Jared Conley asked:


The most popular way to monetize a blog is through contextual advertising; i.e. programs like Google AdSense, Chitika, WidgetBucks, and other similar programs. What many bloggers don’t realize is that they are leaving money on the table with contextual advertising because of one off-handed decision they made way back when they first started their blogs.

With most contextual advertising programs, you are paid for performance. This is frequently a per click payment. Considering this, there are two primary avenues to improve the profitability of a blog: increase the number of visitors who click on the advertising; and increase the payout per click.

For the former, you can increase the click-through rate (CTR), which is the number of times an ad must be viewed before it is clicked; or, you can increase your visitor count while the CTR remains constant. Even better, you can do both! For the latter, however, the answer is slightly trickier.

The most popular advertising platform, AdSense, rewards publishers who maintain a consistently high CTR across all of their web properties by offering a higher payment per click. In their mind, they would rather serve ads on your blog because they know you’ll get more clicks — which means more dollars to them — so they reward your performance with a higher payout. This means that increasing your click-through rate will naturally increase your payout per click!

So the first goal to increase your contextual advertising performance is to increase your click-through rate. Without adding to the suspense, I’ll tell you right away that the most effective way to increase you CTR is done simply by focusing.

If you focus your content on a tight niche, you will naturally attract a more targeted audience. A more targeted audience means more targeted ads. More targeted ads means a higher click-through rate. A higher CTR means a higher payout per click. This is a very rewarding cycle for the average blogger.

So the single most important thing you can do right now to improve the earning power of your blog is to focus it. Find out what your primary topic is and focus your blog around it. If you find that you have a good number of posts that are unrelated, just spin them off into a separate blog. Two separate, but focused, blogs, will out earn one larger unfocused blog.

So the question you might be wondering is this: what will focus mean to my bottom line (i.e. is this worth my effort)? In my experience and testing with more than 200 blogs, I’ve seen that a focused blog will outperform a general content blog with similar traffic patterns by 400 to 600 percent or more. I know of no other way to achieve that kind of improvement for so little effort.

Other articles in this series will address the concept of focus in more detail.

Blog and Earn – Take it to the bank!

Guido Nussbaum asked:


AdWords are a simple and effective way of advertising on the net, which help to reach a vast audience and it does not cost much. Due to the popularity of Google AdWords if you paste an ad on the search and content sites of Google and its related network, you can advertise your products and reach a large number of buyers without spending too much on advertising. You can reach your potential customers at the right time precisely when they are looking for a product, increasing your chances of making a sale.

There are hundreds of people looking for bargains on the net and AdWords help you to reach these people. Through them you can find a market for your products. Your ads are placed above or next to relevant search engines on Google, and whenever someone clicks on your ad you get a potential buyer. This process is very simple, in minutes your ads can be running, and reaching hundreds of thousands of online and offline customers. If your ad is not clicked on, you do not pay. Thus you do not have to spend too much and are in complete control. You can also study their performance any time to see that if you are benefiting from them.

To start, you have to pay a nominal activation fee. After this you do not have to pay any monthly charges, and you can choose from a variety of ad formats. The ads can be in the form of an image, a video or just a text ad. You can change your ad anytime you want. You can keep a record of the Google AdWords performance by checking at your online account control center.

There are different ways in which you can place your ad on the site. Moreover, in pasting a keyword related ad, you choose the keywords for your ad, and decide the amount you pay for each click. The higher you pay, the more the chances of the system displaying your ad on the site. In placement of targeted ads, you choose the exact content site where your ad will be placed. You also decide the maximum amount you will pay for each click, or for per thousand page views.

To be able to target your potential customers and get better website roi, keep certain points in mind when placing ads. Some tips include relating your Ad text to the webpage where it is placed targeting a wide variety of audience. Another thing you should do is experiment with your text formats to see which works best, and include product prices and special offers to attract customers.

You can see the performance of your ads through PPR or placements performance reports. If they are useful and are they giving you some business then you can continue to have them on your site. If you feel they are not giving you any business, you can delete them from your site. You can also help Google to keep track of your progress by using a conversion optimizer. There are some more technical terms you need to have knowledge about like the CTR or the ‘click through rate’ which tells you about the actual number of times people actually click on your ad. The CR or ‘conversion rate’ is the percentage of people that actually buy something on your site.

Monetize Your Website To The Fullest!

Jeremy Long Chia Teik asked:


Selling your products and services on the web is no different from doing it off-line. It requires you to put into use certain yardstick to determine how well your campaign is getting on. This is an important procedure in marketing, and it must not be given slip-shod attention, otherwise negative performance will slowly but surely eat into your profit.

Skills to conduct accurate testing and marketing have to be acquired. They can contribute to the success of your campaign. There are many methods to assess campaign performance. Listed below are proven methods but the list is by no means exhaustive.

(1) The number of page impressions

From your website, you are able to know the total number of visitors. You will also be able to find out more about the general site traffic. Page impressions help to determine the level of popularity of your site.

(2) The number of unique visits

The number of unique visits is best obtained from the referring IP address. You will be able to observe the degree of popularity of your site through these unique visits.

(3) The total number of visitors attained

One of the good methods to assess campaign performance is through the total number of visitors attained so far for your site. There are many statistical programs that will help you to track these results in the manner you want. This tracking can be done quarterly, monthly or even weekly.

(4) The frequency of visits

You can assess if your traffic strategies are performing to your expectation. This data will help you get important feedback for fine-tuning current marketing strategy or to prepare for future strategy.

(5) Determining the click through rate

The click through rate indicates the persuasiveness and effectiveness of your marketing copy. It reveals to what extent visitors are being convinced to buy from you. If you use a split-testing strategy, you will notice an increase in conversions.

(6) Capitalizing on the opt-in rate

The opt-in box will collect the first names and email addresses of your subscribers. This indicates the extent of interest shown by visitors for your offers. You will be able to involve them when it comes to your new product launches, because you are able to know the degree of responsiveness that they have shown to your current product.

(7) Using fully the conversion rate

One of the more important methods to assess campaign performance is applying the conversion rate to help determine actual sales attained so far. If the conversion rate is high, it indicates your effective ability in persuading and convincing subscribers to buy your offer. If it turns out to be low, remedial action must be taken immediately.

In conclusion, immediate action should be taken should campaign performance turns out poor. Marketing results deserve your closest attention, by making use of the best methods for their assessment.

Monetize Your Website To The Fullest!