84,000 unique visitors
$70 AdSense
Traffic has settled down to roughly 1,300 uniques/day.
It doesn't take a genius to see that my Click-Through-Rate is extremely low.
I have to give the thumbs down to AdSense, at least if you're serving a tech-savy crowd. For one, Nerds all browse with AdBlock or something similar enabled (heck, I've got to admit, so do I.) Secondly, I had a ton of trouble getting it to serve up proper Ad content because you cannot 'ban' certain keywords from the Ads you'll get. For example, I'd keep getting ads for 'transvestite boots' and stuff like that, and the only way to prevent that content was to painstakingly ban each domain 1 by 1. My list is pretty big right now. I can understand why Google runs it this way, but it's a significant flaw of that model.
Instead I've discovered what appears to be a service right up my alley. It's called Commission Junction and it basically links you with stores, where you can advertise that stores' products right on your site, with nice clean photos and not too much text (Amazon has a similar service, but not available in CAD). If a surfer on your site clicks on the Ad, and goes on to buy something, you get a certain percentage of the sale. They have a number of advertising companies that fit perfectly with the Fashion4Nerds cause (that is, they're well known (Gap, Shoes.com) and they have free shipping type deals and more importantly free return shipping if you don't like the product or it doesn't fit. This is key I think - I would never order clothes online otherwise.
This may be the way of the future. I've woven the 'ads' fully into the content of the site. In fact, if you're surfing with an AdBlocker, the site won't make much sense - there will be no images on it at all! This could be the way to go... but I've kept some AdSense banners just in case.
To start I've changed over the shoes section to the new format. I'll run it for a day or two, and see if I can make any sales. If it does, I'll re-jigg the whole site. Regardless, I'll let you guys know how it works out...
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5 comments:
Are you planning on using the blog for some actual content? Getting a rundown on your daily traffic stats, site placements and ad revenues wouldn't inspire me to bookmark this. I'd be interested in hearing (hopefully) amusing anecdotes from the fashionably perplexed as well as some good old fashion flaming of the neurotically fashion obsessed.
Hi Kathleen, thanks for writing in.
No I hadn't really intended this blog to be about anything other than the business of running the site - but I suppose that could change. I wasn't anticipating all the humorous emails I'd get. Yah, perhaps my next post will detail some of those... stay tuned. :)
Hey Steve:
How about just putting more ads on your site? I've just been touring round it and I had to click around quite a bit to find ads - the first block I came across was right at the bottom of an inner page.
I'm currently on $40/5000 impressions, which I'm pretty pleased with, but I'm engaged on a big drive to get more traffic to my site and make more from advertising. To that end, I've put a lot more advertising above the fold on the main page, rather than burying it at the bottom like I used to. I was a bit wary of doing that at first, because I also use the site to promote my professional services as a copywriter, and I didn't want the ads to conflict with that or send too many visitors to my competition. I guess you don't have the same conflict of purposes with Fashion4Nerds, so maybe just plastering a ton more AdSense around the place would help?
Anyway, it's a great site and a great idea. I hope it goes well!
Thanks Bill, really appreciate the feedback. I'll be 'relaunching' the site in a month or two with an article I hope will get as popular as my first, and although I'll still have some AdSense, I hope that affiliate marketing will do the job (with the ads front and center this time!)
Hey Steve,
I feel your pain on the Adsense adventure. I've been using them on sites I created (NewsOnly and
SciNews) for about a year now and results have been sketchy. I'm not all that pleased with the results and I've had the same problems with blocking domains with bad ads.
On a brighter side, I am going to look at the Commission site you recommended, do you have any newer info on how you're doing with them?
Also, I've added a link to your Fashion4Nerds site on my new blog, Are You a Geezer? because I think a lot of the areas overlap.
Keep up the great work and give us all an update on how the site is working. I'd like to see more Ask Colleen as well!
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