Forum Moderators: martinibuster
At what point does it stop being worthwhile to keep adding new pages to your site from an Adsense income perspective?
Are you better off concentrating on maxing out the return from your existing pages or does it pay better to keep adding pages, even if the return fromeach page is less?
Equally I think dormant sites stagnate so although we cannot keep adding new pages, we should keep the site fresh by changing content.
So instead of building pages we should refresh them.
from an Adsense income perspective
I'm sure that the poster knows of the benefits of adding content -- e.g. increase user retention, attract more users, more pages for search engines -- but he specifically asked the opinion of everyone from an Adsense income perspective. I hope it is not a call to the dark side of creating pages for the sole purpose of showing Adsense ads :o)
With that said, one of our content development strategies is to diversify our keywords, and not be limited to our usual "theme" keywords. We created a new section of the site that does that perfectly, and it helps buoy our revenues from the ups and downs of Adsense. So content that goes beyond your current scope may be very fruitful, Adsense-wise.
but adding a page a day, come on, nobody would normally do that
Well, it really depends on the type of site you run. If you are running a news site, for example, you'd be toast if you don't add at least one page a day. You'd have a stale site that nobody will visit. But if you run a review of products site, there may be no new releases every day so you don't develop content every day.
We want income from our efforts because it will give us the motivation and resources to give more info and services to the public. Good content is always good for everyone, even if your primary motive is to earn from Adsense. The dark side, in my opinion, is doing bad things just to earn from Adsense, like stealing other people's content or building Adsense pages with no content in it.
You can add even 5 pages a day, why not. Just don't do it because of the ads.
You can use up all the banner and link limits, arrange them, choose different colors and sizes to earn the maximum profit.
But if I would to edit/create all my content, choosing to update only when it would be profitable, and then place a little from-author-note saying "I'm making this site because I love doing <this>" I just couldn't face myself in the mirror.
As for adding content: I think it is a good idea to do so on a daily basis, but not necessarily to one site. Not just because you might otherwise have diminishing marginal returns (Ec 101 again!) like the OP implied, but also because having a collection of well-developed sites (=diversification!) will help reduce your risk!
if you have carved a very narrow niche for yourself, and you have maxed out all the possible content for that niche then, i agree with an earlier poster, that you should start a new site. sitting and tweaking a site, is less worthwhile than building a new one.
as an aside, i have seen VERY few sites that completely max out everything that can be done to a topic. there is always another perspective, another angle that you could address.
people write 100 page PHd theses on the most insignificant topics.
if you have maxed out the profitable areas of your niche, then moving on is ok too.
surely there is another topic that you are interested in?
i usually find that 100 pages of content provides MORE than 2x 50 pages of content. how? i learn from the first 50 what my visitors want to see, what is paying and i choose the next 50 accordingly.
of course there is a plateau that any site would reach, but if you ever reach that point, endlessly tweaking becomes a waste of time... in my opinion you are better served by starting some new content in a new area. perhaps you will choose a slightly broader new area, to ensure that you dont run into a plateau again ;)
I've got one site, and with the new page a day thing I could be busy for the next 20 years, and not ever have to worry about duplicating my own content.
Just keeping up with adding time sensitive data I'm ending up with updating 5 - 10 pages a day, sometimes more.
I could easily add 600 more pages, all at once, in just one existing section of my site.
The possiblities for content valididated growth is pretty signifcant.
Ya know, this could turn a fun hobby into work!
Spaceylacie, is that one page per day per site, or really just one page a day? You have several sites, right? So do you write something like 3-5 pages a day all in all?
6-7 pages a day altogether, Monday through Friday. I have 4 main sites and several smaller ones. I get up about 6:30 AM and can usually finish up by noon. Much of my material comes from visitor input, so it's easy to just add whatever it was my visitors submitted, or asked about, the day before. For me, much of it is just organizing and posting material.
Every day, I get tons of visitors questions(they also submit their own ideas etc.), the new material for existing sites comes from answering their questions and adding their input.
When a topic comes up, that I know there is a market for, and I don't already have a site about it, that goes on my "to do" list and I work on those projects afternoons, evenings, and weekends. It's all fun hobby stuff, so not really work. Then I write about it later.
I currently have at least 15 pages worth of material in my inbox, submitted by visitors within the past few weeks. Between their ideas and mine, I have an endless supply of ideas for new content.
I channel all new material so I know that growth is not negatively affecting my existing pages. New comers stay busy with the old pages and my repeat visitors are also occupied with the new material.
I'll just repeat my mantra from some other whiny thread today:
New content, more traffic and SEO aren't separate things, it's a trifecta of a winning web site.
SEO and traffic gets them to the site, new content keeps them coming back, it's the whole package that makes a real winner. I actually get a lot of repeat visitors as I have "FRESH" content daily so coming back anytime within a month is sure to provide rewards to the repeat visitor.