Joe, your experiment is very interesting. I'll follow this thread too. Hope you'll come with an update soon
If your topic is borderline being against Ezines terms then are you checked Adsense Terms of Service to see if it is ok there?
It will be fine with the TOS of Google Adsense. EZA tends to be picky about certain topics. Like they won't let you submit articles that promote the usage of PLR material. The keyword phrase I am targeting is in the medical field. Nothing illegal or anything like that. But like I said earlier, they approved the first article, so I think I'm ok in terms of using the power of EZA. Joe
UPDATE: Well, being that it's my birthday, I was a little lazy and didn't write and submit a new article to EZA. But I did do a little backlink building. I went to the top 5 blogs associated with my keyword phrase, and left a comment linking back the the homepage of my blog. I also create one new backlink (using this same method) for my first article approved by EZA. I stopped after 5 backlinks because I didn't want it to seem too unnatural (most three say old blogs don't get 20 backlinks in one day). When I do a search for Keyword Phrase #1, it comes out ranked at #16 (near the middle of the second page of Google). But how can this be when I stated that my competition was 7 webpages? Well, when you place the keyword phrase in quotes, there are only 7 results. Meaning, that there are only 7 webpages with that exact phrase on them. Without the quotes, you get webpages that contain ANY of the words that make up the keyword phrase. So when I do a search right now (6:37 pm EST on Aug 15, 2008), the EZA article wrote for KW #1 is ranked 16 out of 3,930,000 results. The article is getting outranked by other webpages that don't have the exact keyword phrase because of the amount of backlinks and other factors determining rank position. The article is ranked #1 for KW inside of quotes. I created a backlink for the article to help it increase its ranking. The more backlinks it has, the higher it will go. Best wishes, Joe Here are my results for the blog: Day 3 Unique Visitors Total: 14 Unique Visitors Per Day: 4.67 Income Earned Total: $0.00 Income Earned Per Day: $0.00 Actions Taken: Total Posts In My Blog: 2 Articles Written and Submitted To EZA: 2 Articles That Are Live: 1 Total Article Views: 4 Total Article Clicks: 0 Forums I Have Posted In: 2 Blogs I Have Posted In: 5
Hmm. I think your CTR for adsense is a tad high. Im not sure on the niche so cant say. But generally i never get 10%. But ill be watching with interest none the less.
Im glad your documenting everything you do. I'm starting a blog and going through some things you are and its really helping
nice thread.. i am experimenting with my blog as well, currently i made over $100 + this month with link advertising and reviews..
You think so? I have Adsense on several sites. My CTRs go from around 3% to 13%. But you are correct, 10% may be too high for this niche. Well, only throwing traffic at the blog will tell. Joe
Hello All, I was doing some more reflection last night on this particular blog. I think that it would be easier to hit my $25/day goal using non-niche affiliate programs as opposed to the using Adsense ads. When I say "non-niche affiliate programs", I am not talking about an ebook in a totally unrelated topic. The few affiliate programs that I am considering using pay you a commission just for getting a lead. An a lead can be as simple as getting someone to get a free quote or fill out a questionnaire. There is an auto insurance affiliate program that pays you $6 just for getting someone to request a free insurance quote. You don't have to sell them anything. What do you think the conversion on that would be? Even non-targeted traffic because most people have cars (and thus may need auto insurance, or at least would like to get a free quote to compare rates to their current coverage). So let's say that the conversion is 2%. Is this a high assumption? If it were a product that's getting purchased, maybe. But to simply have people fill out some basic info to get a free quote, I think it's realistic (although the traffic is untargeted). Now let's compare this option to Adsense (which I only have 1-2 advertisers for): In my original post, I calculated how I would need to get 500 unique visitors each day to the blog to generate $25/day goal (and that's assuming I am making $0.50 per click, which one person thought was much too high). So using a 2% conversion on a $6 payout, that same 500 a day traffic should produce a daily income amount of $60, more than twice my objective. Even if my conversion was a measly 1 percent, I'd still be making $30 a day. Or another way to look at it: To hit my daily goal using this affiliate program, I would need much less traffic. If my assumptions are correct, than I would only need to generate 208 unique visitors a day to reach $25. ($25 goal/$6 commissions = 4.17 sales needed per day/2% converion = 208 visitors). Much easier to generate 208 unique visitors a day than 500. Just some more food for thought. Best wishes, Joe
being that you have a health blog and this is for auto insurance, i don't think you will even get 2% or 1% even though everyone has a car. i've tried a similar program - maybe the same one - from cj and linked directly to the ad from adwords with little success and this was very targeted. i think part of the problem is that for the people to request a quote there are a few forms to fill out as opposed to a simple form requesting just a name and email address. CJ does have some partners that will pay you for leads and all you need to do is collect a name and email - these, of course, don't pay $6 per lead but you may get a higher conversion since your viewers won't have to fill out many forms. also, i think 10% is very reasonable for adsense. i get around 30% for all of my blogs. i put 2 250x250 blocks above the blog post and a 360x280 within the post. i also have 3 adlink units thruout. the other thing i've found out is that if you use a very plain simple theme the ctr goes up a lot as opposed to a fancy, nice looking theme for your blog.
Totally respect your opinion and experience. You know what though? I'm going to have to find out for myself. I mean, if a particular affiliate program has a EPC for the last three month at $419.00, then somebody must be selling those leads, right? Averaging $419.00 for every 100 clicks is something that I need to test out myself. But first I need some traffic. Joe
good luck with this. i'll keep an eye on this thread to see how you do. i'm especially interested to see how you'll do with the adsense.
Ten percent with adsense is really high for a fair-ish traffic blog but thats my opinion. With more traffic the economies of scale comes to play you know.
I will be watching this, I wish to do something similar, started my own Blog in earnest a day or two ago
UPDATE I know that I am still very early in the process, but the lack of traffic is worrying me. I'm thinking that either the few competitors have super-backlinks (unlikely) or that the amount of traffic for those keywords is nowhere near what the keyword tool is telling me (which is very possible). I'm not about to quit or anything. Just voicing a concern. The article that was puplished in EZA is doing really well (ranking-wise). Here's the timeline of its short life: -approved yesterday afternoon -two hours later was ranking at #18 (bottom of second page on Google) for my #1 keyword phrase -last night was ranking at #16 -this morning was ranking at #11 (top of second page - almost there) -just now was ranking at #6 (just below the fold on the first page) Not bad, right? But there's no traffic! According to my keyword research tool, there's over 1400 searches a day for this long tail keyword phrase. But its got to be wrong. Surely at #6, I should be getting a percentage of that 1440+ in traffic, right? We'll see how things play out over the rest of the weekend. Joe
JoeMack, are you going to be posting your updates on this thread or on one of your blogs? I'm going to follow, I like your goal oriented mindset. p.s. the article directory in my sig does adsense sharing too.. plus you'll be getting backllinks from your article marketing efforts. Good luck. Visualize your success!