I’ve finished my two month experiment with various types of advertising embedded on this site. It was a failure. On the day after the MacWorld keynote, I earned $13 dollars from the Apple Store, because someone clicked on an ad to buy something. In addition I’ve averaged about $2 per day from Google ads. All the other ads on the site, which came primarily from the two leading ‘affiliate’ ad programs, produced zero results.
It seems that the people who read the site either block the ads, ignore the ads, or never buy anything.
I decided it’s not worth the effort and have removed the paid ads altogether. Instead, I’ll use the sidebar to feature links to other sites that are run by members of my family or close friends. In addition, I’ll put all the graphics for those sidebar images in the same directory ‘writersblocklive.com/friends/’, so those of you using Adblock or PithHelmet can easily nuke them.
P.S.
It is totally awesome the way everyone gives such great feedback! Thank you!
Reading the comments, I think I need to clarify a few points. I’m not talking about wanting to get rich off this site. I’ve been self-employed for almost twenty years, with some success, and the whole trick has been to offer a product or service that someone thinks is worth paying for. This is not a hobby; the site and the material I create for it are my product. I was simply hoping to find a way to get paid for my product. Working on this site takes time away from other ventures I’m involved in that have far better returns.
I’ve read about numerous ‘professional bloggers’ who claim to be making a living off their blogs, and figured that if I kept refining the site I could get a little revenue coming in. I’ve come to the conclusion that most of those ‘professionals’ are either lying, or can live on about ten bucks a day. I can’t.
This doesn’t mean I’m giving up; not by a long shot. But it means I won’t earn anything for my work until the book is printed, and that dictates a substantially different approach over the coming months.
P.P.S.
Enough people suggested it, that I think I’ll give the small Google ads another try. I’m just not going to get stressed out about it either way.
Honest advertising. Seems to work so far, it’s the first time I’ve even looked at the ads. I think you’re on to something here.
Hey! I just clicked on one! It works! it works! I haven’t checked out Wired since I bought a card from them 5 years ago.
I’ve found that regular ads really don’t make much money as well as the click throughs, although sometimes they do work. What I’ve found that really helps is tojust include either a text ad in the post or include a link to a product if applicable, such as directly to the apple store or to amazon or wherever.
Maybe you should put google ads in the RSS Feeds. I barely ever go on the site, i can read everything from the feed.
I’m in the “ignores ads and never buys anything” category. Why would I click on ads which don’t interest me, let alone buy anything though them?
I can promise though that I’ll be getting the hardcover copy of your book when it eventually gets published.
A blog like this won’t make much from ads because people are here to read the articles. Pay per click and affiliate ads work best on product blogs, where people are looking and shopping.
On a site like this, if you have enough traffic, pay per impression ads might be a better option. None of my sites have enough traffic yet to have investigated this form of advertising, so I’m not sure where to point you.
Isn’t a dollar a day better than nothing? At least it pays for hosting
I think the sidebar looks even more cluttered now
but the content is real and not (sometimes irrelevant) ads.
One of the problems with the internet is this money making proposition. In the BBS days everything was about community and most things were free. When I started getting on the internet in 95, there were few commerical sites. A few years later, all of these “make money on the intenet” books, seminars, and training material starting popping up. Now the internet is so crammed with commericial junk that it has become sad. All of the commercialism has brought all the things that annoy everyone. Pop Ups, Spam, Spyware, and mst Viruses are created so that someone can try to make a buck of the internet. I like this site and you can count me as one of the people who never paid attention to the ads and never clicked on any. (that I recall)
My point is that everything doesn’t have to be about making money. Sure, it would be nice for all of us to become rich off some website, but more likely, that isn’t going to happen. I pay the cost for hosting my own blog and I never considered making it a revenue generating operation. After running a BBS for 7 years, I am used to footing the bill for these types of things. Even I have some amazon.com links in my book review section, but I haven’t made a dime. Plus, I setup my amazon associate account so that I would only get store credit. I figure it may save me a buck or two on a book someday.
Bottom line: I’m not sure you need any ads at all. After all, aren’t you already plugging a future book with this site.
Carl – No, I’m not ‘plugging’ the book with this site; the site is the book. Sort of.
Well Mike. I have been running my site for almost two years and continually lose money.
Mac users compalin that the news and content of the Mac web sucks but that’s because the entire mac web is ran by teenagers. Teenagers have a few hours a day to blog and not woorry about making money, thinksecret, macdaily news, applex and others are owned by teens or college students.
Maccentral and TUAW are owned by corporations and thus have backing to have consistent content but unless you get on with them, then good luck trying to make a buck.
You put a lot of work into this site and you should earn something for doing it. Have you thought of putting a donation button up, i would gladly donate alittle to support the site. A way to get a good ammount of people to donate would be to offer a bonus for people who donated, here are a few ideas:
-give the ability to order and recieve a copy of the published book earlier than those who didn’t donate
-get a signed copy of the book
-get a small discount on the published book
-or inclued a bonus CD/DVD with the book that has the movies and pictures you post on the website.
Neil – Tried the donation idea for about a month, including a nice big button at the top of the sidebar asking for support. Got $5 (thanks again Tyler!)
I think it’s a bit like when you go to a museum and they have one of those plexiglas boxes at the entrance for donations; most people walk right past it.
Google cancelled my AdSense account because I was clicking my own ads. I didn’t read the part about how that’s illegal.
Google’s own documentation says that normal is about 1% CTR. So, 1% of any given sites traffic can be expected to do what is necessary to earn the site owner money. Moreover, the amount of money the site owner earns per click is pretty small. So, a site that gets 1000 visitors a day can expect 10 clicks. If each click paid $1 that would be $10 a day. $300 a month. OK. Whatever. Not really worth much effort. More interesting to me is Google’s strict rules about not allowing AdSense users to disclose their earnings. Google’s AdSense has become pretty pervasive throughout the blogosphere. I have to wonder if as many people would sign up if they knew on the front end how much money they would make?
Lastly, I strong agree with Carl. I liked BBS and the Internet a lot better when it was less about getting rich and more about spreading information and community. Which is to say, I really enjoy Writers Block Live as it is a return to the aspects of the Internet that I enjoy most.
aloha
the problem was, I think, ad-overkill ad-nausium. you had too many ads. that’s it.
Hola.
I write you from Spain. I think you’re doing a fenomenal work with this site and I agree with the donation idea (those who want to give a buck click the button -a little button please-, those who not just read the post).
I also wonder how I could buy a copy of your printed book from Spain. Maybe that is a too-early question but I really want to buy the book.
Regards.