Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I've been blissfully going along with this site and all of a sudden it started to really make money. I started reading these postings to learn more about what I should be doing with my site. Now I have all these ideas I've learned from all of you and I don't know which order to make changes.
I decided the first thing I needed was some kind of idea of what each page is doing by setting up a channel for each page and gathering the statistics after a month. I just finished the first month and have my first 200 pages of information. This process alone will take about 5 months becuase I have almost 1000 pages.
I took the information and made a spread sheet with the page impressions, clicks, page CTR, page eCPM, earnings, and CPC for each page. I also added the google ranking for the main keyword for each page and the results in overture inventory for the same keyword. (These last two things are probably not relevent, but I wanted to see if anyone was even looking for these keywords).
Now comes my problem. My site is a directory. I combined a lot of categories on pages. There are a lot of pages that can/should be split apart into additional pages. Should I do that first in hopes of getting additional traffic and having more pages with more adsense or should I concentrate on the pages that I had channels on since I know if they are producing income and can probably be tweaked to increase that income?
If it is best to work on the pages I have data on, how do I decide which pages to concentrate on? Some have high CTR, others have high earnings and still others have high CPC. Some have no earnings in a month so should I take the ads off?
And finally, I learned from checking Google ranking and overture that a lot of the traffic on my pages must be comming from people navigating through my site. Example: I have a page that is number 2 in a Google search, but according to overture no one is searching for the keyword. But, I had 59 page impressions for the page with one of my highest eCPM and CPC rate. So, given that information, should I work on more navigation from page to page in my site.
One other thing that makes somewhat a difference, I still add everything by hand to my site, so most of these ideas are time consuming.
I know this is a long post, but this is what swirls around in my head and I go one direction for a day or two and then think I should be doing something else so I switch for a day or two. Not a productive use of my valuable time.
Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
"or should I concentrate on the pages that I had channels on since I know if they are producing income and can probably be tweaked to increase that income? "
If you know how to tweak them why dont you just do that,is it too time consuming?
"There are a lot of pages that can/should be split apart into additional pages."
Thats something probably worth to get done
"Some have no earnings in a month so should I take the ads off? "
No you shouldnt,some day someone can click the ads and you are not loosing anything by leaving ads there
"One other thing that makes somewhat a difference, I still add everything by hand to my site, so most of these ideas are time consuming. "
It must worth it
You can use some CMS but there is "ideal CMS for any website"
concentrate on getting more traffic through developing relevant content and don't get lost in the statistical fuss.
[edited by: moTi at 9:14 pm (utc) on May 9, 2006]
No you shouldnt,some day someone can click the ads and you are not loosing anything by leaving ads there
wrong advice. maybe you should. if you leave adsense blocks on poor performing pages, you'll get smartpriced and lose overall income.
I just finished the first month and have my first 200 pages of information. This process alone will take about 5 months becuase I have almost 1000 pages.
Stop! Rather than sinking under a mountain of data, use the pareto rule. Just concentrate on your most popular 200 pages. In fact, if you need a focus to start with, just focus on your top 10 pages - experiment with them and, when you understand what makes them perform well, apply those lessons to the rest of the site.
This seems the best advice. I got this far by just making new pages and adding to the site. I think of my site as a fishing net and the more pages I get out there, the more traffic I can snag.
I think I'm trying to make this harder than it is. If/when the time comes that I run out of topics, then I can go back and fuss individual pages.
If the income from my site grows as much in the next six months as it has in the last six months, I'll be able to quit and really expand the site and update it to some sort of automation.
Thanks for all the help.
More great advice. One problem -- I don't have good access to logs to tell me which are my best performing pages. That was the reason I was doing all these channels. That's another whole issue I haven't dealt with.
Did I tell you yet that I don't know how I got this far except for just bumbling along doing what seemed right?
Time to take a breath and just get back to work on doing what I've been doing.
I'd recommend you stop all content work for awhile. The last thing you need is more pages until you have a management system that gives an acurate picture of what's working and what isn't.
Take Blue's advice: concentrate on a sampling of your pages. If not the top performing 200, then a good representative of each sub-topic in your site. This will give you a feeling for where to look next, and where to spend your time.
I'd recommend you stop all content work for awhile. The last thing you need is more pages until you have a management system that gives an acurate picture of what's working and what isn't.
I think this would be good advice for a more regular business. Adsense isn't. If I have one piece of advice for anyone on this topic it's this"
Despite what people tell you about what works and doesn't work, and why, NOBODY here really knows. They think they know. But often what they think they know is based on faulty logical errors, and so, quite simply, may apply to one site, but not YOUR site.
What works on one site won't on another.
What works one week may not work the next.
What works for one niche may be disaster for another.
The upshot is that while data is great to have (I'm a data junkie), the time it takes to interpret enough data to provide some hypothesis as to what works and doesn't is going to be so much that by the time you analyse the thing, the "world" changed.
What's the option then? To be blunt, some degree of systematic experimentation is good, but it's also limited by time and chaos. Build content. Recognize that no matter how much data you gather, you STILL won't know what will work tomorrow.
...and don't believe anyone who tells you flat out that you "should" or "should not", for example remove low CTR ads. They don't know, but everyone wants to seem like they know things. I give some credence to official google hints.
What works on one site won't on another.
What works one week may not work the next.
What works for one niche may be disaster for another.
The time it takes to build records and use them to guide your investment of time and work is worth every minute. It can literally be the difference between success and failure.
... I have almost 1000 pages.
... I still add everything by hand to my site.
If you aren't already using them, then be sure to make good use of SSIs (Server-Side Includes). Also, you can save an enormous amount of labour by using a bulk-editing utility to make site-wide changes with a couple of clicks of the mouse. I use Search and Replace 98 [htmlworkshop.com] (freeware). It can edit a single html file, or all files within a folder, or, if the Recurse Folders option is enabled, it will edit all files in all sub-folders within the parent folder - a very powerful feature.
Thought for the day: Don't work harder - work smarter.
I don't have good access to logs
Fix this. Trying to do analysis of the sort you describe without full access to your server logs is like playing darts blindfolded.
I can see how important it is to keep involved with this group so I can ask questions that help to give me information to base my decisions on. Then do what I always have, take what works for me and go with it.
Thanks so much to all of you for your great answers.
