Constant updates and income

What's your view or experience on this?

[explorador]

At first it might sound naive but after several years and specially today, the web, traffic and income behave in surprising ways. We have too many cases where traffic increases don't exactly hit the earnings, sometimes the earnings might even go down.

The usual advice is to keep posting, publishing fresh and original stuff and it works in several ways around diff goals. BUT given that traffic seems steady in some cases no matter what, given that sometimes the traffic spikes don't increase the earnings and that many of us had or still have an ugly duck bringing money (that ugly site you never update)... then this question keeps comming back to my head (around Adsense Earnings):

• What's your experience on one site with no updates, and then you begin to post weekly, or daily (sure, fresh and original quality content).
• What's your experience on one site with weekly updates and then you begin posting daily or even more than once per day?
• On the short term?
• Long term?

I played with this in the past with not much luck. I got more traffic lon term... earnings went slightly up. Then got back to regular posts. Today I have LOTS of fresh new quality content ready to be posted (automatic posts) but I wonder if it's worth posting all of that on a daily basis. I'm talking about 60+ quality articles with original pictures, it's even enough to create a new website from scratc (yes it's that good). I'm fearful of creating a wave and then no posts for a while.

** Note: I know many post around here about "thousands" or new articles per day, some talk about 10,000 pages but still after all these years I can't really figure out how to write all that much of "good" content. I agree that there is always a new view on something but I also agree with some members who say 10,000 in a matter of months is nothing but poor content or essays, no offense, just please if you think 60+ great articles is just too little to talk about (without a clue on what I wrote)... then this is not the thread for you.

Thanks and please share your opinion

[frankleeceo]

For me I actually think wave plus constant updates if new information comes in work well.

It takes time for Google to fully index and assign the traffic to the posts, unless some of your posts are highly viral and sticky that people go to it all the time.

Because of the time frame that Google can take to fully boost the pages, I usually post all of my content as I finish them. I never hoard them nor do I intentionally post them with certain time frames. I keep it "natural" based on my own writing speed and feel.

But again my most productive day usually only nets about ~10 new articles then I go into a drought of going back to update my "older" contents. I don't spin content nor mash

I use it a gauge for my self, if certain topics are getting more traffic, I make more contents that are related to that content so that I get more views. The content that gets little traffic? No additional work will be put towards it...much.

This strategy has worked well for me.

Because of strategy, I have a few sites where the same content sits forever, while a few sites that continue to get updates. My overall trend is up, aside from the seasonal flux. But then again I only have about 2 years of content making experience with me.

[webcentric]

The SERPS are always looking for new content. If you're CNN, then G is all over everything you post (probably before you even post it - chuckle). I've always looked at it like this... A site with just a moderately active update schedule is enough to keep the bots attention and deep linking into your site structure (in an almost random fashion from the home page - the way a blog does) keeps the bots moving around the site to discover new content and structure. We sometimes have new content show up on our primary site's home page for only a few hours before being pushed off and G manages to find it in short order. Other times, the home page can be almost stagnant for days. Over time G has worked out that checking our home page is good for them so they keep coming regularly. I've come to believe that G knows the difference between time-sensitive info or at least sites with time-sensitive info (such as news sites) and sites with less time-sensitive information and it treats that information differently. Blogs walk a fine line in this area because the content is new but may not be necessarily time-sensitive. I think the question is less about the schedule of posting and more about the type of information being posted.

[Andem]

Since this is in the AdSense forum, I will not comment on search engine results except when they have an effect on earnings as that is what you are asking about.

I am not very well versed on the various terms or keywords that earn 'big bucks' for Google AdSense publishers, but in my experience over almost 10 years as a publisher, I can certainly state that the effectiveness of advertisements and valid CTR/CPM are almost unpredictable, to a degree and over a period of time.

Less traffic can mean more clicks and vice-versa. Depending on your traffic (which coincides with SERPs), 2000 impressions and 20000 impressions could yield the very same overall income with the very same (or similar) content and ads; Now-a-days, it seems that when you have very well-targeted traffic, less is more and more is less in terms of traffic:income.

In terms of sites with little-to-no updates, I would have to say that it is more of a roller-coaster ride which is more unpredictable. As I said above, there is very little predictability regarding traffic and earnings in my own experience and the traffic vs. CPM ratio can be interchangeable. Seeing weeks or even months with surprisingly high CPM are to not be totally unexpected if you really provide content which is complimented by useful ads.

Focusing on the short term is never a good idea.

[hannamyluv]

On our site, we publish daily, at pre-set times. But we have an editorial calendar that can stretch out for months (Right now we have articles scheduled to go live through March 2014).

We use to just publish as articles from the writers came in (because the sooner you get content out there, the sooner your content can "mature" as mentioned above), but then we took a hard look at social and attracting repeat visitors. We found that social and repeat visitors are more likely to visit if you have new content you can put out on a regular basis.

Regularly scheduled (and spaced) articles also help get more social cred for an article. If you drop several articles all at once, then none of them are likely to get much social attention and people forget to check back regularly to see if you have posted more.

But if you have your visitors trained that they can expect an article at a certain time every day/week, they will look for it and be more likely to check your social media accounts or your site for that new article (thus resulting in the likelihood of more initial likes/tweets/pins/links).

This has an affect on your AdSense because this type of traffic gives an article its first legs and gets you some extra eyeballs that it may not have had if you are haphazard in your publishing schedule. So you can get a good boost on an article early on, rather than having to wait for it to mature. Not to mention it helps significantly in building traffic from repeat and social over time.

We basically aim to turn our site into a habit. ;)