my blog gets around 20 hits a day or so, but it has help with a bit of change per day, and provides click throughs to some of my other sites. But I see the traffic rising so I will work on it more to put in more effort, time, to try to bring the money and traffic up.
It boils down to traffic. Get lots of it. Even if you have the greatest content in the world, what good is it if no one knows about your blog? There are many places you can get traffic from. Exchange links with other blogs, get a media mention, advertise, etc.
As others have said, it depends on the blog. A couple of points to be aware of: Relevancy is important for ads. If Google isn't displaying ads relevant to your content, there's generally less chance of clicks. Blogs that post multiple articles on one page often confuse Adsense because of the varied topics - try to drive your visitors to single pages if you can. Don't expect to make money with advertising right away. Yes, some of us do make significant money, but it takes time and effort. It's not going to happen overnight for most people. Many bloggers would be overjoyed if they even made a dollar a day. If you keep working at it, and build your traffic with honest content, the money will eventually come, but it could take years. Be patient. Search engines work from key words and phrases that humans type. The more words you have written, the more chance of a search engine directing someone to your site. That doesn't mean you should be writing long articles; people have short attention spans - keep it short and to the point. Keep it fresh. If you can post every day, that's much better than once a week. People may visit your site a few times out of curiosity or by accident; if they don't find something new, they may not come back. Finally, have fun. If blogging isn't something you enjoy, forget it. It's just not your thing, move on. This isn't the path to easy riches, so if you aren't loving it, what's the point?
I watch all my referals I get from search engines and chart what phrases bring people to my site. I then make sure I try to cover that content in the near future -- which then brings more and different referals to my sites. Over time I have double my traffic every month with the bare minimum of actual advertising and marketing. I do ask my readers to "Email This Post" to their friends that they think will like the content -- which has also increased my readership base.
This is an interesting topic. I just recently created a wordpress blog on my site, but it is simply being used a a simple way to post news. I was considering starting a blog, just as an extension to my existing site to post my views regarding current sports issues, rather than simply posting in my forum only. I figured it would be a way to eventually bring in a few extra faces into the actual site. I never really thought about the revenue side of it.
If you start a blog -- commit to it. Make a firm commitment to spend x hours a week or x days a month updating it. Get a calendar, or have your PC remind you to write content. I write over 20 articles per day (based on e-mails I receive) and I'm getting to the point where I may write more. But I started out writing 1 article every 2 days and the traffic was not so good. Now I'm getting work offers from people interested in my contents (and my odd opinions).
Good point. I have been looking at different blogs as of late to see how others approach them in terms of content amount, content length, etc... Never really paid attention to adsense or other ad placement though. Would you mind PM'ing me your blog so I can check it out?
Same with my blog. It sat there and I was blithely posting every day. Never made a cent, as it was not set up that way. Then the end of Dec. 2005, (like this was a long time ago, lol) I changed the direction of my blog from a personal blog to an internet marketing blog. Lots of good articles, links, and free downloads...all aimed at internet marketing. Then earlier this month, got help on how to add google adsense to the blog. And poof! A non-money maker has become a tiny cash register! I use wordpress and the dawgblog is on it's own domain. The Iowa Dawg
Not so. You can't run Google and Adsense ON THE SAME PAGE AT THE SAME VIEWING, but it's fine to rotate them - for any given page, I show Yahoo about 10% of the time just for variety.
I'm sure that when Adsense and Yahoo are showing at the same time on the same page there will be a problem. Can anyone else verify this?
No, google does not want competition for contextual ads on a page. If running other contextual ads with google on same page, google will disable their ads. Read google TOS for clarification. I got an email from google bringing to my attention that I had google adsense and yahoo and clickbank contextual ads all on the same page. How they can tell is beyond me, as it is okay to have google adsense and amazon on the same page. Google adsense and banners on the same page. Google adsense and text ads on the same page. Maybe it is because yahoo and clickbank contextual ads also run on scripts? The Iowa Dawg
They can tell because their ad can trigger a read of your page and of course can see if you have both Adsense and YPN code in it at the same time. No doubt that triggers something else that notifies you and puts you on a "list" to be checked again - the whole thing is probably untouched by humans.
Google enlists an army of people just to check sites. Go to google site, somewhere there is where you can join up and be a googler of sites. The Iowa Dawg