March 20, 2011

Adsense Earnings - Best Advert Position

Adsense earnings can be affected by where your adverts are located on a web page. There are hotspots - where people are more likely to see and click on adsense ads. The top left of a page is a good hotspot for adsense ads.
I recentlt changed a whole website with about 150 pages - the adsense adverts were originally in a 120 by 60 skyscraper on the right of the page. I altered all the pages so that the adverts are now on the left side of the page.
This month - the CTR is 2.48% .In the month before the changeover - the clickthrough rate was 2.35% - so not a very significant increase in click through at all .
So - in this limited experiment nothing has really been proven - a slight CTR incrrease that may have been caused by repositioning of the adverts from the right side to the left side.

My best performing ads are those that are shown in the middle of a page - between the text. These always have a high click rate.

October 25, 2009

Amazon Associate Scheme

Amazon call their affilliate scheme the  "associates program"  . The one big drawback of the Amazon scheme is that you only get commission if the user makes a purchase during the "session" - i.e during the visit to Amazon that came via your link. If they close down the browser and come back an hour later - you get no commission. Most affilliate schemes use cookies to track when visitors arrive from an affiliate  link. Many  sites will pay commission on any sales made for up to 30 days after the initial visit.   There must be millions of clicks from Amazon associates that get nothing in commission - but the click may well result in a sale within  a few days.
But - even with this drawback - the Amazon associate program can be a good money earner if used in the right way. By linking to specific products on pages that provide relevant  information about those products. The commission paid by amazon starts at a low rate but rises to 9% for those associates that sell a lot of stuff. The maximum commission for electrical items is capped at £7 - which is another negative factor with Amazon. On a sale of £1000 - that works out at just 0.7% commission.  Many online shoppers trust and know Amazon - so they are more likely to purchase from them than from a site they have never heard of before.

October 24, 2009

Keeping Top On Google

Update your blog or website to ensure you maintain your position on Google results. A regular post at least once a week will keep the search engines interested. Stop updating - and you risk being slowly relegated down the results.  If you have a post that is doing very well on Google - don't make any changes to it. Add new posts by all means. Keep checking your position on google - to see how you are doing. Things change all the time. The number of hits you get can drop by at least 100% if you drop from top position to second position on Google. Google is the major search engine - if you lose google traffic - the traffic from Live or Yahoo will be a small fraction of the google traffic.
Be careful of duplicating content. I had a new site on it's own domain which I set up to replace an existing blog on a free blogging site. Laziness and haste made me do a lot of copy and past to get the new site up and running while he old site was still online too. I suspect that was the main reason why it appears to have vanished from google after doing very well for a few months. A few attempts to get  it back have failed  - so I will have  to start again.

November 06, 2007

A new Affiliate site for me - Paid On Results

I discovered another affiliate site called Paid On Results - I have signed up and am happy with it so far. They have a few well known shops - like Reid Furniture, Grattans, Freemans - and more. Commissions are good and cookie lengths are also fairly long.

October 01, 2007

Irish Affilliate Schemes

Affilliate schemes are a nice easy way to earn some money from your website or blog.
Tradedoubler have a site specifically for Irish based webmasters . Sign up to Tradedoubler for access to be able to sell products from companies such As Apple , Dell , Ebookers, Tesco, Skype, ITunes and Viking.

November 07, 2006

Search Engine Friendly Design

Tips and Tricks for getting a web site ranked highly on search engines:
To buy your products or click on your adsense links - people have to find your website. Most traffic comes via search engines - so you have to cater for them.

Do consider search engines when designing your website
Do take time to get your content to be as user and search engine friendly as possible
URL names can be important for many search engines - if they contain keywords it can help but don't make them too long.
Do try to keep your content succinct and to the point. 300-500 words per page is ideal
Do use keywords and phrases intelligently throughout your content
Do use a unique Title and Description and Keyword Meta Tags on each individual page of your site
Do ensure that every page is linked within your website
Do try to include keywords or phrases around links in the text of your website
Do use thumbnails (smaller images that can be clicked on to enlarge) for photos that you want to present on your website
Don’t ignore search engines when designing your website – it is harder and more expensive to retro fit search engine friendly design after the site is live
Don’t publish reams of content on a page
Don’t publish massive photos or graphics just because you think they look good
Don’t cram lots of keywords into your meta tags – use them as they were meant to be used
Don’t copy content from another website and use it verbatim on yours – all content you or anyone else puts up is copyright to the author – respect that copyright.
Don’t copy a competitor’s meta tags and use them on your website
Don’t use any tricks like invisible text or keyword stuffing – they will only get you into trouble!

Get Listed on the Search engines

Unless you plan to spend money advertising your web site - you need to get it listed on the major search engines.
The main search engines you need to consider as part of your online marketing campaign are as follows: Google, AOL, Yahoo!, Overture, Inktomi, Alltheweb, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Teoma and the ODP (Open Directory Project).
Some of the above are technically directories meaning that a human editor reviews your website before entry into their database. The most well known directory is Yahoo!.
The Open Directory Project is one of the least known but most important directories as it powers results to Google’s listings among others.
Yahoo! is the web’s most visited website.
Google feeds results to AOL and is one of the most popular search engines in the world.
If you focus the core of your online marketing efforts on Google, Yahoo and MSN you will be well on your way to getting access to over 90% of the search engine traffic that counts.
How to get indexed
All of the search engines have a facility to let you submit your site. For example, if you go to www.google.com/addurl.html you will be able to submit your website to Google. It may take up to 4 weeks before the Google robot (as called a spider) visits your site. However, it is also possible that you will get visited by the spider so long as there is a link on the web somewhere pointing to your site.