And the money rolls in

$1.29

Yep. That's how much I've earned in the four days since I started this blog. So between the initial blogging learning curb, signing up for AdSense and Google Analytics, trouble shooting problems, actually writing the posts and obsessively checking to see if I've had any new visitors, I would say that I've earned an average of approximately $.06 - $.08 cents an hour.

I'm just raking it in.

Once again, AdSense provides all sorts of information to help optimize your income. You can generate reports according to type of ad and date or range of dates. You can check out specific ads or compare different "channels", although I haven't fully explored what those are yet. Here are a couple of examples from today. You can see them full size if you click on them.


And this.
So I can compare which posts either draw people in for a first time or get people to come back and revisit, which is the ultimate holy grail of making money off of a blog.

I'm just scratching the surface of how to use AdSense, let alone the various other methods people use to generate income from their blog. Who knows, maybe I'll break $.10/hour sometime soon. The possibilities are so exciting.

I won't be posting on Saturday because I'll be out of town without internet access.

See you Sunday,

ML

Advertising

Welcome to day two of Pursuing Success.

So many things to work on. Today, I have chosen to implement the advertising. My object is to generate income through this blog, so it makes sense to me to set up at least some revenue source before working on getting people to come to the site, and then come back again, and again, and again.....

I registered with Google AdSense yesterday. Unlike other Google services I've used, I had to wait for it to be reviewed and approved before I could use it. The website said it would take up to seven days, but I heard back from them in less than twenty-four hours. As you can see, I have two different types of Google Ads on the page.

Now get this. I am forbidden to encourage people to click on some ads and I am encouraged to try to get people to click on other ones.

The ad for Firefox with Google Toolbar is called a "referral". There were several products and services that I could promote, and I chose that one because I actually use it myself and believe it is a much better product that Microsoft Internet Explorer. If you haven't made the switch, I encourage you to try it. And that's not just because I will get paid (a very little bit) for every person who follows the link and installs the software.

The other ad in the white box is called "AdSense for Content". Those are ads that Google selects and tries to match products or services with the content of my blog to increase the likelihood of people clicking on the link. I am not allowed to encourage you to click on any AdSense for Content ads. So, of course, I won't.

So, I spent time today finishing the AdSense registration and setting up the ads, but there are all sorts of optimization options that I have not yet had time to read through. There are tips on placement and colour schemes. There are things called "channels". I don't know what they do yet, but apparently they help to optimize the choice of ads to go on different web pages. There are different types of ads that I have not reviewed yet.

I guess I'm treating this like any other writing assignment I've had. First, just get something down. It doesn't have to be great, just get it down. Then edit, edit, edit. And then maybe edit some more. The unusual part is that it is all in public.

So it's another small step forward. Tomorrow? Optimize ads? Learn about keywords? Work on the colour scheme? layout? Learn what else I can do with html?

Ah, decisions, decisions. Until tomorrow,


ML