The problogging experiment – first month earnings report
Earlier this month in "Wordpress SEO : Jump-starting a new blog - from zero to 600 unique visitors/day in one month" I mentioned a small problogging experiment I'm currently doing with a long time problogger in the China niche. We're both trying to implement what we know, play around with some content and monetization options and see how this problog can grow.
I figured that it might be interesting for some of you other bloggers to take part in this experiment and see how well we do, so I'd like to share October's earnings report with you. Mind you, this blog has only been running for about two months.
Here are the overall stats:
- Google Adsense - 32US$.
- Kontera - 19US$.
- Widgetbucks (still experimenting) - 10US$.
- Shoppingads (still experimenting) - 4US$.
- Adbrite (dropped) - 2.2US$.
Report :
- Google Adsense isn't performing that well, with relatively low CTR, and I'm guessing that this is related to the fact that the ads displayed are not entirely relevant. Because this blog is about weird news and humor, the ads engines have a hard time making out the blog topic. Furthermore, the eCPM is very low, suggesting that there aren't many advertisers targeting those keywords in Adwords.
- But, surprisingly enough Kontera is doing much better when it comes to CTR, although Kontera continues to display much lower eCPM than Google Adsense.
- The recently added Widgetbucks and Shoppingads beta are doing soso, especially since it's a bit difficult to match products to this kind of blog, but, I admit it's doing better than I expected. Shoppingads has only been added a week and a half ago. One interesting thing to note is that this blog gets a lot of international traffic through translators, and Widgetbuck's widget doesn't show up on those pages. Widgetbucks - overall - is doing a bit better than Shoppingads is. There's something about those jumpy flashy ads that's attracting a bit more readers to click.
- Adbrite was performing so badly, CPC and CPM, that I decided to drop it. Even with the family filter on and trying to self moderate what ads are added, I found the Adbrite ads to be a bit annoying and on of the spammy type that I think have absolutely no added value for readers.
- Overall, all programs combined are showing a CTR of about 6% and earnings of around 65US$, which I believe is okay for a new experimental blog, right?
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Got some feedback or want to share your thoughts? I'm interested. Hopefully, more next month.
Looks like a good start. Best of luck going forward. I'm unfamiliar with widgetbucks, but I might check them out.