As I talk to other bloggers running Google Adsense, they mention how their eCPM (effective Cost Per Thousand impressions) increased with the introduction of a new layout or optimization idea, not realizing that eCPM isn’t really affected by that.
Effective Cost per Thousand impressions (eCPM) is directly related to the content of the advertisements being displayed by your contextual block - if you write about blue widgets, you’ll see blue widgets. If you write about structured settlements, you’ll see advertisements about structured settlements. When you write about mesothelioma, your eCPM (if people click on the ads) will be higher than if you wrote about structured settlements, which will be higher than if you wrote about blue widgets. The content of your site, and this is why niche selection is crucial if you’re in it for the money, is what will dictate your eCPM - not your layout.
Clickthrough Rate (CTR) depends on a whole host of factors, one of which is layout. If you remove visual impediments between your content and the ad (blending), then you’ll see your CTR increase. When it was permitted, people put images next to the ads because it drew the attention of the reader who would then be enticed by the ads. By making layout changes, you affect CTR.
Increasing your eCPM may have a negative effect on your CTR (people visiting your site for blue widgets will start to see advertisements for mesothelioma, which they don’t care about, so they don’t click) so don’t devote your time to increasing your eCPM. Likewise, layout decisions could increase CTR but lower your ultimate revenue number. If you have three blocks per page and drop it down to one block, you will likely see a CTR increase but an overall revenue decrease because the number of clicks will fall. This may have different benefits down the road but in the short term (which is a bad way of thinking about things) it may not be the right move.
The key to being a successful blogger, from both a following perspective and a monetary perspective, is to focus on the content of your site - not optimizing contextual advertising or trying to make an ad sale. Rich valuable readable content is crucial because it is what will drive traffic to your site and that, in turn, will entice readers to show up.
I would argue that if you have fewer than 500 unique visitors per day, you really shouldn’t focus on earning advertising money and instead focus on ways to get traffic to come to your site. Outside of a couple adsense blocks, focusing on content will yield the biggest gains down the road because as you gain exposure and backlinks, your value as an advertisement platform increases. In fact, if you sell advertising too cheap and experience typical blogging growth curves (especially if you sell an ad before reaching some sort of critical mass) you may start kicking yourself in the ass because you sold something off for too cheap.
For example, I sold my first private sale text link ad on Blueprint for Financial Prosperity on January 6th, 2006. I don’t have traffic records or anything but I know that I had relatively low Pagerank (probably a 3 or a 4), with fewer than 500 unique visitors, and not that impressive a list of backlinks. I was growing, not growing tremendously, but I wasn’t making a tremendous amount of money. I sold a text link ad for $12 a month for six months - a grand total of $72.
By comparison, my total take that month was $1,114.75 after expenses which included the once a quarter payment of $326.99 (For 4th Quarter of 2005 in which a post I wrote about Amazon’s Price Drop Policy was Dugg, so it was atypical). So, that $72 represented almost 10% of the otherwise $787.76 I would’ve probably pocketed sans the Amazon excitement - so you can see why I signed it.
By the time that arrangement was up for renewal in July of 2006, I was asking for and getting $50 per text link sold.
The lesson is: Don’t focus on advertising, focus on content. Content will make you more popular and more money than devoting energy to monetizing. Not only that, you might sign yourself to a long term deal that ends up being bad for you.
