaign). They also run Adsense ads on individual and category pages. Details on their Advertising Rates.

3) Instapundit.com - 129981 visits/day - Runs BlogAds (8 ads currently showing) - ranging in price from 6000 per month for the Patron Position to Classified $500 per month. They also have a Donation Button and Amazon affiliate links.

4) Gawker - 104460 visits/day - Runs a variety of sponsorship/banner and affiliate ads (CNET again). They also have AdBrite text ads available at a cost of $600 per 4 week campaign. More information on their Ad packaages.

5) Eschaton - 103837 visits/day - Running BlogAds (currently with 8) which range in price from $2500 per month down to $100 for a classified ad. They also include a donate button and see to be running an affiliate program with a book store.

6) Defamer - 91942 visits/day - Similar to the above Gawker blogs with CNET affiliate program, banner ads, text ads with AdBrite ($450 per four week campaign). More on their ad packages.

7) lgf: journey heaven is a funky moose - 82475 visits/day - Blog ads (currently running 10) which range in price from $2750 per month for the premium spot down to $800 for a second tier ad). They are also running Amazon affiliate ads and have options for donations.

8) Power Line - 62304 visits/day - Blog ads (currently running 11) which range in price from $1400 down to $450 per month. They also have an ad for an insurance company (could be CPM or could be affiliate ad). Lastly they have a store which sells merchandise (t-shirts, cups, caps etc).

9) Wonkette - 54963 visits/day - Similar deal here to the other Gawker Blogs with the exception of some BlogAds (currently running 10) ranging in price from $1700 per month down to $650 per month). Their AdBrite text ads are $150 for 4 weeks. They also sell Wonkette T-Shirts. More details on their ad packages.

10) www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish - 48804 visits/day - BlogAds (3 currently running) range from $3200 down to $250 for 4 weeks. Andrew also runs Adsense ads on a few pages, with a few Amazon affiliate ads and runs a successful ‘Tipping Point’ donations campaign.

11) Michelle Malkin - 45661 visits/day - Also runs BlogAds (six at present) ranging in price from $1900 to $650 per month.

12) The Smirking Chimp - 41947 visits/day - Runs BlogAds (2 at present) at a cost of $425 per month. They also run some amazon affiliate ads and a merchandise store.

13) The Washington Monthly - 41482 visits/day - BlogAds (4 of them today) cost $395 per month. They also have affiliate links for Amazon, Adsense ads and a Donate button. You can of course also subscribe to the print edition.

14) Go Fug Yourself - 38742 visits/day - BlogAds (7 of them) cost $275 per month). They also sell t-shirts.

15) Blog for America - 33746 visits/day - No ads that I can see - but you can make a contribution/donation.

16) HughHewitt.com - 26517 visits/day - Currently 5 BlogAds running - the cost of which is $1000 per month. You can also buy Hugh’s book via an affiliate link on the sidebar where he has a few other books linked to also. There is also a site sponsor banner ad and a tip/donation button.

17) Captain’s Quarters - 20817 visits/day - BlogAds (currently 23) cost between $200 for premium ads to $125 for second tier ads per month. They also have affiliate links (amazon) in their sidebar as well as a donation button.

18) Lifehacker - 19185 visits/day - Similar to other Gawker Blogs with a range of banner ads (some served by double click - impression based I guess). Details of their advertising.

19) Blogcritics.org - 16078 visits/day - This blog focuses heavily upon Amazon affiliate links (they are in every post). They also have 3 BlogAds ads at ranging from $700 to $210 per month. There are also a few other affiliate program ads scattered around their blog.

20) Wizbang - 15379 visits/day - BlogAds (2 at present) ranging in price from $500 to $100 per month. They also have a text link or two on the sidebar through AdBrite ($150 per 4 week campaign) as well as amazon affiliate links to books.

21) washingtonpost.com - White House Briefing - 15125 visits/day - Has a variety of ads including banner ads and text ads run via a number of systems including Overture, doubleclick etc.

22) The Volokh Conspiracy - 14337 visits/day - Runs a DoubleClick campaign at the top of its sidebar as well as a donation button.

23) Kim du Toit - Daily Rant - 14179 visits/day - BlogAds (currently 4) cost $140 per month. They also accept donations via PayPal.

24) PoliPundit.com - 14025 visits/day - BlogAds (currently 8) range from $280 to $140. They also run Adsense ads in their sidebar and some sort of impression based ad or affiliate program on individual pages under posts.

25) MyDD - 13964 visits/day - Blog Ads here cost $500 for premium ads and $100 for classifieds per month - they currently have two running.

26) Drudge Retort: Red Meat for Yellow Dogs - 13667 visits/day - This blog runs a variety of ads including Adsense Ads across the top of their blog and BlogAds (currently 3) which cost $200 per month.

27) Roger L. Simon: Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter - 13388 visits/day - Roger runs BlogAds (currently 3) which cost between $800 and $300 per month. He also has Adsense ads in his sidebar and affiliate links to his books as well as a donate paypal button.

28) Matthew Yglesias - 13353 visits/day - BlogAds here as well (currently 6) ranging in price from $220 to $130.

29) Crooks and Liars 12933 visits/day - BlogAds here (3 at present) cost between $230 and $75 for a month campaign. They also run Adsense Ads in the side bar, accept donations

30) Digital Photography Blog - 12518 visits/day - The most prominant ads here are Adsense ads on all pages. There are also Adsense Adlinks and is a Adsense Search Bar. There are also Amazon affiliate programs, BlogAds (2) at $107 per month, text links from $49 per month and other affiliate programs.

Ok - I spent too much time on this today so I’ll stop now. I’ve got a few more observations and reflections to make - but I’ll open it up for some discussion first. What strikes you about these blogs? Looking forward to your comments below in comments.

Update: I’ve written a second piece on a few more of my reflections on this little study here.

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Written on April 27th, 2005 at 08:04 pm by Darren Rowse

Adsense RSS Ad Testing Rejection

RSS, Adsense 5 comments

I thought I’d try my luck and drop the team at Google’s Adsense an email to ‘offer my services’ as a tester for their RSS ad program. Of course I wasn’t expecting an affirmative response but thought I’d test my birthday luck. The response was to be expected:

Hello Darren,

Thank you for your email. The feature you’re referring to is one of several new features the Google AdSense team is currently testing for a very limited number of publishers. At this time, we are not able to offer these features to other publishers. Should we offer this feature to additional publishers in the future, we will be sure to notify you at that time.

Sincerely,

Phoebe
The Google AdSense Team

Oh well - it was worth a try I guess. I wonder how one gets selected for these testing roles?

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