Traffic <> Money
January 24th 2009 14:19
When people talk about earning money online, one of the most common aspects is ad revenue. AdSense, Kontera and a bunch of other services provide keyword-generated ads and our visitors click them to generate a few cents. That's the theory.
In practice, although I've not been doing this whole online thing for long, I've noticed that the reality is a long, long way from the theory. Take that article I published yesterday, for example. In one day, my traffic on the various HubPages I've written tripled. OK, so it's not as big a deal as it sounds - the actual figures went from around 30 hits to 90 or so - but it's still a pretty significant change.
However, looking at the ad stats is depressing. On this particular piece of work, I paid close attention to the important key phrases. I even went off and used Google's tools to find which phrases were most popular in a stunning use of SEO techniques (well, stunning for me, anyway!). Twenty-four hours on (roughly) and I had a quick peek at the stats: lots of lovely page impressions and not a single ad click. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Now, it may just be me, but I find that disheartening. Twenty four hours isn't long, but it's still pretty indicative, I'd say. Personally, if I like something on the web, I'll click an ad - not only to see what's available behind some of those weird bits of advertising text, but also to show that I appreciated the creator's efforts in posting their work. Apparently, there aren't that many other people who think like this.
Presumably, this is the practical upshot of ads invading everything on the web. Commercialisation has perhaps made us almost blind to the ad text - our brains simply cut that part of the screen out, marking it as useless bumpf. Or maybe Windows has a built-in ad detector that pushes our mice away from the clickable area. Who knows?
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Comment by moonglow
A Lot of Scrap
The Wily Wordsmith:Poems, Stories and Creative Scraps
Paranormal Paranormal
Teacup Tales
Rubber Ball
In Zoo
However, there are some great ads displayed on my pages (yahoo!). Like ads for knitting cruises on my craft pages.
Good luck attracting clickers! I see you have those earn-money-fast ads displayed here!!
Comment by Chris Champion
Vyoos
Zoomies
Bloggercises
The Blog of Lists
Newly Old
Money Whither
I've taken the liberty of writing a general response to this post, and posting it on my blog here, pointing to yours.
In short, I think you have all the ingredients: you just need time and more content to see reader numbers, and thereby click-throughs, grow.
Best of luck,
Chris
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak