Monetizing Your Blog - Improving CTR
Last month Aaron Lynch posted a call for suggestions on ways to improve the revenue and CTR for InstantSpot. I read his post and the comments that followed and really didn't think much about it at first. Then near the end of the year when things were a little slower I decided to take another look at some of the suggestions and see if I could improve my blog a bit.
The items that I focused on were:
- Colors - Make the ad color theme blend into the color scheme of your blog/site. Focus on background colors and font colors to reduce what someone called "ad blindness". If it looks like an ad, people are less likely to click on it.
- Positioning - Place your ads in a place where people are more likely to click on them. Google has done that homework for you already - see Aaron's other post for details. I'm still playing with this myself, so don't go insulting me in the comments ;)
Now granted, these are only two minor things, but the results have been noticeable. In the past few weeks I've seen a decent improvement on CTR. My blog all time average was around .68% and since the changes I'm averaging .94%. This month is even better so far - currently running at 1.54%. More noticeable is the dramatic increase in revenue since the changes. I'm not sure what to attribute this to as revenue is based on the ad itself, not the CTR. I can only imagine that an OT post is generating quite a bit of traffic and subsequent clicks since my observation has been that ColdFusion ads don't really pay all that well. I'd really have to dig into my stats to confirm this though.
Another item that I implemented while making these changes is channels. Google allows you to assign a particular channel for each ad unit (or group of units) to allow you to track the performance of them individually. It has been interesting to watch the performance and it definitely provides good feedback as to future enhancements that could be made to improve ad performance.
If you are interested in improving your revenue, I'd definitely suggest checking out Aaron's posts and the comments posted over there. You can definitely make some improvements by making a few small tweaks.
If you don't know what InstantSpot is, check out the homepage. InstantSpot is basically a free blogging service, but with much more than just blogging. You can share photos, manage your personal online calendar, communicate with friends via the ShoutBox message board and much more. If you'd like to get your own free InstantSpot please consider using my referral link: http://www.instantspot.com/referral?c=lxq8jnnx.
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