Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Let's define ROI for your actions as measurable dollars, ones that you can trackback to the action.
What actions or activities do you believe yield the highest ROI for time invested?
Does "what you do" reflect anything about "what you know or believe yields the highest ROI"?
I know, on one hand we do what we love. OTOH, we have bills to pay. If all I did was go fishing I'd soon run out of gas for my boat or food to power me rowing the oars. So, whilst the discussion lacks a certain appeal - like 'we do it for money' - at some level money plays a role. Let's agree, for the purpose of this thread, to leave the philosophical discussion for another thread.
Do you apply metrics to your time, especially if you are a one man or one woman show?
Have your metrics changed your behavior? How?
What do you measure when it comes to your webpublishing business?
What have you learned?
Do you avoid doing some of this 'hard thinking'? Any insights?
Is there anything going on about "easy stuff" gets done first AND is the least income productive?
What do your activities look like from a percentage of time view?
It's a hard thing to take a hard view of how one spends one's time. I'm a bit of a mess myself. Struggling with the shift from lawyer + domain guy to lawyer + writer/publisher. I love to write and explore and learn new things and help people . . . I'm just starting the organize the writing process. Yet, I'm still spending time optimizing existing revenue producing activities (mostly domain related) whilst learning the stuff of the next tasks (WordPress, directory software, LAMP servers, etc).
I look forward to any of you sharing how you break up your day and assign time and why you do it in the manner that you do.
Let's define ROI for your actions as measurable dollars, ones that you can trackback to the action.
If you're an AdSense publisher trying to make money off of pure content, you're going to find that "trackback" much harder than you imagine (unless you're just fooling yourself).
Example: 3 pages, each taking 3 hours to create, and Page A makes me $1/day, while Pages B and C make me $1/month. What's the ROI on Page B?
Well, when all three pages are interlinked and thematically related, it's real hard to say. Would Page A be ranked as high if the "poor ROI" pages B and C did not exist? Maybe not.
And suppose pages A, B, and C are completely independent variables (as is often not true), so you decide to abandon creating pages like B and C, and focus totally on making pages like A. Ooops -- next month's algorithm change drops pages like A out of the running, and suddenly page C has the best income on the site. Unfortunately, you've only got one page like page C, because you thought you knew how to measure ROI.
What do you measure when it comes to your webpublishing business?
I measure what visitors are actually doing. Why is there a surge in traffic this month on keywords related to "widget polishing"? I can test my theory about that surge by adding links to my Widget Polishing page that are relevant to the motives I hypothesize. If I understand the motive, I might be able to see modest changes/additions that can increase profits.
I measure volatility. The Google Stability Number [webmasterworld.com] gives me an idea how vulnerable my AdSense income is to algorithm changes. I don't look at numbers like daily income or daily EPC without having at hand the standard variance for the last 3 months of those numbers -- otherwise, I would get emotional about changes that "feel" significant (like a doubling), but that are actually just statistically expected blips, given the current normal variation in my data.
I measure keyword space ownership. If you're a pure content player in AdSense, then you're really playing a game of trying to own (rank highly in Google for) a chunk of the nearly infinite space of possible keywords. It's real hard to predict where in this keyword space the best ROI lies, but it's not so hard to monitor your progress (or setbacks) in expanding the space you own. Would you rather own "widget repair", or "1932 widget repair", "1933 widget repair", ... "2006 widget repair"? I would typically rather own the latter, because I tend to find higher EPC on more specific content, and I tend to get much stabler SE traffic with a large keyword base than with a small one.
I measure traffic sources. You'll often see posts here like "My traffic was cut in half today!", and yet the poster seems to have no actual clue what happened, other than to vaguely blame Google. If you're a pure content player with a large base of content and you can't quickly identify, for example, what keyword categories caused yesterday's statistically significant traffic surge/decline, then you're flying blind.
Have your metrics changed your behavior? How?
I respond more and plan less. Metrics showed just how unlikely it was that I could predict how easy it would be to rank for keyword X, and how much money could be made from keyword Y. OTOH, metrics showed that there was often a better ROI in responding to the (often trivial) needs of visitors than in pounding away at new content that I think fits nicely with existing content.
You might start out with a grand scheme for a website that tells people how to write novels, only to discover that the real money is in telling people how to format tables in Microsoft Word. For a pure content AdSense player, I think it's better to plan less and respond more...
60% writing content
25% building links
10% reviewing stats / testing new ideas
5% learning (reading forums like this one)
I only track simple metrics that focus on unique hits, page views, and dollars.
Page views and money help me estimate over time how well a particular idea works and scales. It also lets me project future earnings expectations for both existing pages and new ones I'm planning.
I track the number of hits and their source, including keywords. This information is useful in deciding what marketing activities work the best plus which new keywords and pages to target in link building.
As Ronburk says, it's hard to track ROI for some thing anyway (such as content writing). And it really isn't necessary or even desirable, at least for a mostly evergreen content site, because the credibility that comes from having editorial "loss leaders" along with obvious money topics helps to build reader loyalty, favorable press coverage, etc. over the long term.
