Posted in adsense, case studies, ctr, earnings, niche blog, profits, projects | 19 Comments
An Update On My Boring Blog Project
I have been doing a case study of improving the earnings of a boring blog that I had neglected for a long time. Here’s an update on my progress.
The previous articles, along with their dates are:
09/25/2006 Getting Content
10/16/2007 Keyword Research
11/08/2007 Link Building
Keep those dates in mind while looking at the table below. These are my AdSense earnings for the blog since I started it. Per Google’s terms of service, I am not allowed to give click-through rates or amounts per click.
| Date | Page Impressions |
Earnings |
| Jun-06 | 18 | $0.79 |
| Jul-06 | 26 | $4.21 |
| Aug-06 | 45 | $3.05 |
| Sep-06 | 15 | $1.31 |
| Oct-06 | 30 | $0.00 |
| Nov-06 | 15 | $0.00 |
| Dec-06 | 10 | $0.50 |
| Jan-07 | 11 | $0.00 |
| Feb-07 | 16 | $0.00 |
| Mar-07 | 32 | $0.00 |
| Apr-07 | 59 | $3.27 |
| May-07 | 18 | $0.00 |
| Jun-07 | 277 | $12.34 |
| Jul-07 | 14 | $0.00 |
| Aug-07 | 18 | $0.12 |
| Sep-07 | 121 | $6.21 |
| Oct-07 | 53 | $1.23 |
| Nov-07 | 295 | $11.49 |
Notice the increase in September. This is when I added a lot of new content.
Then there is another increase in November, when I worked on link building.
What about the larger numbers in June? I have no idea. I went back to the blog and checked, and I did not add any new posts at that time. As far as I know, I didn’t do anything in June. 
Is It Worth It?
Is my work on this blog worth it? After all, those are pretty small monthly amounts. However, there are a few things in favor of continuing:
- The traffic numbers are small. For such small amounts of traffic, the earnings are quite good. If I can get the traffic numbers up, I will do well.
- I have not spent much time on it yet. I could add a lot more content and get a lot more links, without too much trouble.
- This is a good example of what happens when you neglect a blog. If I had kept my efforts up since June of 2006, I could be earning a lot from the blog by now. The problem is, the topic is so boring. However, I think I will continue to put some effort towards it once in a while, just to see how well it will do.
- One thing that is very encouraging is the lack of competition in this niche. This is another factor that makes me want to continue.
All in all, it’s not a rousing success. But I thought you might want to see the results anyway.
You can look at these results as glass half full or glass half empty.
Glass half full: Numbers are increasing. Good potential.
Glass half empty: Very low earnings so far. Boring subject.
We only have a limited number of hours per day to work. I guess we each have to analyze our projects and decide where to put our efforts.
The reason I would like to put some more effort towards this is that I only have to do it once. Once the numbers get up there, since there’s not much competition, I will not have to do much, and the earnings will continue. For example, I have one blog that is consistently earning $300-$400 per month, even though I have hardly updated it for many months.
The more money I can have coming in on “autopilot”, the more time I will have to spend on the really fun things in the future. 
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Pat,
Thanks so much for this post, it’s very interesting to see actual numbers. I have been blogging for a couple of years now, starting out as a fun hobby, but have been trying different techniques to monetize my various blogs. Although my blogs don’t cover the subject of making money online, I still feel i have something positive and worthy to offer my readers.
I have had moments of utter frustration wondering why I wasn’t making any monetary returns on my invested time, but slowly I am seeing some profits, and this post solidifies my belief that it is possible.
One Eyed View
One Eyed, your dream site is interesting. How is it working out for you?
Yes, sometimes it’s hard to decide if the small money made by a website is worth it ? After the minimum basics are done (content, link building), I usually wait about 6 months before checking the stats. If I see some interesting keywords bringing traffic I try to create a few pages on that… and I wait again… after if it produces nothing more than $10/month I give up.
It’s difficult to give up on a project in where you invested time. It’s like the stock market game: to create money from small websites, we have to learn to keep winners and accept the “loss” of losers.
Thanks, Diva. There are actually a lot of great women bloggers. This gives me an idea for a post – so check my next post for a great list of female bloggers.
Fab, that’s a good way of looking at it – I like it.
Fab,
That’s good advice. If only I could follow it and not check my websites stats daily…bad habits are hard to break;)
I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be doing this blogging thing if it was just about the money. I couldn’t imagine trying to write all the time about something that didn’t interest me…even if it did make money. I think I’d have to stick to the subjects that I could make money with and still have some interest in.
Ok, One Eyed View – you asked for suggestions, so here are a few:
1) Your home page looks a little bland, except for the ads, which add some nice color. I would add an image to some of your posts, maybe early in the post so that the image will display on the home page. Just to add some visual interest.
2) I would change the link color of the AdSense to the same blue that you use for your other links. You might get more clicks on the AdSense that way.
3) The videos on your video page don’t seem to be related to dreams. I struggled with that too. I don’t know how to get the AdSense videos better targeted. You might be better off just going to Youtube and choosing some specific videos, and then just put some text AdSense on the video page. (You would need some text on the page about dreams, so that AdSense knows what topic of ads to serve.)
Other than that, it is a nice looking blog!
Jason, I don’t write many articles for the boring blog. I get them from article sites, mostly. I only write a few articles that I submit to article and ezine sites. I don’t think I could stand to write all the time about things I had no interest in, either.
Another tactic would be to outsource the article writing. I may do that in the future.
One Eyed View: Ok I do check the stats once in a while
Same with the email… I lose a lot of time per day, checking it! I read Tim Ferriss way about checking emails (once a week only) and it seems to be great… but it’s just very hard to implement.
I too make use of article sites, for one of my blogs. I started with posting all my own writing, then couldn’t keep up, so I started searching article sites for relevant material. See here http://wedreaming.com
Thanks for the input from a woman’s point of view. It seems most of the popular bloggers are men but women are a force to watch out for.
You’re welcome! I’m glad my tips were helpful to you.
The photos look fantastic! You found some really great ones too.
Pat,
http://wedreaming.com started as a labor of love. I go through periods of very intense dreaming depending on what I’m dealing with on a conscious level. Whether my dreams are stress induced or brought on by a problem I’m figuring out, they often seem pretty “real”. For years I kept a dream journal and even have drawings of some, as I really believe I can learn from them.
Sometimes, they’re just plain weird and that’s kind of fun to record too. So I started http://wedreaming with the premise that I could put all my dreams in a central location and share them with people in with the hope that I might be able to start a community of like-minded folks. I have had a few people sign up and post some dreams, but the community hasn’t taken off like I had hoped…so far anyway.
I try to post useful information for people who might be looking for dream interpretations or other info, and I have monetized it with some Adsense and Amazon Associate links, but it isn’t close to having a “regular” income.
The more I learn about affiliate marketing, the more I will modify the site, and hopefully be able to offer quality information and still earn some revenue.
Any suggestions for the site are welcome and most appreciated.
Pat,
Thanks for the tips, all very do-able. I might just remove the video link for now until, but I will definitely add some dream related text content on that page.
I will also change the Adsense link color, great suggestion!
And the best tip I think is adding images to the top of my posts. In fact, when I started reading your blog, the images struck me right away. I first wondered how you getting these, but then I saw your link about getting images from Flicker…I’m off to read that post now! Stay tuned for changes!
Thanks Pat!
Photos added, have a look http://wedreaming.com/
It adds so much to the look, more color, more meaning.
Thanks, David. I think the potential is pretty good for this site.
Over 30 per 1000 on google is pretty decent for publisher pages these days. Ever since google started allowing Adword users to specify a different price for their partner network it is hard to get a good return.
In other words, just because we see that people are bidding big dollars for a particular search term that isn’t always the price they are bidding when the match occurs on their publisher network.
Combine the results your getting with google with some related affiliate products and an increase in traffic you have a winner for sure in my opinion. Thanks for sharing.