How AdSense Can Be Best Revenue Source For Blogs

Posted: 17 Jan 2011 01:19 AM PST

Recently, The Blog Tyrant did a guest post here on Daily Blog Tips titled Why I Will Never Use AdSense On A Blog Again. He explained how using AdSense can cause you to lose readers.

Daniel commented on the post saying:

AdSense is still a very efficient method on some niches/types of sites, so I wouldn’t exclude it forehand or forever.

I agree with Daniel here. While AdSense is not a a good choice for some blogs, it can be extremely useful for most of the blogs out there. In fact, it is the main revenue source for 45% of DBT readers.

In this post, I will discuss how AdSense can be best revenue source for blogs.

Why AdSense Is Better

Less Time: Implementing AdSense on a blog does not take more than 5 minutes. You need to paste the code into the sidebar widget or an appropriate plugin and Google will handle the rest. Affiliate Marketing, in contrast, can take several hours per post and Email Marketing requires extra effort.
Low Traffic Requirements: AdSense does not need loads of traffic. Small amount of traffic(around 5K visitors per month) can easily make you $10-20 per month. Affiliate Marketing and most of other monetization methods, however, need much more traffic.
No Buying Involved: Other monetization methods require people to buy products. Now, chances of someone clicking an ad are much higher than buying a product because he is not spending money. This makes generating revenue easier as opposed to methods requiring sales.
Targeted And “Safe” Ads: AdSense is better than other ad networks because the ads are targeted according to content and reader and there are almost no “unsafe” ads like other networks.

How To Maximize AdSense Revenue Without Losing Readers

One great point that The Blog tyrant made was that you lose readers because of AdSense. He said:

I was losing money. Each Adsense click of between 10 cents and $5 represented a loss to my blog.

That is one thing to consider when using AdSense. Most of the visitors who click ads do not come back and you lose them. But this does not mean that you should go and remove all the ads from your blog.

The key is to target right people.

Let’s take a break from all these stuff. Can you please do one small thing for me?

Follow following steps:

Open a new tab.
Open Google Analytics or the tracking software you use.
Go to “Search Engines” under traffic sources.
Compare the bounce rate with other traffic sources.

Search Engine visitors have higher bounce rate, right?

This is because search engine visitors come for quick info and leave as soon as they find it. No subscriptions, no purchases!

Just remember the forum you visited when you needed tech help last time. Did you visit it again?

No?

The same goes with majority of search engine visitors when they visit your blog.

All this exercise was just to show that you can show AdSense to search engine visitors.

Search Engine visitors also tend to click ads more often(how do you think Google makes so much with ads in search results?) than regular readers.

Now, they are not subscribing and are bouncing anyway, what is the use of trying to retain them?

It is a win win strategy to shows ads to search engine visitors.

Another good strategy is to show Adsense on older posts. Most of the regular readers check newer posts only and showing ads on older posts won’t hurt. In fact, Daniel himself shows ads on older posts.

You can use following WordPress Plugins to show AdSense ads only to search engine/old traffic:

Who Sees Ads: Who Sees Ads is the most powerful advertising plugin for WordPress. It lets you choose variety of conditions about when to display. And interface is simple drag and drop. Just give a name to ad block, drag rules, paste code and then add the template tag to your theme. The only drawback is that it does not automatically add ads inside content. But with all the features offered, you can’t complain!
Ads For Old Posts: Ads For Old Posts is a simple plugin that will let you display ads only on posts older than x days. Just paste the code, choose alignment and you are done.

I have used both plugins and they are very good and work well with WordPress 3.0.2(latest version as of writing this post).

Using the above methods, you can get best of both worlds. You can generate good revenue and at the same time, get readers.

Over To You

How has AdSense worked for you?
Have you considered displaying ads to search engine visitors only?
Do you have any other advice for fellow bloggers using AdSense?

About The Author: Hi, I am Ishan Sharma. I am an 19 year old Entrepreneur and blog about Blogging Tips on my blog Blogging With Success. I also run WordPress Blog Experts where I offer quality WordPress services for affordable prices. Do not hesitate to ask a question here or on my blog, I answer each and every comment on my posts.

Original Post: How AdSense Can Be Best Revenue Source For Blogs

4 Quirky Ways to Write More and Better

Posted: 15 Jan 2011 08:35 PM PST

This is a guest post by Arsene Hodali. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

Most people try to persuade you into writing by telling you how rewarding the art of writing is, and how although it’s challenging, it magically becomes easy over time.

That’s a load of bull.

Writing does not get easy over time. In fact ask a serious writer whether or not they love the act of writing and they’ll usually tell you they don’t. Writing is strenuous; it’s never going to be ‘easy’.

So why do some people seem to constantly write more and better than others if writing is equally hard for everyone? Well, that’s all due to the tactics they apply to writing. The best writers I’ve found all apply conditions to their writing.

And if you can calmly listen for a tad bit I’ll tell you about some of them.

1. Write as if you’re writing to a friend

Why do most new bloggers write more passionate and heartfelt content than most professional bloggers? Because most new bloggers don’t have an audience. People fear audiences; the bigger the audience gets the more they see their own flaws (even when they’re barely noticeable) and start to ponder whether or not they’re worthy of being in the audience’s limelight.

So one way to write better is to disregard the audience.

Stop writing for an audience and instead write for a friend.

Write everything as if you’re writing it for your best friend (imagine yourself writing an email to them perhaps).

What this does is that it makes your content more heartfelt and much much more simpler. For you and I know that whenever we try to persuade our friend into doing anything, let alone listen, we have to explain our situation in the simplest and most heartfelt manner.

Shockingly, this is the same passion and simplicity that will touch your audiences heart. Go figure.

2. Write as if you’re never sure until it’s written

Most people think that in order to write something down, they have to be 100% sure of what they’re talking about. And this is the problem. No one’s ever 100% sure (except for the ignorant). When you approach writing like this the only thing you’re doing is putting up a big barrier for yourself.

Instead approach writing as the process of being sure (which is quiet different). Tell yourself that the only way you’ll ever be more sure of anything is by writing about it.

Approach writing as the process of being sure.

People view writers as always being sure of themselves (how else could they write what they write about so well?), but frankly this is a mirage. Most writers actually write things down in order to be sure of themselves (they too are human after-all).

Through writing things down, they’re able to see their thoughts take form. Some of it makes sense, some of it doesn’t. Then they make sense of the nonsense, and present the finally piece to you; the audience. Books are not written in one sitting.

3. Stare at a blank canvas

Don’t approach writing as having to write in itself. What I propose is that you shouldn’t even think about writing when you want to write. Instead view writing as the act of staring at a blank canvas (yours can be a sheet of paper perhaps, but mine’s the computer screen).

This is what I do. I set a designated time everyday where I must stare at a blank screen for at least one hour (I use WriteRoom). What this does is calm me down. For this approach tells me that I don’t have to write, I don’t have to think, I frankly, don’t have to do anything except stare at a blank screen with my keyboard in front of me. The thing being that after staring at a blank screen long enough I always find my fingers flying all over the keyboard. As if they had a mind of their own.

This is the beauty of staring at a blank canvas, your fingers start doing the writing for you, not your brain.

As Seth Godin frequently says, “You’re lizard brain fears work.” It fears writing… But it doesn’t fear sitting down and doing nothing. For that’s not work, that’s mindless staring.

But your fingers don’t fear work. Quiet the opposite, your fingers love work. So what staring at a blank canvas does is it calms the brain (have no fear, there’s no work here), while giving your fingers all the material they need in order for them to do what they love (work). And the more you learn, the better your fingers get (this is called practice).

I figured that if my brain had to do the writing for me instead of my fingers, I’d be writing a lot more less (this post would more than likely be nonexistent).

4. Don’t hit publish quiet yet

You’ve written your masterpiece, congratulations! Now leave it alone and go do something else.

Don’t hit publish; Don’t send it out into the world just yet. Wait a day.

We all have this urge to put our work out there as soon as it’s done, but what most of us forget is that in that brief moment after we’ve finished writing we all get this delusional view of our writing.

In that brief moment after we’re done writing something we all think we’ve written masterpieces.

So disillusion yourself. Walk away from your ‘masterpiece’. Come back to it tomorrow and read it again. Come back to it when you no longer have on those rose-tinted glasses that make all your writing seem amazing.

Now that you’re back, is your writing still good? Does it now look like all the other writing that’s out there or is it still as unique as you thought it was? If so, then click that publish button, for the world needs more good writing. But if you think you can write better or improve upon it then do that instead.

But I warn you, don’t fuss over perfection, it’s non-existent. While clicking that publish button a lot slower than you usually do, keep in mind that you will still need to ship as much as possible (Seth’s words again, seems I like the guy). This is why I urge you to stay at least one day ahead in your writing. For this gives you enough time to wait a day until you publish, while still allowing you to constantly put work out there into the world.

And as I said earlier writing isn’t easy for anyone. But by applying certain boundaries (I’d rather not call them tricks) to your writing you can in fact write more and better. It’s never going to be easy, but it does get easier.

About the Author: Arsene Hodali examines life through whimsical thoughts, questions, and actions over at dancePROOF.com. From surviving the Rwandan Genocide to living on two hours of sleep a day for 6 months, he’s experienced some pretty wild things. To quote a certain hippy, “He’s seen things man.” Outside of whimsical ponderings, you can find him running “Quotes” Clothing. He asks you to ponder life’s mysteries with him.

Original Post: 4 Quirky Ways to Write More and Better