Blog advertising advice

by

I’ve been thinking about changing the ads on this website.  I’m just not happy with the revenues from Google Adsense.  It seems my page views and unique visitors have gone up, yet my ad revenues have gone down.  (They weren’t that high to start with)

A few stats for the last 30 days:

  • 991,327 pageviews  (That’s almost a million!)
  • 279,555 unique visitors
  • 51.19% New visits
  • Google pagerank 5/10

I’m not exactly sure the significance of all of those numbers, but I get the impression that they’re pretty good numbers. 

So, I’m asking for some advice from bloggers (or those who know) on a couple things: 

  •  How much should I charge for ads?
  • Best ad sizes and locations (one place recommended 125X125 pixel ads)
  • Selling ideas (besides just placing “Advertise here” link on B&P)
  • Any other suggestions

I thinking about doing the adwork myself and would rather not use an ad broker.

Any input would be appreciated.  You can contact me at: [email protected]

0

16 thoughts on “Blog advertising advice”

  1. I think you should get heavily into tooth whitening, willy enlargement patches, acai berry and hoodia weight loss miracle cures and of course a bit of colonic irrigation. SO I understand, these are all untapped markets where millions can be made with only an hour or so effort per day. Hope that helps !

  2. I’d suggest a couple things, the first on is let the market figure out what you’re site is worth. Unless someone goes out of their way to pay you more for a dedicated spot on your site, keep using AdSense or Project Wonderful, both of which I use on http://www.myconfinedspace.com

    Don’t be discouraged by the drop of your revenue as your page views increase, it’s a shitty market right now, and it’s hit the advertising sector pretty hard.

    My best performer advertwise is the big banner one at the top of the page. after that it’s the insert that’s half way down the page, and then it’s the large tower. Just remember though, the more ads you have, the more cluttered the site looks 🙁

    If you’re not with project wonderful yet, I would highly suggest them!

    Also, I would suggest adding in a ‘subscribe to comments’ plugin, just so I know when/if someone else comes along and says something here abouts.

  4. Good luck and let me know how it goes. The only people who want to advertise with me directly are penis enlargers, porn, and gambling sites. Or else they want the ads free.

  7. This isn’t my expertise, but I’ve used Analytics a lot. I’m surprised that your % of new visitors isn’t lower. I come back frequently and I would think others who visit would too. Google ads don’t pay very well unless they are well targeted. Since your content is pretty varied you aren’t likely to get much of a rate. My advice is to go with volume and insert a few more ads. I think you could handle a couple more skyscrapers on the side without annoying your readers much. Please don’t get any of those dancing fools.

    I looked you up in Quantcast.com and was surprised that you skewed so young and male since your commenters seem to be a bunch of old farts like me, but your traffic is growing very nicely, which might explain the new visitor number.

  13. I think you should just request some stimulus money based on declining revenues. Plus, you can indicate you’re fair and balanced because the lefty-loosey’s and righty-tighty’s meet here all the time to share polite political discussions…Ummm…but you might want to hide the Michelle Halloween photo before requesting the $$’s.

  15. Jonco – One teensy request: Can you move the B&P search box away from the top banner ad? It does look OK when you go into “Previously on B&P”. I tried searching for the “letter from new marine” yesterday – you’re automajically taken to a google search page but there are no B&P results — only web results. (And yes, I did have search B&P checked – but the search engine didn’t want to look at B&P).

  16. Julie,
    I realized that it no longer searches B&P and was going to fix it but just forgot about it.
    I’ve just added a Search B&P box below the Google Search.

Leave a Comment