more pages more profit?

need help on adding pages on a content site

[annej]

I know it is a big help in commercial sites but in my content area it takes me a few days to write a new article on the topic because of the research necessary. I know each article adds to the quality of the site and I will continue to write them. But it's not enough to really help much in terms of income.

I'm trying to find ways to increase pages without spending so much time. Do other content people have any ideas? My content is the history of a hobby.

Thanks

[Livenomadic]

Pickup any girl/teen magazine and you'll find all the tricks of the trade to create fast content.

For Example:

20 Things you need to know about X
How to X in T days
How to choose the best X
X reasons to Y
Newcomers Guide to X

These content pieces are really fast because they are very fluffy.. lots of white space, lots of numbered lists, etc.. etc..

[alika]

You may want to look into article submissions but your topic may be too limited to find loads of free articles on the topic. The downside of course is that the quality if often not there, plus that same article is all over the web already. But hey, it's free content.

Or you may want to hire a writer to help you out with articles for a fee. While others are paying Adwords to monetize their Adsense, you may want to spend in a totally different direction: beefing up your content with well-written and well-researched articles.

Another approach would be to diversify your content. Branch out in a related topic -- hopefully one that has loads of advertisers who are bidding well. Then build on that topic. You may also consider availability of free content when choosing other topic.

The best way we found to combat ups and swings of Adsense is to focus on multi-topic sites. One topic may be down, but another is sure to go up, making for a pretty even if not a continuously increasing revenue stream. With us, using channel data since last year, we already found those topics that really work well for us in terms of effective CPM, and we focus on adding more content on those topics. Afterall, these are the topics that bring home the bacon.

[Livenomadic]

Oh and another thing,

Take questions visitors asked you (via email) and your answers and make them into a "Expert Advice" Column.

Q. How do I X?

A. <Paste your answer here>

Very quick and easy way.

[eddy22]

Or u could try dmoz or wikipedia content.
It's legal to put adsense on these pages...
They are free and have hundreds of thousands of pages.

eddy

[eddy22]

Or create a blog...

[howiejs]

The first key is finding the ads that have a decent EPC and that you can generate a good CTR for

After you find those few targets - build around them and focus attention on your homepages to these articles, etc

[ignatz]

I'm trying to find ways to increase pages without spending so much time.

You can rent a squad of monkeys ;)

[totter]

I've had some luck expanding what my site was about and then creating database driven pages. Database content is pretty easy to update and in my case helped introduce my site to people in my industry.

[annej]

Thanks for all the suggestions folks. I do have some articles by others in the field. Perhaps I could promote that more though. The history stuff needs to be written by people who have a clue but maybe I could try for informal stories of how great grandma made a somethingortheother kind of widget.

I'll consider the expert advise idea except half the time I have to spend a lot of time researching the answer. I need to find a way so the answers could mostly be off the top of my head. I'll have to play around with how to do that one. I think it could be a popular feature though.

I do need to think fluffier. I have two websites in on the same general topic. One is pretty academic but the other is mostly info I wrote about just because it sounded interesting. I could do the fluff stuff there.

I have a question about pages that are primarily a picture. How much text/content does Google want before we put adsense on the page? I often have thumbnails in my article then when you click on it you get the full picture in a jpg.or a gif. I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to put all those larger pictures on actual web pages with a sentence or two about the photo.

Thanks again everyone. I'll give the other suggestions some thought as well, even the monkeys. ;)

[david_uk]

> > I do need to think fluffier. I have two websites in on the same general topic. One is pretty academic but the other is mostly info I wrote about just because it sounded interesting. I could do the fluff stuff there.

I wouldn't go for dumbing down personally, but I would expand the site with articles and features written at levels for all visitors.

On my high content site there is a mixture of visitor submitted content, reference pages at academic level, a page of humour on the topic etc. I do know that I have a wide variety of visitors who want to read articles at levels from simply reading through the FAQ to knowing exactly *why* something happens and what other research is available to confirm/deny. I tend to concentrate on the articles that need a bit of research, and simply add the content or links etc. that others supply to save me a bit of time.

I also wrote a history of the topic, and have since had an email from a top researcher wanting to use it in his next book!

Anyway, good luck with the site content. In my personal experience, having good content with well targetted ads doesn't necessarily guarantee good Googlebucks. Some pages adsense just doesn't work on for me! Ironically, the best page for earnings by far is the main site index page, followed by the FAQ. A lot of the high content pages no longer have ads on them as historically they don't get the clicks. However, one datapoint doesn't make a survey and everybody's experience is unique.

[ken_b]

I have a question about pages that are primarily a picture. How much text/content does Google want before we put adsense on the page? I often have thumbnails in my article then when you click on it you get the full picture in a jpg.or a gif. I'm wondering if it would be worthwhile to put all those larger pictures on actual web pages with a sentence or two about the photo.

One thing you might consider is to comment about details of the widget on the page with the larger photo. Details can get lost in thumbnails, so it makes some sense to do this.

[annej]

David, Yep, I mean fluffy for me. No footnotes, no links to added information, just something fun that my visitors might enjoy. My researched article pages are terribly leaky and my index pages don't do well because the people who get to them are bent on finding the information they want. The more academic stuff is what has put my sites high in the serps and with good pr. So they are well worth doing plus it's my field of interest. But I am always amazed when I notice my hokey little pages of widgets I've made that I put up for friends and family do very well with adsense. No one would ever find those pages of amateurish widgets without their being linked from a high pr page but once people find them they go on to the ads. Go figure. So I agree adding some fun pages are the way to go.

Ken, I think you are right, the pages showing the larger pictures with a bit of information should work. I just wonder if a couple of lines is enough for AdSense. I don't want to find myself spending weeks just writing up info on these pictures. One reason I'm thinking of making these into pages and putting adsense on them is that people are ready to move on to something new at that point.

[ken_b]

I just wonder if a couple of lines is enough for AdSense.

I'd think that 20 - 25 words of well written, description/caption text would do the job on image pages.

But I'd also put an appropriate image title on the page in an <H> header of some sort.

I'd try making a couple pages and using the preview tool to see what kind of ads they attract. You can test how much content is needed to get targeted ads that way too.

If that looked promising, I'd keep on making em.

The biggest risks are that if you have much other stuff (site links, etc) on the page, you need to put enough unique description to avoid any duplicate content penalties.

You also need enough to avoid the "not enough content" notice from Google. I don't know how much that takes, but as long as the image is the main reason for the pages, I doubt the text required is very much.

[annej]

Thanks, Starting with a test sample makes a lot sense.