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Dear Mr Google, please explain

March 23rd 2009 23:02

Just when I thought I was coming to terms with the slippery slope of AdSense methodology, I uncover evidence that everything I thought I knew may have to be discarded.

Here is what has happened.

Total AdSense earnings yesterday: US$0.01
Total AdSense clicks yesterday: 0

Has AdSense discovered a new form of mathematics? Or have I perhaps, in recognition of my 10 months of tenacious blogging, finally made it on to the bottom rung of some Frequent Writer Reward Scheme?

Dear Mr Google, your response is eagerly awaited.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: AdSense, Blogging, Making money by blogging

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AdSense and other questions

March 21st 2009 07:48

AdSense can be confusing, and after a reasonable amount of research there is still much I don't know. However, I can offer the following. It's not the full story, but I'll aim to answer some common questions.

1. How much can you make blogging on Orble?

You will make about US$15 a month if your readership is about 500 a day (if 500 readers a sounds big to you, see Question 4 for blog growth forecasts). I can verify this earnings level for 500 readers a day because that's my current average (spread over six Orble blogs).

The Orble Blog Adviser blog has a post here which analyses the performance Orble's best-performing blog, ZCars. At the time of the post ZCars had about 20,000 readers a day and earned about US$40 a day ($1,200 a month), according to Orble.

Having these two sets of figures - for ZCars and for my blogs - allowed me to make a comparison. ZCars has 40 times more readers than I do (20,000 divided by 500) but earns 80 times as much ($1,200 divided by $15). However, ZCars' $1,200 a month is before Orble's 50% cut, bringing the equation back to 40 times my earnings.

My blogs and ZCars therefore earn AdSense income at exactly the same rate, making the Blog Adviser post not just roughly accurate but remarkably reliable.

2. Who clicks on AdSense advertisements?
This is like asking who reads ads in newspapers, or actually takes notice of spam email ads. The answer is that somebody does, otherwise the system wouldn't exist. Further, the answer to Question 1 shows that the number of money-making clicks is predictable - AdSense click rate is between 1 and 2% of visitors to your blog.

3. How much do I earn per ad click?
The answer to this is confusing, because Google's advertising system is complicated. There is no set fee to buy a Google ad. The rate an advertiser pays depends on key words - the words which describe the core subject of the ad and, typically, the core subject of the blog or web page where the advertisements will be placed. The more popular the key word, the more expensive the ad.

And if someone clicks on an expensive key word ad on one of your pages, you get paid more than for an inexpensive key word.

I recently made US$3.53 in AdSense earnings in one day - from one click! It was a record; an extraordinary, one-off result. The following day things returned to normal - I earned $0.06, from two clicks.

4. How quickly does blog readership grow?
If you write it, they will come. Believe it.

Another post on the Blog Adviser blog is entitled 'Orble Blog traffic over time: what to expect'. It offers a chart which shows that a blog on which you post a minimum of three posts every 20 days (say an average of just over four a month), will grow from zero to 900 readers a day in 500 days.

All six of my Orble blogs were started from scratch (I pig-headedly refused to take over abandoned blogs) within the last 10 months, and again I have found this Orble advice very accurate.

The problem for the impatient blogger, as you will see if you check the chart, is that growth starts slowly before accelerating from about 300 days. After 300 days, an average blog which has been added to regularly should be seeing about 150 readers a day. Just 200 days later, the number should be about 900 readers a day.

My two earliest blogs are both now about 300 days old and have tracked or slightly exceeded the Orble chart. If they continue to track that chart, things are about to get exciting at Vyoos and Zoomies.

5. So it's just a matter of writing at least once a week for 500 days?
To a large extent, yes. There are of course some things you should and shouldn't do, and they have been covered by many people in many posts. Three brief points are worth making again, however.

Firstly, you don't have to be Hemingway, but good spelling and grammar are rewarded.

Secondly, choose a niche subject and stick to it - it is the nature of blogging that writing about anything and everything will attract poor readership numbers.

Thirdly, the more content the better. You may have noticed that ZCars readers most days get two or three quality posts. It doesn't have to be that many, but three a week will get you substantially better results than one a week, and one a day will do better again.
image: washingtonmonthly.com

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: AdSense, Blogging, Making money by blogging

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