Hate The Grind

Many new webmasters and bloggers are all attracted to Google AdSense when it comes to monetizing their websites. However, there are other money making opportunities out there aside from Google AdSense that can add to your monthly internet income total.

Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket

The quote above is one you will hear alot on webmaster forums, and “make money” blogs so I guess I’ll say it too. The phrase is catching on with a lot of bloggers as most blogs that I visit have several different banners and ads intermixed with affiliate ads. Back in the day, it would not be uncommon to see blogs with just Google AdSense ads scattered throughout with every blogger hitting the 3 ads per page maximum!

So thats great! Bloggers and webmasters are discovering that there are other ways to make money online outside of the Google world. The problem that I see today with blogs is that bloggers are giving up too early on new revenue streams. The decision to pull an ad off their blog is premature, and is reducing their earnings. So, how do you tell when it is a good time to stop adding more ads? or to start pulling some down?

Let The Traffic Be Your Guide
If you want to be successful at making money online with your blog, then you need to be looking at your site metrics regularly. I check my website stats continuously throughout the day at least a dozen times. I can tell if site traffic is below, at, or above normal with just a glance and you need to be able to do this too.

There is a fear amongst bloggers especially that too many ads will drive away all the visitors, or at best persuade them to read the blog through an RSS reader resulting in less money being made on the actual blog itself. I have even asked if sponsored posts can affect the credibility of a blogger, and ultimately his or her traffic. You can tell when you have “too many” ads by looking at your website or blog traffic. If traffic is steady or growing and you’re still adding new revenue streams, then the answer is a clear no. When it comes to monetizing traffic, there is no time for guesses and theory. Take a look at your logs to see if people are really being driven away.

Removing New Ad Networks Too Soon
After John setup a partnership with Kontera to allow smaller blogs and websites to run Kontera ContentLink ads, there were hundreds of applications (over 400) with about 200 approved right away. Normally, in order to join a network like Kontera or IntelliTXT your website requires over 500,000 page views. John along with his rep at Kontera made it possible to join based on the content on your site as opposed to how big your site is.

I’ve been reading a bunch of blogs that I have found via John’s blog (mostly people who comment on his blog) that have added Kontera ContentLink ads to their blogs and was interested in seeing how it is working out for other people. I didn’t join in because I run IntelliTXT on my car community website. Based on what I have read, not too many people are making significant money off of Kontera. In fact, most of the weekly earnings I have read about were in the $5 - $10 range with some even under a dollar for a weeks worth of impressions. These are some pretty low earnings for sure! So, time to take down the Kontera ads right?

Hold It Right There!
The sole deciding factor that led to the Kontera ads being pulled down in most cases was low earnings. However, I highly recommend that before you take down an ad based on low earnings that you take a look at the whole picture. When I decide whether or not I should keep a revenue stream going, I take a look at various metrics such as traffic, revenue, revenue over traffic (effective cpm) to name a few.

So, if we look back at the ContentLinks example, some questions I would ask myself include:

• Is there a suitable replacement for this revenue stream?
• Was traffic negatively affected?
• Are the Kontera ads negatively affecting other revenue streams?
• Did the overall site revenue go down? revenue over traffic go down?
• Is there enough sample data to make any decisions?

You must ask yourself these questions to make a better decision on whether it is time to pull down the Kontera ads. If you answered “no” to most of these questions, then you probably should have kept the Kontera ads up. Why pull down an ad when it can contribute to your overall earnings? Sure it might be adding a very small amount, but the last time I checked, $5 per month is more than $0 per month.

Of course, there are some valid reasons to take down Kontera ads, or other ad networks too (including AdSense!) even if the answer to the above questions were “no” and that is that the revenue generated from Kontera is not worth the cluttered look that Kontera provides. I can’t argue against that one!

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Moving Beyond Earnings Per Click or Impression

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