One of the reasons I decided to put Adsense on this blog was out of sheer curiosity. There are plenty of Google sponsored case studies available from American shoe shops that significantly increased sales and revenues using Adsense.
Successful blogger John Chow is totally and refreshingly transparent with all his various revenue streams but I didn’t have a clue what income (if any) a small-time blogger might expect.
So, here - drum roll, please - are the revenue figures for this blog for the first 3 months
- July - $8.31
- August -$8.33
- September - $8.77
Not a massive amount but certainly more than I expected and enough to cover my hosting costs with Bluehost. This is from a blog with around 100 daily visitors (mainly one-hit wonders from Google). I used a simple wide banner (Leaderboard) with 3/4 adverts and blended the background into the theme. Initially the banner was on the footer but after a few days, I moved the ad to the header section (‘above the fold’).
What is quite interesting is that, for various reasons, I hardly posted to the blog in August (5 posts versus 25 and 23 in July and June respectively) yet the revenue (if you can call it that) was consistent for each month. Also, the trend is upwards for each month - just !
I briefly experimented with a ‘Adsense for Search’ box but it didn’t integrate well with my current theme (plaintxtBlog) so I abandoned it.
Another fun element was watching the Google AdServer try to present suitable adverts based on my content. Because I don’t really signpost things with flashing lights, at times Google displayed a fairly bizarre and esoteric mix of (in)appropriate banner ads.
Some more facts and figures:
- Most clicks in a day: 4
- Most lucrative click: $1.64
- Least lucrative click: $0.01 (yes, 1 cent)
- Best day: 5 June 2007 ($2.16)
- Worst day: $0.00 (too many to mention)