It is just over six months since I first placed banner ads on this blog and, much to my surprise, the accumulated income has just reached $100 (which triggers the first payment from Google).
As the introduction of AdSense was purely an exercise to learn how the system works and experiment with different placements and formats, I have decided to donate all proceeds to a worthy charity.
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
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:
After a promising start, the recent introduction of AdSense on this blog is seriously floundering. I am bitterly disappointed with the financial returns in June and my wife is seriously doubting the wisdom of my decision to resign from a highly paid job in IT consultancy in favour of professional blogging on the kitchen table.
Consequently, after an extraordinary board meeting, I have decided that desperate measures are necessary. I have cashed in my £12.50 Adwords vouchers bundled with my Bluehost account and launched a brilliant, inspired, marketing campaign aimed at driving traffic to this site, increasing e-commerce sales and boosting the click through rate.
So, if you see the following Google advertisement on your travels through the InterWeb, please be sure to let me know.
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