8 Tips to Maximize Revenue in Contextual Advertising
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
I been looking for information to increase my blog's contextual advertising revenues and here is what I found:
1. Determine What Kind of Blogs are best for Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising may not fit for all blogs. Some blogs do extremely well with it, earning 5-figures or more in a month while others earn mere pennies a month. What surprise me is that it's not about traffic as there are some blogs getting only 5,000 ad impression that earn more that those getting 50,00 impression monthly. So, what kinds of blogs do well on contextual ads?
Experiences and testimonies reveal that visitor's characteristics determine what blogs work well with contextual ads. These are:
* Blogs where visitors are in a buying mood
* Blogs where visitors are looking for information on specific products or services that interest them. These may be product, business opportunity, looking to buy tickets, and etc.
* Blogs where visitors are researching ways to spend money.
* Blogs where there is a high percentage of fresh unique visitors as regular visitors tend to ignore ads
* Blogs where visitors show an interest to ads, and not just the blog's offerings
is also what the technology will read to serve well-targeted ads.
So, if you are up to contextual advertising, the next time you create your next blog, be sure the kind of visitor will fall under the above categories. And if contextual advertising is not working for you as you expect, be sure to check out other forms to monetize your blog such as affiliate programs and CPM-based advertising.
2. Develop High Quality Content for Your Visitors
Looking at it from the advertisers' perspective, many prefer their ads to be shown on blogs with good content. Remember, content is what brings visitors to blog, and content is what makes them interested in the ad. In contextual advertising, content
3. Stick firmly to the Terms and Policy of Contextual Ad Networks
You don't want to lose a good revenue source that may be giving you as much as $2,000 a month just because you did not read the terms that you have supposedly agreed. Read and understand the terms of service. Its' purpose is to spells out the do's and don'ts that will guide you in your program participation.
4. Use and Analyze Data
As a participant in a contextual advertising program, you will be provided with reports that tell you how effective the program is working on your blog. The basic metrics will include page/ad impressions, number of clicks, click-through rate (CTR) and earnings. Some provide effective CPM, or the cost per thousand impressions. These metrics can help you analyze what is working well in your blog, and whether you can improve your revenues.
5. Repeated Experiments
Experiment and see what works best for your blog. If the revenue increases, then stick with it. If not, leave it and try something else.
You can manipulate 3 things to increase your contextual advertising revenues. These are ad impressions, number of clicks, and click-through rate. Even if your traffic is not growing as fast as you hope for, you can grow your revenues if you improve your click-through rate. And you can improve the performance of the contextual ads in your blog by experimenting on layout, colors, ad format, and number of ads.
6. Blog Promotion
This is one of the most difficult parts to do. Increasing the traffic to your blogs and continuously building your blog (like publishing new posts frequently) is always a good way to improve revenues, not just contextual advertising.
7. Keywords Diversity
Advertisers bid for keywords and the amount they are bidding affects your contextual advertising earnings. To protect your revenues from wild fluctuations, the best approach would be to diversify your keywords by developing content based on different topics.
8. Build an Empire of Blogs
This is similar to the tips I shared before in Make $500 a Month with Adsense. Remember, don't put all your eggs in one basket, as it may fails all of sudden. The more blogs you have the higher your contextual revenue expected. If one blog's contextual advertising dries up, you still have others to enjoy, right?
I hope you find the above information valuable. These are excellent ideas to follow to increase your blog's contextual revenues.
Good luck.
1. Determine What Kind of Blogs are best for Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising may not fit for all blogs. Some blogs do extremely well with it, earning 5-figures or more in a month while others earn mere pennies a month. What surprise me is that it's not about traffic as there are some blogs getting only 5,000 ad impression that earn more that those getting 50,00 impression monthly. So, what kinds of blogs do well on contextual ads?
Experiences and testimonies reveal that visitor's characteristics determine what blogs work well with contextual ads. These are:
* Blogs where visitors are in a buying mood
* Blogs where visitors are looking for information on specific products or services that interest them. These may be product, business opportunity, looking to buy tickets, and etc.
* Blogs where visitors are researching ways to spend money.
* Blogs where there is a high percentage of fresh unique visitors as regular visitors tend to ignore ads
* Blogs where visitors show an interest to ads, and not just the blog's offerings
is also what the technology will read to serve well-targeted ads.
So, if you are up to contextual advertising, the next time you create your next blog, be sure the kind of visitor will fall under the above categories. And if contextual advertising is not working for you as you expect, be sure to check out other forms to monetize your blog such as affiliate programs and CPM-based advertising.
2. Develop High Quality Content for Your Visitors
Looking at it from the advertisers' perspective, many prefer their ads to be shown on blogs with good content. Remember, content is what brings visitors to blog, and content is what makes them interested in the ad. In contextual advertising, content
3. Stick firmly to the Terms and Policy of Contextual Ad Networks
You don't want to lose a good revenue source that may be giving you as much as $2,000 a month just because you did not read the terms that you have supposedly agreed. Read and understand the terms of service. Its' purpose is to spells out the do's and don'ts that will guide you in your program participation.
4. Use and Analyze Data
As a participant in a contextual advertising program, you will be provided with reports that tell you how effective the program is working on your blog. The basic metrics will include page/ad impressions, number of clicks, click-through rate (CTR) and earnings. Some provide effective CPM, or the cost per thousand impressions. These metrics can help you analyze what is working well in your blog, and whether you can improve your revenues.
5. Repeated Experiments
Experiment and see what works best for your blog. If the revenue increases, then stick with it. If not, leave it and try something else.
You can manipulate 3 things to increase your contextual advertising revenues. These are ad impressions, number of clicks, and click-through rate. Even if your traffic is not growing as fast as you hope for, you can grow your revenues if you improve your click-through rate. And you can improve the performance of the contextual ads in your blog by experimenting on layout, colors, ad format, and number of ads.
6. Blog Promotion
This is one of the most difficult parts to do. Increasing the traffic to your blogs and continuously building your blog (like publishing new posts frequently) is always a good way to improve revenues, not just contextual advertising.
7. Keywords Diversity
Advertisers bid for keywords and the amount they are bidding affects your contextual advertising earnings. To protect your revenues from wild fluctuations, the best approach would be to diversify your keywords by developing content based on different topics.
8. Build an Empire of Blogs
This is similar to the tips I shared before in Make $500 a Month with Adsense. Remember, don't put all your eggs in one basket, as it may fails all of sudden. The more blogs you have the higher your contextual revenue expected. If one blog's contextual advertising dries up, you still have others to enjoy, right?
I hope you find the above information valuable. These are excellent ideas to follow to increase your blog's contextual revenues.
Good luck.
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I'm Joe Li
From Hong Kong
