Written on September 27th, 2005 at 12:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Poll of the Week - Where does your Traffic Come From?
Bouncing off last week’s poll which identified that most people want to learn how to get more readers to their blog - this week’s poll asks you to identify the way that most of your blog readers currently find your blog/s.
I know picking one might be difficult - but I’ve chosen to make this poll a ‘one choice’ per vote only one so pick the predominant one. If you have more than one blog do it on an overall sense. For example - over my 20 blogs I get the vast majority of readers from search engines.
Here at enternetusers that is a little different as I have a higher repeat readership level - but on my bigger blogs SE’s refer larger amounts of readers.
If you want to explain your vote, or talk about how different blogs are different etc you can do so in comments below.
Written on September 27th, 2005 at 12:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Poll Results - Bloggers Want to Know How to Build Readership
This week’s poll has been asking for readers to suggest what they would like to learn most about blogging here at enternetusers. The results are in and there are some clear messages emerging.
I’ve included screen capture of the results below but the top three areas that you’re asking for more information on are:
- Building Blog Readership
- Adsense Optimization
- Search Engine Optimization
I’m pretty happy with the results - it fits with what I was sensing from readers questions and conversations.
I also think it makes sense that the topic of finding readers (which is really what is behind both #1 and #2) is the biggest need of bloggers.
I’m increasingly coming to find that that while optimizing your ads is an important topic - that there comes a point where your ads are well optimized and where the only real way of increasing the amount of money that you can increase what you earn from your blog via Adsense is to increase your readership.
So thanks for sharing. I’m hearing you and as I’ve mentioned previously - I’m working on a resource that I hope will be useful in the ‘finding readers’ issue.
Written on September 26th, 2005 at 03:09 pm by Darren Rowse
“What is a Good CTR in Adsense?”
It’s strange how I often get the same question from a number of different readers within a day of each other and then don’t get asked it again for months. The question of the moment seems to be :
“What is a good CTR (click through rate) in Adsense?”
Let me attempt an answer.
I should also point out that revealing CTR is against Adsense TOS - so don’t expect me to pepper this post with real life examples. I’ll also explain for non Adsense users that CTR is ‘Click Through Rate’ - or the percentage of people that view pages with ads on them that click on them.
The problem with comparing CTR (and in fact a lot of Adsense statistics) is that every blog is so different that any such comparison can be problematic - and at times pointless.
Why is comparing Adsense CTR between sites a problem?
The percentage of people who click on ads varies depending upon many different factors. I’ll list a few here - and as we go you might spot a few ways to increase your own CTR.
- CTR varies between topics - one of the things I learned in my early days with Adsense after using it on multiple blogs was that despite having the same design on a different blogs, CTR could vary incredibly between one blog and another. One of the reasons for this is simply the topic of the blog. For example some Adsense publishers find that sites with products as a topic tend to get better CTR than sites with non product related topics. They argue that people are more likely to click an advertisment if they are in buying mode and see an ad that might meet their need.
- CTR relates to Ad relevancy - if I have a blog about ballpoint pens that has ads for ballpoint pens I have a higher chance of a click than if my ballpoint pen blog has ads for dog food on it. In most cases, the more relevant ads are to the topic of your content - the more likely you are to get clicks. Reasons for ad irrelevancy vary between blogs and might be something that is to do with your blog design (too many uses of the word ‘blog’ for instance triggers blog ads on virtually any topic) , your topic (some topics are difficult for Google to discern) or some problem at Google’s end (I’ve heard of one or two cases where bloggers have written to Google to ask about irrelevant ads and Google have made some changes to fix it).
- CTR can vary seasonaly - for example - many blogs report higher CTR on weekends (but lower impressions). Some find that holidays or the lead up to them (eg Christmas) can produce large variations in CTR. These variations can vary from blog to blog considerably.
- CTR varies between reader types - It is well documented that blogs and websites with high levels of loyal (repeat) readers tend to get lower CTR than sites with higher levels of search engine traffic. As I’ve written recently - this is because loyal readers can become blind to your ad positioning and design and because SE readers tend to be searching for some specific information that they often want to take some action over - this puts them in a hightened information gathering mode and more likely to click on an ad. Another reader type variation is readers being referred from other sites. I find that these sorts of readers can go either way depending upon what the site referring is but generally CTR is lower. For instance when I get a link from Slashdot I generally expect a pretty low CTR as such a link brings masses of traffic from some pretty tech savy readers who in general don’t click ads much.
- CTR varies between ad design and placement options - one massive factor for CTR is the positioning and design of your ads. For example if you put your Adsense ad at the bottom of your page where no one will see it you’ll get a very low CTR - whereas if you position it in a spot where it will be seen it will get clicked on more. The same goes for the colors you choose - select the right colors and you’ll improve CTR.
- CTR varies depending upon other site design factors - you can impact the CTR of your ads by using other visual factors. You need to be careful here not to be seen to be encouraging your readers to click ads - but many Adsense publishers have found subtle ways to draw their readers eyes to ad using images, shapes, color etc. One good tip that doesn’t break Adsense TOS is to use spaces around your ads. Studies have shown that ads tend to perform better on a white background with white space around it.
- CTR varies depending upon other options to ‘click’ - if your page has no outbound links except for your Adsense ads - the chances are increased that those will be the links that people click on. I was chatting with one person last week who has such a site. He is able to drive traffic to pages on his site with useful content but no other outbound links so that when his readers finish reading his content they either close the browser, hit ‘back’ or click an ad. His CTR was higher on these pages than on others. Of course there are downsides of this approach as his blog is very insular and not interlinked which means SEO is difficult for him. Decluttering your blog can increase CTR.
So there you have some of the reasons why CTR can vary so much. I guess the question remains of ‘what is a good CTR in Adsense?’
Really the only way to answer that question having covered everything that we have just examined is to say that a good CTR will vary from blog to blog.
I’ve seen blogs that have done everything that they can to increase CTR and are still under 1% while have seen others that get into double figures. I suspect that most bloggers fall somewhere in between that and would fit into the 2%-5% range.
Feel free to add your own experiences of CTR (don’t share specifics or you run the risk of getting into trouble with Google) in comments below.
Written on September 24th, 2005 at 11:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Gawker Adds Comments to Three Blogs
Megablog, Gizmodo, has decided to allow comments at last. It’s been a pretty long time coming and something that many have complained about - but the time has arrived (they’ve done the same thing on Gawker and Lifehacker blogs also).
Interestingly they’ve decided that only invited guests will have commenting privileges at this point - something I’ve not seen on any other blogs before.
They explain this on their Comments FAQ page by writing:
Anyone who has been invited, either by us or by a friend. The invite system works like Gmail. We’ve invited a bunch of our favorite gearheads, bloggers, and frequent tipsters to comment, then given them invitations to share with their friends and colleagues. That way, the burden of inclusion, and exclusion, is shared.
Why are comments by invitation only?
Most online communities are like Apple Stores and hip bars—they quickly get overrun with tourists, thus lowering the overall quality of the experience. The same thing will happen to us eventually too. But we’re going to try to put off that moment for as long as possible.
I can hear the critiques of this move already - there will be some who say its elitist - but I wonder if this could be a smart move. Commenting rights could become hot property on their blogs - this could limit comments to more manageable numbers (I don’t bother with comments in blogs like Slashdot these days due to the numbers) - in the short term this will help limit comment spam (although it will get harder as more are invited) and if they are choosey about who comments they could end up with some really knowledgeable and high profile people featuring on their blogs.
Of course it could all go horribly wrong if the masses don’t like the fact that they are being locked out and/or if the competition starts playing it up that they have a completely free commenting system.
It’s definitely something to watch.
Written on September 24th, 2005 at 01:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Making Money with your Blog’s Archives
Nice post by Tristan over at TNL.net titled Money in the archives which talks about one of the lovely things about Pro blogging - ie its ability to continue to generate income off posts that are quite old (the archives). This is what many refer to as the principle of the Long Tail. The article compares blogging in this regard to offline media where a writer is paid a one off fee (say $1 per word) for their article. In comparison a blog post lives on and has the potential to continue to generate income:
‘Once the entry has advertising on it, any revenue generated from that advertising goes to the blog writer. Initially, it’s not comparable to the thousand dollars the writer got from a mainstream publication but, if the entry has legs (ie, it keeps serving an audience), it continues to generate money, pretty much until one of a few possible things happen:
* The writer decides to remove ads from his/her site
* The writer decides to remove the entry from the site
* The story has run its course and is no longer useful or superceded by a better oneIf one writes with such a long run view, a story can generate several times what the initial payback was from a publication.’
I’ve found this principle to be true myself. I now have 11,000+ posts working for me in my archives.
However it’s also worth making a few other points:
- this principle relies pretty heavily on your ability for your posts to rank well in search engines. The problem for most bloggers is that even though they might brilliant articles that they will have difficulty in finding readers for those articles because their blogs struggle to have enough ranking in Google and Yahoo.
- most posts income ability to generate income will diminish over time. This will be due not only to the fact that many are time specific and will date but also because the way search engines rank posts these days is to give priority to fresh content. Over time other competing pages on your competitors (and even your own) post will often rise up and take over your position in SE’s.
I’m not wanting to discredit the TNL article - but it’s worth stating that while the theory is good - that its not always that easy. In my experience - theories of the Longtail work really well for some bloggers who have either profile or SE ranking - such strategies tend to diminish in effectiveness for less highly ranked blogs.
One last tip - you can increase the effectiveness of your archives to make money by being a little smart about highlighting your most effective older posts. I’ve been thinking about this over the past few days quite a bit.
I don’t have time to unpack it right now - but have a read of this post at Webmaster World on Filtering your Traffic for Fun and Profit and you’ll see a little of what I’ve been pondering. It’s about creating (and/or identifying) pages with a higher earning capacity and then funneling your readers in that direction.
Written on September 23rd, 2005 at 06:09 pm by Darren Rowse
enternetusers HQ - Dreams and Realities
Someone asked me what I want for my enternetusers Birthday. I said nothing - that was until I saw this:
Could this be every blogger’s dream?
The reality however is probably a little more like this for many bloggers:
Found via Gizmodo
Written on September 23rd, 2005 at 05:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Blogger.com adds New Adsense Integration Features
Blogger.com have just gone and made it easy for bloggers using their system to integrate Adsense into their templates by adding new features which allow easy selection and design of ads to blend into their blogs. Bloggers get a more automated choice of size and colors. They offer a variety of ‘match template’ options and ‘blend template’ options.
Users of the system are given the ability to preview how their ads will look before going live with their changes.
Read about it at Blogger Help : How do I put AdSense on my blog?
Written on September 23rd, 2005 at 02:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Six Apart - Project Comet
Six Apart has put out a press release in the last few hours annoucing a new blogging platform that they are planning to release early in 2006. It’s code named Project Comet. They are selling it as featuring Community Aggregation, Multiple Streams and Privacy.
They write:
‘Combining the weblog publishing power of Six Apart’s popular TypePad service, the community aspects of its LiveJournal offering, and the years of insight garnered from Movable Type, Project Comet will enable aggregation of content from different blogs and unparalleled ease of use. The new platform builds on Six Apart’s vision of offering an open platform for users to create add-ons and very simply hook into any application.’
Written on September 23rd, 2005 at 11:09 am by Darren Rowse
Shiny Media Announces 3 New Blogs
Everyone’s favorite UK Blog Network, Shiny Media, has announced three new blogs.
They describe them as follows:
HDTV UK - High Definition TV will arrive in the UK next year and HDTV UK is the first website to deliver daily updates of the latest HD news, whether it be new HD compatible screens, HD programming or HD ready video recorders.
Pop Junkie - Written by a team of snobbish music obsessives each day PopJunkie serves up a mini review of a great lost pop album. Some are the long lost work of major artists, such as Frank Sinatra’s odd concept album from 1969 Watertown or Cathy Dennis’ Brit Pop album Am I that kind of Girl?. Others are by completely obscure bands whose records were so out of time they now reside untouched in the bargain basement bins.
Trashionista - Trashionista gets to grips with the wonderful world of female fiction. We take an unbiased look at beach reads, bestsellers, new releases and old favourites - and we actually read the books before writing about them. The Trashionista doesn’t believe that ‘chick lit’ is a dirty word - but if a book is trash, we’ll let you know!
Written on September 23rd, 2005 at 09:09 am by Darren Rowse
enternetusers Turns 1
Today enternetusers turns 1 year old. Despite its 1465 posts it’s only a baby still.
I thought I’d do the normal celebratory thing and post a list of the 20 most popular posts from the last year (in no particular order). Feel free to nominate your favorite enternetusers moments/posts/series in comments below if you’re in the mood for a little enternetusers celebration also.
- Blogging for Dollars - One of the posts that started me off on the ProBlogging journey. While it appears here on this blog on 23 September it was actually written a couple of years ago on one of my other blogs and transferred here (as were quite a few of my first posts).
- Adsense Tips for Bloggers Series - Another older series of posts - popular in search engines but also because its up there at the top of my blog
- Monkey Bar Blogging - A post about not racing into ProBlogging full time without making sure you’ve got something to keep you going first (I send people to this post every week)
- 2005 Business Underblogger Awards - a Meme I ran earlier this year to highlight some of the less popular but great quality business blogs going around (it’ll be an anual award that I run)
- Positioning Your Adsense Ads - Very popular post - along with the whole Adsense category on this blog
- How Much Do I Earn from Blogging - This is a summary post that links to some of my posts talking about my earnings levels - they’d have to be among the most popular posts on the whole blog.
- How the Most Highly Visited Blogs Earn Money - An analysis of some of the most popular blogs going around and how they generate some amazing amounts of cold hard cash.
- Search Engine Optimization for Blogs - Basic Solid tips on how to get your blog climbing the Search Engines
- The Importance of Title Tags in Search Engine Optimization - Amazing how simple tips can have an impact - I got a lot of positive feedback from this one.
- One Blog Many Categories or Many Blogs? - This topic always generates a lot of discussion - we’ve talked about it numerous times on enternetusers and it always causes controversy.
- What’s wrong with Blogging? - What happens when you give bloggers an opportunity to tell each other what they don’t like about blogging? An interesting conversation happens.
- 10 Tips for Using Affiliate Programs on your Blog - As the header say - going beyond Adsense and BlogAds to affiliate programs.
- Blogging in Formation - Lessons from a Goose - One of my famous (or should that be infamous) ‘tangent posts’ about being like Geese with our blogging.
- Principles of Choosing a Profitable Blog Topic - Another post that caused some ripples.
- Converting One off Visitors to your Blog into Regular Readers - A post I often refer people to that goes beyond attracting people to your blog to examining how to keep them there.
- 31 Days to building a Better Blog - A recent meme that generated some of the best posts I’ve ever seen on blogging - most of which were written on readers blogs.
- Blog Case Study - Is it Time to Quit? - I was surprised by how many people jumped onto this case study of a blogger who was quitting blogging and why he failed.
- Strategic Blogging - part of the 31 Days series that generated a lot of interest.
- Generate a High Quantity of Content Series - an older series of posts on increasing your post numbers.
- Declaring War on Blog Apathy - another 31 Days series that actually helped me out of a bit of a blogging slump that I was in at the time.
I want to finish this post by saying that enternetusers is the blog I’m most proud of - I enjoy it so much. A massive part of my love for it is the community that has been forming here. While the above posts might have been popular - what I’m most proud of about the blog is the collective wisdom and community spirit that I sense. I am continually getting feedback from readers that comments from other readers and friendships with other readers have helped them so much in their blogger - this is what it’s all about.
Here’s to another year with more of the same!
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