Maximize Clicks

I have a number of blogs on miscellaneous topics. Recently I added Google AdSense to them. The goal is to make as much money as possible from users clicking on the ads in my blogs. To this end, I want to eliminate any distractions that might cause the users to not click on the ads. So I have tried to configure my blogs to not have many things to click other than the ads.

Therefore I have removed comments from my blogs. I have also hidden the labels for each post. As far as the sidebar goes, I got rid of the About Me link. I also ditched the blog history. In some cases, I have even gone as far as to eliminate the titles of each blog post. The title is clickable and brings you to a page with just that blog post on it. There should be no need for users to click that.

One of the few extras I did keep was the images I include in each blog post. Those are essential to a good looking blog. I did shorten the number of posts that are displayed on each page of my blog. This number was strategically chosen to be as long as the ads that are placed on the sides of the blog posts.

My hope is that this increases the chance that viewers of my blog see the ads and click them. The danger in these extreme methods is that my blogs will not remain interesting to keep the users coming back for me. So now I really need to engage the readers with some sharp writing and awesome pictures. I also need to ensure I post very often, as they see less blog posts per page.

I will let you know how this works out. For now I am already seeing an increase in the click through ratio on my popular blog pages. It is my hope that this trend continues indefinitely.

Blog Lessons

I read a post on the Latest Geek Stuff blog. This is a blog written by omfut. His post was entitled “1 Year of Blogging, What I Learnt (sic)”. Some of his experiences matched mine from my 10 months of blogging. I thought I would comment on these findings.

Omfut has been blogging for 1 year. He said blogging is fun when you enjoy it. He cautioned bloggers to not let it run your life. Even though it is hard to write every day, that does usually increase traffic to your site. What is your goal? Are you just trying to gain more traffic to your blog? Or are you sharing quality posts? The best blogs are those for which the author has a true passion.

My initial goal getting into blogging was to make a lot of money. I have not been successful at that. However I have chosen blog topics that really do interest me. It is also fun to learn about the technical side of blogging. For example, I liked learning how to use Blogger. And it was a trip to get into the world of Google AdSense. I am finding more and more that I want to learn how to do web programming.

Here was a funny thing from Omfut’s blog post. He said he put AdSense on his web site just as an experiment (as opposed to making money). Yeah right. It is fine to try to make a few bucks on your blog by using ads. But don’t try to fool us into thinking the goal behind it is not to make money. You will be only fooling yourself. Just for that you get no clicks on your ads from me buddy. Aside from that, good blog post. Hopefully you will still be blogging 1 year from now. I know I shall be.