Google AdSense On A Blog Update
written by John Chow
As some may recall, I am running a case study to see if a personal blog can make money with Google AdSense. Here are the results so far. For the month of September, the blog made $352.94 from Google AdSense ads. However, you have to keep in mind that the ads were not turn on until September 17th, so these results represent only 13 days. That works out to $27.15 per day, which isn’t too bad. It won’t allow you to quit your job but it is a pretty decent part time income. There are a few things to note however.
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The first thing is ad placements weren’t fully tweaked last month. I was still fooling around with different ad sizes, positioning, blending, etc. The key to AdSense success is to keep tweaking until you get it right. Sometimes the tweaks can step over the line. This email from Google put the brakes on my super blending AdSense trick. Right now, the current AdSense placement is to have a 468 at the top of the post, another 468 at the bottom of the post, and a 300 box inline with the blog content.
The best performing ad unit is the 300 box, follow by the 468 top then the 468 bottom. Percentage wise, the 300 box gets twice as many clicks as the 468 banners. This is not surprising since it’s the biggest ad and it’s embedded right into the blog post itself. I would like to know how you feel about this. Do you find the ad too intrusive? Does it turn you away from the blog? Feedback on my ad placement would be welcome.
The Digg factor didn’t have that much of an impact on blog revenues at first. However, by the time the 5th and 6th Diggs came along, I had managed to tweak the placements of the ads to the point where it made almost $100 on its biggest traffic day. I am very confident that the blog can make money on a Digg now.
So far, Google is the only monetization method used on the blog. Adding other revenue streams like text link ads, affiliate deals and Vibrant Media can easily double blog income. However, for this month I will just run the Google ads and nothing else.
I have decided to donate the income from the blog to my church and other charities. John Chow dot Com is my personal blog and making a profit from it just seems strange to me. Please note, I am not downing anyone who makes money off his or her personal blog - I think that is great.
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Hi John!
What are the stats for your Blog? The averages, not the crazy digg days…
Well, the average got blown out of the water! LOL I was expecting to do 30,000 page views for September but, as you can see, it went way over. Right now my Sitemeter stats is showing I average 20,720 page views per day but I doubt I will be able to maintain this level. However, I am hoping to beat September’s 220,000 page views.
John
I have found that by adding images next to your ads helps with the clickthrough rate. Since you are using wordpress as your blogging engine, you should checkout the Adsense Injection plugin - which will automatically insert adsense in random places.
Let me know what you think of my site http://www.sharepointbuzz.com
Since I have started Sharepoint BUZZ, the ads have taken care of hosting and I am averaging 3% clickthrough rate. I’m waiting for my first Google paycheck.
Heck, I’d be thrilled with $27-and-change a day. Right now, I’m lucky if I hit the ‘and-change’ part of your report from the one site I’m running ads on. But I’m pretty new to this all, so I’ll give myself a bit more time before I’m looking for $100 days…
As to that Adsense Injection plugin, well, it might be ok if you don’t really care what kind of conversion you get. When I tried it briefly, I couldn’t see how I could track what ad was getting what kind of conversion. The biggest problem with the plugin is it puts Google ads in your full RSS feed which, if I’m not mistaken, violates the TOS.
It is interesting that the AdSense Ads will only go through the Wordpress ‘Loop’ once…the ads only show up in your first post.
I use AdSense in the header and in the sidebar right now. It may be too intrusive and send the wrong message to your audience if the ads are enveloped/integrated into your content. But then again, the ads would match that article better than trying to match the entire page.
The only issues I’ve seen with Adsense is the blocking by some corporate sites…the ads are simply blocked and not seen. Basically, the network slows down at lunchtime because everyone is surfing…prime time when the Adsense should be kicking in.
Update on the Wordpress Loop…I had ads in the header and sidebar. When I placed the AdSense code in the WP Loop only one showed up in the post content.
When I removed the header/sidebar ads then AdSense started appearing in three posts! Must have been the three ad limit that Google has.
So the solution? I configured WP to only show three posts. Now every post has ads and they are relevant.
With the ads being integrated, the site now has a nice clean design. I’ll trim the ad size down depending on feedback.
BTW, great articles!
Sean -> I will have to look into the RSS feed thing, as I was unaware of that. Then what better way is to put in the ads into your posts.
John how do you do it?
Kanwal, if you’re looking for a plugin for Wordpress, I like Adsense Deluxe. It isn’t entirely automatic like Adsense Injection, but it’s still pretty simple. Just a little pull down menu to insert your code wherever you want while you write your posts. Or, if you want to be even lazier, insert a little snippet in your template, and tweak away on it - all in one location - to your heart’s content.
Hey John!
Just stumbled upon your site while doing a google search on “adsense income”. Great site and great information for all of us trying to make a few bucks from adsense! I think it’s a noble thing that you are taking your adsense income and donating to charities. You’re setting an example for us all.
Best Regards,
Joe
http://www.StingyFinance.com
You’re less than 1% of blogs my friend. Your traffic proves it. Stop giving real bloggers hope with Adsense. It does not work for low traffic blogs, and that’s 99% or more of the entire blogosphere.
It’s a complete waste of time for 99% of the market.
[...] Recently, Jim Kukral of ReveNews left this comment to my Google AdSense On a Blog Update. You’re less than 1% of blogs my friend. Your traffic proves it. Stop giving real bloggers hope with Adsense. It does not work for low traffic blogs, and that’s 99% or more of the entire blogosphere. [...]
Hi John,
I have a site http://www.howtogetafirst.co.uk using mistylook (and your adsense placements, thanks for the tips
) and have a problem with adsense that you appear to share.
Often when a page loads the adsense blocks have lines through them, a page refresh clears these lines, but its very annoying.
Just wondered if you had picked up on this (as it happens with your site also) and whether you have any idea what causes this.
My browser is FF2, the problem does not occur with IE, so I guess its an FF specific problem.
I also noticed that neither of our sites are W3c valid, presumably as we have modified the template.
I was thinking of resolving validation errors to see if that cured the problem.
Any ideas???
Jez
[...] The blog made $352.94 in September, $1,361.64 in October, and $2,139.93 in November. I have received $1,714.58 so far, which represents the income for September and October. Money from December will be received in the New Year. This blog was never intended to make any money and I have stated that I would donate what money it made to church and charities. I have decided to donate the income from the blog to my church and other charities. John Chow dot Com is my personal blog and making a profit from it just seems strange to me. Please note, I am not downing anyone who makes money off his or her personal blog - I think that is great. [...]
[...] John usually posts about a variety of topics, but my favorite topics are his blog ad optimization articles and what works best for him. John was also the first to introduce me to AGLOCO. John made over $25k from the old AllAdvantage program, and already has 3000 referrals under him for AGLOCO. When the AGLOCO program starts, you can be assured that John Chow is going to be among the leaders of AGLOCO income. [...]
Always nice to read some tips on ad placement — I think it’s one of the toughest things to get right on a blog.
[...] and is always a great source of ideas. John Chow dot Com was monetized back in September, where it made $352.94 - all of it coming from Google AdSense. In October, he added Vibrant Media IntelliTXT to the [...]