Phew! What a week this has been. It all started with the idea that I could turn the domain GolfChum.com into something really big. One week later, and loads of people are telling me what a good idea it is. Now I’ve just got to finish making the thing!
Earlier on this week, my traffic soared to 100 unique visitors in 1 day. This was primarily because I was featured in 2 Blog Carnivals:
- Carnival of Business #13 by David Maister which highlighted my Ethical Conduct of an Entrepreneur Article
- Carnival of Personal Finance #57 by Just Another Money Blog which highlighted one of my first ever posts for Blogtrepreneur - How To Make Money On the Net using eBay.
On the topic of earnings and Adsense, you will notice that I now have only a leaderboard in the header, and a small button in the right sidebar. I felt that my big ads were intrusive to your viewing experience, and so felt that I would much rather you read my articles rather than focus on the ads. Im now contemplating whether to completely remove the ads and focus only on Text Link Ads (aff.) which seem to be performing for a large majority of people, both through their affiliate and publisher programs. Do you think I should transition towards this?
The Blogtrepreneur Forums are slowly building up, although I am still in need of more members, so get over there and register now for free - it only takes a few minutes. My BlogRoll too has been updated, so if you want your link to be included, please email me through the Contact Page. Let’s hope I can continue this growth. Watch this space!
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Dave Starr // Jul 24, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Nice update. Here we are in the Northern hemisphere “summer doldrums” and we are both seeing nice increases. My wife, who has two blogs of her own just exchanged words with each other because we couldn’t agree how many clicks we had already today … the clicks were coming in faster than the little ‘watch tool’ I run in my Firefox status bar was updating … she was looking directly at our Google AdSense account, so she was right (as always LoL).
RE: the ad quantity and placement, I personally find that the 5 unit link bars perform much better then the leader board at the top … but my experience is limited.
Like you I find that some of the blogs shove too many ads in, especially the 250×250 blocks right in the middle of the post. I know that many of the ‘big’ probloggers report that those ads do well, but I don’t read many blogs that intrude that way … it’s like popups and (especially bad) those full page interstitials on some sites. I see on of those, I may stay long enough to read the item I came there for, but I never willingly return again … but one thing you should think of is a link unit across the top and a link unit at the bottom and 120×600 skyscrapers on the right or left column. These give quite a few ad unit placements yet do not interrupt the flow of your posts at all.
I actually tracked down a person who clicked on one of my link units and asked why he clicked … he considered the link unit a service because it allowed him to find 8 or 10 potential suppliers in one compact space … instead of doing 8 or 10 Google searches. Sounded good to me … all adverts are not a nuisance, they really can be a service to readers if they are kept out of the way of the main content.
2 adnan // Jul 25, 2006 at 9:55 am
Thanks for that excellent comment Dave,
Congrats on your Adsense so far. Yuor optimization must really be working well. Do you mind if I ask how much you’re making and the amounts of traffic you get per day?
I think I’ll follow your guidance and change the leaderboard, I think it must be a little offputting for people coming first time to the site. Also, Ill also try putting the Skyscraper in one of the sidebars, and see how that goes.
Thats interesting about tracking the person down. The reason I stopped using text links was because I wasn’t getting many clicks and apparently, a person has to click 2 times on a link unit for you to get the money.
Thanks again, and I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!
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