Optimi(s/z)ation

A post on the official AdSense blog gives me inspiration

[Cheeser]

I'm sure y'all have seen this blog post [adsense.blogspot.com] on the official AdSense blog?

It sure got me wishing I could go from $10/day to $1,700/day too, so I incorporated some of the suggestions presented. (I'm actually between $50-80/day right now.)

Specifically, I rearranged my news article page so I could embed a 336x280 with each story.

I will let you all know how it goes! *crosses fingers*

...PM me if you want the before/after URLs to compare my changes

[wgca]

sounds interesting :)
but I wonder how that could work if you have a forum :S any ideas?

[Cheeser]

Just a quick update six hours later (I know, not much data, but I thought I'd share).

So far, very promising! Seeing a 1.1% CTR on the new ad block (the old 728x90 at the end of each article used to do only about .5%). Could be just the novelty, but I'll keep an eye on it and report back. The new ad block has made as much in 6 hours as the leaderboard did in the previous 18.

[incrediBILL]

That blog post was completely meaningless as the traffic details were missing.

How many visitors a day, 5K, 10K, 100K?

[Bluepixel]

Even a 10 year would notice that an ad blended into the text or at the top brings more than an ad at the bottom of the page.

[Cheeser]

Day 2 report

(First thoughts: I should have done this so long ago it's not even funny.)

My average daily income from January 1 through April 1, 2006 was $45.58 according to GA's reports.

Well.... today, for the first time ever, I finally broke the $100-in-one-day ceiling (been close before, but only during "peak" interest times for my niche - this is definitely a "down" time, making it all-the-more impressive).

CTR and eCPM more than doubled thanks solely to the changes I made. If this remains consistent, I've just doubled my Google revenue with a few small changes. Incredible.

If you aren't including the larger rectangular ad blocks next to your site articles, do it now. Use channels, track everything, make money.

Find the sweet spot on your pages and concentrate all your efforts into maximizing its potential.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Cheeser --

Congratulations! I really like hearing about experiments like this.

While, as incrediBILL mentioned, traffic can certainly be a big factor in revenue, I think one of the most important lessons for all publishers is that optimization can dramatically improve earnings even for smaller sites.

For people who are just getting started with optimization, I think this blog post is also really helpful:

[adsense.blogspot.com...]

Understanding eCPM is important to interpreting the results of any experiments and changes you implement.

-ASA

[Cheeser]

Thanks, ASA!

For those asking, I generally do about 100,000 impressions a day (one site, which is all I run). I don't know where that fits in the scheme of things, but my site is one of the most visited in its niche.

I'm so excited about this - I'm hoping if the revenue remains consistently higher, I will be able to drop pop-under ads (which I've always hated and loathed forcing on my visitors) and even start paying some of my volunteer staff.

For months, I stared at those ad placement "heat maps" and wondered if they were accurate. I can tell you emphatically now, they are. I have been missing out on upwards of $2,000/mo... well, no longer.

[danny]

I hate the look of large boxes in the middle of text, so I'm not willing to use mid-content rectangles. (Actually I don't use any mid-content ads.)

But my other locations - leaderboard at the end of the content and link unit just above (or top left) - are the next best spots according to the heatmap.