Fluctuations in AdSense Earnings

The AdSense earnings can vary from as few as two to three cents per click to as much as one dollar per click. These fluctuations are quite normal and are usually the result of one or more of the following reasons.

• Drop in ad impressions due to reduced traffic or page views
• Drop in the click-through-rate (or CTR) - A CTR of 1% to 4% is considered normal but I have seen days where it drops to as low as 0.5%
• Lack of relevant contextual ads for the content of the pages - low relevancy would mean that AdSense would serve low paying ads
• Reduction in advertising budgets of advertisers
• Seasonal variations - for example, festive seasons may attract bigger advertising budgets and therefore there will be higher cost-per-clicks (CPC)
  

The advertisers seem to bid higher on the beginning and in the middle of a month. But, CPC seem to drop towards the end of the month, probably because advertisers run out of gas.

Further Reading:

• Diagnosing and treating revenue fluctuations (Part I)
• Diagnosing and treating revenue fluctuations (Part II)

Monetization - A Reality Check

Blogging for Money is not as easy as the hype that goes around. It is certainly not a matter of simply starting a blog, putting some ads on it and waiting for the monthly checks to arrive at your post box.

This recent post on the Alexa Blog presents an estimated calculation on possible earnings from blog monetization, serving as a reality check on money blogging. It is estimated that, despite the economic setbacks, the online ad spending in US alone will expand to an impressive $24.5 billion in 2009. The figure worldwide will be much more and a portion of that money can be grabbed by all the bloggers out there. The problem, however, is that it needs lot of hard work from the part of the bloggers, to be of any success. The above mentioned calculation is somewhat narrowly scoped in that it only considers CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions) ads, but the overall message it conveys is still true.

So remember, if you want to monetize your blog, don't expect anything soon. Be prepared to invest lot of time and effort to build up your visitors by offering quality content and being responsive to their questions etc. It may require a year or two for you to be successful. (The time period will, of course, vary depending on your blogging niche and the amount of effort put)

AdSense Tips

Google AdSense is the dominant provider of contextual advertising services. If you are also using AdSense as a means of monetizing your blog, this article will provide you a set of tips for maximizing your revenue.

Eye Catching Positions
A typical visitor to a web page scans its content in what’s called an F-shaped pattern. According to an eye-tracking study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, the dominant scanning pattern of readers consists of a starting horizontal scan at the top of the page, followed by a shorter horizontal scan slightly below the first scan and finally a vertical scan along the left edge of the page. These three scans form a general F shape pattern.

This is an important advice given by many web design gurus when it comes to deciding the layout of a site. Web designers are generally advised to place their important content to fall in this field of view. The same tip is useful for ad placement, a fact also confirmed by the heat map published by AdSense Help.

According to that map, ads placed below an article also performs well because readers generally look for where to go next?. The study referenced above says that this behavior forms an E-shaped scanning pattern, which is also common.

Complementing Ad Design
Ads that complement the color theme of your blog tend to perform better than those that contrast. Even though this AdSense Help article explains three forms of color schemes, namely Blend, Complement and Contrast, ads that contrast don’t perform that well. This fact is confirmed by an optimization tip published on the AdSense blog and also a guest post by pro blogger Darren Rowse on the same blog.

Find the Right Size
Ad size also plays a crucial role in catching the readers’ eyes and also in attracting better ads. Generally, bigger ads perform better. However, too big is also bad. According to Darren, the Medium Rectangle size (300 x 250) tends to perform better than the Large Rectangle. This is due to the fact that more advertisers tend to prefer the Medium Rectangle because of its wide use.

The AdSense blog, too, recommends the Medium Rectangle along with the Leaderboard (728 x 90) and Skyscraper (160 x 600) formats.

Number of Ads
This is another useful advice by the blogging guru Darren. General belief is that higher the number of ads, higher the chances of readers clicking on them. But too much ads can drive away the readers.

Use of different ad formats such as Link Units, Image and Video ads, and using Google Analytics to find out which content generates the most revenue are the other tips offered by Darren. Last, but not least, experimenting with different ad sizes, color schemes and positions etc is the best way to find out which ads works well on your blog/site, says Darren.

Related Posts

• Color Elements of AdSense Ad Units
• HOWTO: Find the RGB Values of a Color
• Customizing AdSense Ad Units
• Standard Ad Units

Contextual Advertising – AdBrite

Article Series: Blog Monetization

In this second article of the series looking in to contextual advertising networks, we will have a go at AdBrite. (Previous one was about Yahoo! Publisher Network)

AdBrite, in fact, offers more than just contextual advertising. It's text and in-line ad formats (in-line ads are the pop-up ads that appear when you hover over a double underlined keyword in your content) are contextual while there are other formats which enable you to be part of an ad marketplace. As a publisher, you can be a seller of ad space in this market place.

To get started, you need to sign-up and setup an ad zone. (A zone is analogous to an AdSense channel, but unlike in AdSense where the ad unit is the primary, here the zone is the primary unit and you attach ads to the zone). Once a zone is defined, you get an ad code which can be easily installed with the use of Blogger's HTML/Javascript widget.

AdBrite does not impose exclusivity; i.e. not allowing ads from other networks to be displayed on the same page. However, when displaying AdBrite ads with AdSense, remember to comply with the AdSense terms of ensuring that "formatting or colors of the third party ads is different enough from that of the Google ads" as described here.

Earnings are on Cost-per-Click, Cost-per-Impression and Cost-per-View bases depending on the ad format used. Payments are made via checks bi-monthly. The earnings are paid out two months after accrual, meaning, for example, earnings in January are paid in March. The default minimum payment threshold is $100, but it can be set to as low as $5!

Standard Ad Units

All most all of the online advertising schemes, contextual or otherwise, today offer various ad formats such as Banner, Half Banner, Leaderboard etc, that come in various sizes. These formats and sizes are in fact defined by a standard (or rather a guideline) published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

The IAB is an organization comprising of over 375 media and technology companies, who have got together with the objectives of improving the field of online advertising and marketing.

This guideline, as stated by IAB, “provide a framework for advertising inventory and web page design”. Advertising networks, advertisers, publishers and web site designers, all benefit from the adaptation of these guidelines. Ad networks don't have to offer a multitude of ad sizes, advertisers can design their ads to fit these standard sizes, web site designers can optimize their template designs and finally, publishers get the flexibility of working with multiple ad networks without having to change ad placeholders.

The guideline defines standard names and sizes (e.g. Banner is 468 x 60 pixels, Leaderboard is 728 x 90 pixels), a maximum recommend download size, and for animated ad units, a recommended animation duration. In addition for ad unit guidelines, IAB defines guidelines for other forms of advertising such as pop-ups and rich media.

As publishers, it is wise to evaluate whether an ad network conform to these voluntary guidelines before deciding to sign up with that network.

Contextual Advertising – Yahoo Publisher Network

Article Series: Blog Monetization

In the previous article, we looked at contextual advertising in general. This one will take a detail look in to one of those schemes, the Yahoo! Publisher Network.

Yahoo’s Publisher Network (YPN) is pretty much similar to Google AdSense in operation. Content Match is the AdSense counterpart and, in addition, YPN offers RSS ads. To get started, you need to sign up for a publisher account.

Displaying ads is just like in AdSesne, where you have to select from one of many ad formats and color schemes. Then you can attach an optional Reporting Category (similar to AdSense Channels) to that ad unit. Once defined, all you have to do is to copy the given ad code in to your blog or web site. In Blogger, the ad units can be easily incorporated with the use of an HTML/Javascript widget.

Unlike AdSense, Content Match does not impose a limit to the number of ad units that can be displayed on a page. One caveat, however, is that you cannot display ad units from another publisher in the same page in which YPN ads are displayed.

Earnings are on a Cost-per-Click basis, so your income potential depends on the numbers of visitors and the number of clicks they make. There are 4 payments methods and PayPal is one of them, allowing for convenient and quick receipt of earnings.

Compared to AdSense, availability of easy ad filtering by way of ad categories and sub categories is a plus. Additionally, ability to receive payments via PayPal is another important advantage over AdSense.

Blog Monetization – Contextual Advertising

Article Series: Blog Monetization

In this article, we will be looking at one of the most popular forms of web advertising, contextual advertising. Contextual Advertising refers to the mechanism of displaying advertisements relevant to the content of a web page currently viewed by a visitor. This is done via automated systems that scan the page content looking for advertising keywords and then display relevant ads for those keywords.

The contextual ads come in two main types; on-page ads such as Google AdSense or pop-up ads such as Vibrant Media. The payments are either based on the number of clicks (Cost per Click – CPC) or the number of types the ad is displayed (i.e. impressions) (Cost per Impression – CPM).

The two terms CPC and CPM are named from the point of view of the advertiser and not that of the publisher of the ad. For example, each time a visitor clicks on a contextual ad, the corresponding advertiser has to pay some amount to the ad network. That is the cost the advertiser has to pay the ad network for that click. The ad network pays a portion of that cost to the publishers.

Options
Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of currently available contextual advertising schemes

• Google AdSense
• Yahoo! Publisher Network
• Microsoft adCenter
• Text Link Ads
• Vibrant Media
• AdBrite
• Clicksor

References:

• Contextual Advertising
  

Blog Monetization

This one marks the beginning of a series of articles on one of the hottest topics amongst the bloggers all over, monetization. Much has been written about monetizing blogs, but the bitter truth is that it’s very hard. Nevertheless, the message from the people who have succeeded is that, if you have the commitment and the determination, making money blogging is not impossible. This series is an attempt to look at the state of the art of blog monetization and to enumerate the current know-how in the blogosphere, by looking at both the successes and the failures of others.

First of all, let’s have a look at the current income generation schemes available for bloggers. (This is a summarized listing of such schemes and the follow up articles will elaborate on each one.)

There are two primary types of blog-based income; direct and indirect. Though no standard definitions of these two types are found, we can describe direct income as those income generated in relation to the content of your blog. Indirect income can be described as those income generated through means other than in relation to the content.

Exploring further, we find today, the following popular direct income schemes.

• Advertising – like in other types of media (TV, radio, newspapers etc.), advertising is a prime source of income for bloggers. This scheme can be further categorized as below.
• Contextual Advertising – Display of ads relevant to your content (e.g. Google AdSense)
• Search Advertising – Displaying ads for searching within your blog (e.g. AdSense for Search) or when you get visitors via search engines (e.g. Chitika)
• Sponsorships (aka Targeted Advertising) – Getting vendors related to the content of your blog to display ads for time and size based (i.e. not per-click or per-impression) rates
• Affiliate Schemes – this is where you earn commission when your readers buy items advertised in your blog. This differs from contextual advertising in that clicking on an affiliate ad alone will not give you any revenue. Amazon Associates is a famous example in this category.
• Selling Your Content – Thirdly is the means of selling your own content in various print and electronic mediums. Books, ebooks, CD/DVDs etc are examples here.
  

In the indirect income type, we have a more variety of options.

• Services (aka Consulting) – Once you build up a good readership and an image as a reliable source for professional help, you can start offering services at a charge. It could be advice on technical matters, search engine optimization, graphic designing, Internet marketing etc.
• Sales of Goods (aka Merchandising) – This refers to selling materials such as T-shirts and caps to your readers, at a profit.
• Paid Writing – You can write sponsored reviews about various products. PayPerPost is an example in this category. Writing for team blogs, doing outsourced writing for corporate blogs are other options here.
• Donations – Offering genuine help to your readers and getting donations in return is another means of income for bloggers.
• Selling the Blog – Lastly, is the act of selling out your blog. It could be a hard decision if you’ve put lot of hard work in building it up, but some people develop blogs with the intention of selling it.
  

All schemes above are not applicable for all types of blogs. Selecting what is suitable depends on factors such as the niche of your blog, your readership (e.g. merchandising is good if you have an established base of returning readers) and availability of advertisers.

In the coming articles we will be exploring each of these schemes in more detail.

References:

• 10 Ways to Monetize Your Blog
• How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs
• 10 Simple Steps To Directly Monetizing Blogs