One of the recent changes I had made to one of my more popular blogs (Blueprint for Financial Prosperity) was to remove a verticla gray line separating the sidebars from the main content. The initial reason for having the vertical line in the first place was to help the flow of the page and guide the reader when they were viewing articles. The problem is that the small and subtle vertical line would prevent a reader’s eyes from floating over to the ads past the content.
I removed the lines as a little bit of a test and my CTR improved by 50% as did my earnings. I didn’t think such a small change would have such a significant impact but it did.
Site statistics and RSS subscriptions make up your street cred and reach on the Web. When advertisers visit your site and consider paying you to show an ad, they want to know how many unique visitors show up and how many people read your words daily.
Let’s say you only have 15 unique visitors a day… that’s fine, don’t be afraid of it. If a prospective advertiser likes your site (which is one of the main reasons why they’d advertise in the first place) the second step is finding out your readership. If it’s low, they put it on their radar and wait to come back later. If it’s high, they might contact you to find out your rates. If it’s hidden, they have no idea and they could potentially forget about you. The path of least resistance is the one they’ll take.
There is nothing bad about low readership - unless you make it an issue. Nothing is more embarassing than having a prospective advertiser contact you only to find out you only have 15 visitors so let them know early!
Sitepoint has a forum dedicated to the selling of blogs, only $9.95 per listing.
For some thoughts on how to value a blog, read this article at Performancing.com.
Twenty six letters, twenty six steps, how convenient! These are some great tips on how to build a great site. Notice the common theme: Build great content.
If I were to divide up all the people who visit your blog into two categories, I’d split them up into searchers and readers. A searcher is someone who fired up a search engine, started to look for something, and ended up on your blog. A reader is someone who is going through their daily web routine and managed to end up on your blog, whether it be because you’re on his or her blogroll, subscription list, etc. A search will click on an advertisement where as a reader will most likely not.
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Patience is key for a blogger because it can oftentimes take weeks and months before the search engines find you. It will take time before you’ve written enough posts to attract readers and earn their trust. It will take time before you hit the coveted tipping point where all your hard work finally pays off. Until then, plug onward and upward and eventually the hard work will pay off.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of aspiring bloggers quit because they don’t see the fruits of their labor. While I don’t have concrete statistics, the sheer number of dead blogs out there is a testament to how difficult it is to persevere and continue to write when it seems as though no one is listening.
And when it happens, don’t consider yourself lucky. You deserved it.
A heatmap measures how long the typical internet reader keeps his eyes transfixed on a certain location of the page and overlays that over your page. An example of a heatmap is available on Google’s Adsense Tips page and it illustrates a lot of important ideas.
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What is a microblogger? A microblogger is a blogger who likes the idea of becoming a problogger but hasn’t quite made it just yet. Everyone starts off, at one point or another, as a microblogger and through hard (and intelligent) work and diligence, works his or her way up to becoming a problogger.
What is the purpose of this site? Well, I feel the premier site for a blogger trying to generate the most income remains Darren’s Problogger.net but I feel that a lot of the ideas he’s pushed forward work well for mid-size to larger bloggers and don’t work as well with the little guys. I’m not saying a microblogger shouldn’t read problogger, because you 100% definitely should. (There is a wealth of information there and it’s like when your parents tried to teach you something. It may not apply now, but wait a few days/weeks/months and you’ll find that its very applicable.) I just think there’s a bit of information left unsaid that a small-time blogger may find valuable.
I basically only have one blog, Blueprint for Financial Prosperity, which I started from the ground up back in February. It started with a PageRank of ZERO, no presence in Google, fewer than 10 unique hits a day (half of which were from me, myself from home, myself from work), no RSS subscribers, and Google Adsense barely let me in the door.
It now clocks in at around 600 uniques, 400 RSS subscribers, a homepage PageRank of 5, and I received some press in the New York Times business section. I am still a microblogger but I think some of the things I’ve learned along the way and some of the thoughts I’ve had may have some value for some of you.
