Lingolook

It all started with a video from the late, great Ken Giddens. It was amazing how this man played the system. And buy system I mean the way people searched for information.

He showed in the clearest way possible, that the way to make money through pay-per-click systems like Adsense was to collect traffic looking for something particular, give them a little more information than they already knew and then point them in the direction you want them to go.

The (obvious) secret to making money with AdSense is getting visitors to click on the ads you want them to. Put differently, what you’ve got to avoid is giving them a reason not to.

This sounds dumb but I’ve recently learned some interesting lessons about this on one of my blogs.

To start with I believe in putting up AdSense ads only where they serve a purpose. Take a look round this site and you’ll see no ads. Lots of widgets and things but no ads. For the simple reason that in my view, anyone “lonely” enough to visit this blog isn’t looking to buy anything so what purpose do they serve here? They don’t actually add to the experience so, for now at least, they’re not welcome.

No, the idea is to put ads where they add value to the page. An example is the AdSense block on the right margin over at www.genitoriinfuga.com. Yes there’s an English version but we’re working on this one at the moment.

What this site does is tells of our travels “without the kids”. If anyone else feels the urge to follow in our footsteps, Google is kind enough to provide some pretty good ideas. It’s complimentary and makes the site look a whole lot more professional in the process. Now all we’ve got to do is work on our traffic…

A blog that isn’t lacking traffic is www.theacerguy.com and this one in particular has taught me more lessons than I’ve had hot dinners (and I’m a big guy). There’s steady growth, interest and participation from all involved.

This site has AdSense blocks both on it and off (Swicki). I’ve noticed that if people get onto the Swicki, they’re ten times more likely to try and get away from it by clicking on the AdSense ads. Ken was right.

So what was the lesson?

Recently The Acer Guy had a lot of traffic from people with a support issue. At first I wasn’t able to resolve the issue completely so visitors passed through, often clicking on the Ads when they didn’t find what they were looking for.

Then last week-end I posted a solution to the problem. Almost overnight my AdSense revenue went through the floor and is struggling to show a heart beat.

So at what cost authority? I guess there’s a fine line between giving people what they want in return for building long-term reputation and giving them what you need in return for a quick buck.

I’ll take the former any day.

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This blog is becoming a bit of a joke for certain aspects, a war casualty for others.

It wasn’t my intention to have a blog explode on me but The Acer Guy  really has taken me by surprise. In the space of one month, the average number of unique daily visitors has risen from an average of 50 to over 400 and this trend doesn’t look like it’s going to ease up any time soon.

All this with the “paid” job becoming more and more, emm, involving.

It’s been a fascinating trip, even more so as it’s a one-man public show.  I’m having so much fun staying up with the conversations that it’s very hard to make any real progress with user tracking, Adsense CTR and all that jazz.

The one thing I have noticed, as this is  as big a surprise as the growth in visitor numbers, is the fact that the biggest Adsense earner is in fact off-site. That’s right, the Swicki generates at least 3 times the Adsense revenue of the other income streams.

I have a theory for this: The Swicki is a way for users to fine tune their searches once they arrive on a site. But the Swicki results page is a mess, so users click on the fastest way out… Adsense. It’s not quite what I had in mind when I created it so I’ll have to look into a way to clean it up a little.

This is more like me ringing home to touch base than me saying anything shocking but that’s the way things go online I guess.

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Moving on from my last post, it’s becoming harder and harder for me to concentrate on some of the things I’d like to in this blog as many of the wheels I’ve set in motion are beginning to turn very rapidly indeed.

These wheels are teaching me the lesson of a lifetime but while I’m busy absorbing, it’s becoming very difficult to produce. Or at least share…

Time has become an issue lately with me. Let me put that differently: Time has an issue with me.

I just can’t get around to organizing my day in such a way as to have a start and a finish. It’s just a continual blur, just like one of my son’s frantic scribbles, whizzing back and forth with amazing power and authority only to produce what can best be described as a colourful mess.

I don’t know about you but I’ve now settled into following a few blogs directly on NetVibes rather than slavishly scouring my aggregator for keywords. That at least allows me to keep in touch without taking too much time away from my 9-to-5 (that’s pm to am ;-))

I think some of the best blogs right now are Jack Humphrey’s and Jane May’s, if only because the first talks straight, no-holds-barred authority tactics that go down like a glass of Glenfiddich with no ice. The second is far more gentle and surprisingly encouraging. Their styles are so different yet so equal in their appeal. Maybe it’s just because they know their stuff and write damned well.

Speaking of Jack Humphrey, he’s just launched a new Web 2.0 marketing tool that I like so much I bought it the moment it came out. It’s called Web2Submitter and it’s so clever you wonder why nobody thought about it earlier.

If you’re not clear about the principles of Social Powerlinking and are scared by sites like Go2Web20.net, I thoroughly recommend you hop over to Jack’s site and read this.

Anyway, the beauty of Web2Submitter is that it automatically submits submits your blog posts to Web 2.0 sites like Digg, Netscape, Reddit, Shoutwire, Plime, Newsvine and Stumble Upon , creating countless backlinks, traffic and a whole lot of authority in just a few clicks.

Like I said, brilliant.

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