Monetization Makeover: Tom Keating’s VoIP Blog

Welcome to the second edition of Monetization Makeover. In this series, I review the monetization of different blogs, in terms of both strategy and ad placement, and make suggestions for improving profits.

Today’s lucky blog: Tom Keating’s VoIP and Gadget Blog. Optimized correctly, a blog like this can make bank.

In Monetization Makeover Part 1 I critiqued PSPFanboy’s ad implementation, copiously citing the Adsense heat map as justification for my recommendations. If you haven’t seen the Adsense heat map, I suggest you take a good look (and even if you have, I’d suggest reviewing it early and often). And now, to this week’s blog.

Tom Keating’s VoIP and Gadget Blog

Tom Keating’s VoIP and Gadget Blog is a very well read site in its area. The niche he’s in is one that pays very well with contextual advertising, since CPC bid prices for VoIP-related keywords are very high (trust me, I know). With this in mind, let’s analyze a “permalink” page. As a long-established blog with gobs of content, Tom Keating’s blog receives tons of traffic from search engines like Google. The traffic from search engines mostly flows to these permalink pages (blog software packages like Wordpress and Movable Type handle these permalinks very well for search engine ranking purposes).

Transparent Visitors Pay Your Bills

Now, a bit of an aside on search engine visitors: they tend to be transparent, meaning they find your site in a search engine, click over to your site, either find what they’re looking for, or not– but either way, they usually exit by clicking on an outbound link on your site, or by clicking the back button on their browser.

This is a very important point in terms of its implications for monetization. Visitors from search engines are not going to subscribe to your XML feed at the rate visitors from links do. They’re going to come over for 40 seconds or so and leave, so you need to make the most of them in that quick timeframe.

Now, if you’ve read any of my posts before, you know how my mind works, and you already have figured out the conclusion: these transparent visitors are ripe for monetization. If they’re going to click off, I might as well get them to click off on an ad that pays me for each click. Further, you should note that the CTR on ads from transparent visitors tend to be higher than that of repeat visitors, as repeat visitors have seen your design before and often become “banner blind” to your ad placements.

To sum it up, I think a very good strategy is to maximize the CTR of your ads from transparent visitors without going too far and annoying your regular visitors.

Back to the example at hand. Tom has obviously tried to maximize the monetization of his site (there sure are a lot of ads on the page!)

I’m seeing 6 ads, actually count em. Great monetization, right? Not necessarily.

This is one example where less is more. The ad units that can make him the most money (namely, Adsense) are not featured prominently, nor are they optimized. Further, the page is cluttered with ads that probably pay a lot less than Adsense (Chitika, and, I’m guessing, the graphical units). Using those units has the effect of lowering the CTR (and eCPM) of the Adsense units, while probably not making up that lost revenue. And at the end of the day, it’s all about eCPM of the entire page.

Sometimes Less Is More

With that in mind, I’d probably do something like this:

• Make the skyscraper part of a left column – Skyscrapers nearly always perform significantly better on the left.
• Change the sky to 160 width (it was 120 before) – 160 sky’s perform a lot better than 120 sky’s. The human eye can read the wider text much more easily (and thus click more often).
• Blend the skyscraper – The default Adsense color pattern (white background, blue border) performs terribly. Blending = good.
• Put the graphical skyscraper below the Adsense skyscraper – This one comes with a caveat as I’m not sure what kind of deal, CPC or CPM they get from these. But chances are, they pay a lot less than Adsense for a topic like VoIP. So feature the Adsense.
• Drop Chitika – For a theme like VoIP, Adsense is going to wildly outperform a program like Chitika (again, I know from experience).
• *Not pictured* Change Adsense title text to a more clickable color – To get that ridiculously high CTR on Adsense units, all you have to do sometimes is use red, orange or a shade of blue as the title text. Experiment a bit, as this will vary from blog to blog, but it can make a pretty big difference. (I didn’t picture this one however since I thought it might detract from the design–everything is a tradeoff.)

That wraps up the second edition of Monetization Makeover. Remember, when in doubt, just ask yourself What Would Andy Hagans Do?

I welcome your thoughts.

Don’t Be Ashamed to Regurgitate

Darren’s post 101 Ways to Run Out of Things to Blog About got me thinking about the dangers (or not) of running out of things to blog about.

‘I spent days putting together this great list. I wanted it to be big as a way of bringing new readers in and to show how much I comprehended of the topic…’

‘the results were amazing. I got on the front page of Digg and high on Reddit and Delicious…’

‘I had close to 30,000 visitors in 48 hours!.’

‘the next day I sat down to write my next post and realised that every topic I thought of to write about was covered in my mega list…’

Sure we’ve all been there. I mean, how many times have we blogged about content on Performancing? How can I possibly write another post about that!?

I think regurgitating content — with a new spin and/or flavor — is a good thing, for several reasons.

1. New readers haven’t necessarily read your old stuff. If you’ve been blogging for 2 years, probably half or more of your readers have only been reading for one year or less. Why not introduce them to some of your older posts? (Or put a new spin on the old post, and introduce them to the concepts therein…)
2. It can be helpful to old readers and the blogger alike to take a stroll down memory lane. Football usually comes down to the basics (block and tackle; don’t turn the ball over). So does pretty much any subject. Investing: Buy low, sell high. Amazing how often people forget that one.
3. Revisit and expand: Did you REALLY cover everything you know in your 101 list? I bet you didn’t. Each of the 101 points had a sentence or two explanation. I’ll bet my [valuable appendage here] that you could write an ENTIRE POST on each point. Five posts a week, that’s 20 weeks worth of content you can write!

Bottom line, I knew I wouldn’t like that post when there was a complaint about getting 30k visitors (and probably a ton of secondary links) from a good ol’ link bait. Repeat after me: link bait, then regurgitate!! (That has to be the most disgusting slogan ever!)

High End vs. Low End Content

In most topical niches, there is an “expertise range”. Some bloggers will try to appeal to the masses by making just about every post “n00b-friendly” (e.g., ProBlogger does this well). Other blogs seem to be written for other experts (e.g., Signal vs. Noise).

The issue as I see it is this: writing for the low-end is going to have a much wider appeal and usually get you more traffic, simply because most people aren’t experts. On the other hand, if you write for experts, you’re more likely to get links, since other experts are more likely to have blogs in the niche; it’s also usually better in terms of building your personal reputation and authority. Bloggers who try to do both (i.e., expert post today, n00b post tomorrow) will usually end up annoying both audience segments with the inconsitency.

Of course, the optimal kind of content is probably the type that appeals to both the masses and other experts; People like Copyblogger and Chartreuse seem to do the balancing act quite well.

Whom do you write for in your blog(s)? N00bs or experts? And why?

Why You’re Not Getting on the Digg Homepage

I stumbled across DiggBait 101: 8 Ways to Help You Get to Digg’s Front Page today. I appreciated both the helpful tips themselves, and also the picture-in-a-picture-ness of it all (How to get a blog post Dugg? Make it about Digg and include “8 Ways to…” in the title).

Most of the tips were standard how to link bait stuff, but two really stuck out, as I think they’re the ones that most bloggers miss.

4. Get a Few People To Digg for You:
Sending some emails and bugging some friends to Digg you is not gaming the system.  It's just savvy marketing.  Don't necessarily expect the  momentum to build unless you put in some effort to make it so.  It also affords you the ability to control the title and description for the Digg.  You can count on your competition to do the same, making it even more necessary.  If you're really against this, then send the article around anyway, but without explicitly asking them to digg it.

Didn’t Calacanis say something to the effect of, “it’s all about the IM list”? Stop being so dang high and mighty. You need to promote yourself a bit — others sure as heck aren’t going to, if you don’t!

6. Keep trying.  Don't give up.  Don't expect Instant Gratification:
I tried for awhile and posted lots of interesting stuff. I still didn't get Dugg.  I never expected it with the aforementioned post either; but 100 or so posts later I finally got it.  I didn't look for it; I just posted good stuff with a few of the above tips in mind and eventually got what I wanted.

Ya know what? Maybe I shouldn’t have written this post. I’ll be happy to let everyone else not ask their friends for bumps, and get frustrated after a few flops… meanwhile, my sites can continue get on the frontpage

Blogging Has Finally Grown Up

Old media vs. new media. Us vs. them. The plucky, indepedent blogger out-scooping the major news agency.

Sound about right? We (bloggers) hain’t get no respect.

Well, that paradigm is changing, if indeed it hasn’t already changed. I’m not sure bloggers can claim underdog status indefinitely. A glance at BlogAds shows that some bloggers are charging tens of thousands of dollars a month for an ad slot — and they’re getting it.

What’s more, prominent bloggers are gaining status as “media”. No, I don’t mean the 2-minute “let’s check in with the blogosphere!” segments on MSNBC. The people who matter are actually giving bloggers respect.

Two years ago, 15 media slots (out of 15,000) were given to bloggers at the Republican convention–a small, but notable, indicator that political candidates were beginning to realize the power that bloggers wield. Now, in the fashion industry, bloggers are getting press passes to shows, and PR firms are doing research on whose readership is the widest.

Alison Brod, a New York publicist who represents designer Jill Stuart, now has an employee focusing exclusively on blogs, tracking their impact on sales, among other things…

Fashion blogging’s coming of age is happening as U.S. online advertising revenue, a small percentage of which goes to blogs, topped $10 billion last year, and is expected to grow 22% annually, to reach $27.3 billion in 2010, according to Kelsey Group, a consulting firm.

BlogAds, which places ads on 1,300 blogs, 150 of which are fashion related, says that in the past six months it has inked deals with big fashion companies like Hennes & Mauritz AB’s H&M and Gap Inc.

When a MSM publication says blogging’s “come of age”, that means it probably happened about a year ago. The question is, where is it heading? And how many years until the size and power (and ad revenues) of independent media eclipse that of the mainstream?

Guy Kawasaki: It’s Hard to Make Money Blogging

First off, if you aren’t a regular reader of Guy Kawasaki, head on over. There’s a reason why he rose to stardom in his first few months of blogging.

Now, Guy is sort of an outside/n00b in terms of webmastering, and he brings a fresh perspective on issues we old hats have beaten to death since 2001.

His recent post The First 100 Days: Observations of a Nouveau Blogger, is a succinct but accurate collection of truisms. In particular:

10. It’s hard to make money blogging. The advertising revenues don’t add up to much, but there are other significant rewards like helping people change the world..

Amen to that. One of the major themes of Performancing is that of making money from blogging. But the truth is that the vast majority of people do not make much money from their blogs… and even if they do make a decent bit, if you amortize it over the hours they put, it’s still likely they’re effectively earning less than minimum wage while blogging. (There are exceptions of course, but they are outliers.)

I think all of us in this space are driven, in part at least, by something besides money. (Well, except for me and Rich.)

What motivates everyone to blog? Are you mostly in it for the money (or something that could bring money, like if your blog gives you exposure that leads to a job offer)? Or do you do it for fun? A passion? A hobby? A part time job? A bit of all of the above?

(I’ll go first… I’m in it 90% for the money… 10% as a hobby…)

Weaning Myself from Adsense

Yes, you read the title correctly. A self-described Adsense junkie has decided to seek help. Step 1: Admitting you have a problem.

For me, that problem was having a sizable portion of my income come from one company. The problem was the constant worry of a click attack and getting booted without warning. The problem was no good backup plan to monetize (YPN? could make up maybe 20%). And the problem was not understanding the details of how and why I get paid how much I get paid (smart pricing).

Now, don’t get me wrong. I looooove Adsense. It’s by far the best way to monetize content on many niche topics. But, looking back, I should never have invested so much in business models that have the above problems.

The other option

Now, I don’t want to paint an overly rosy picture. I’ll give it to you straight. Affiliate marketing is hard. And most blogs do not lend themselves to be monetized well with affiliate ads.

From my own tests in the past, I knew about these challenges in monetizing blogs with affiliate links. Affiliate links just didn’t fit most of my sites.

So I started from square one. What type of site would work well with affiliate monetization? The answer (and I’m not saying it’s the only answer, but it’s the answer I found) is to build sites around the buying cycle.

Compare:

1) A blog about trends in VoIP, including security issues, industry news, regulatory news, etc.

2) A blog about VoIP products for consumers, including reviews of the latest VoIP wireless phones, headsets, routers, etc.

#1 is a dream for Adsensing. I get ads for VoIP, which pay well, and who cares if they ever convert? But if I put up affiliate links, the revenue is terrible. I don’t see conversions. Most of my visitors are enthusiasts or geeks who want news. They aren’t shopping.

At any given time, the vast majority (98%?) of people on the Web aren’t shopping for something. And getting a conversion out of those people is extremely hard, since you have to get them over the first step (“what is this product? do I even want it?”).

Now, if you can get a lot of traffic from the 2% — the shoppers — your job is easy; they know what it is; they know they want it; so show them their options, and let the merchant take care of the rest.

Newfound confidence

So let’s revisit the problems I had with Adsense:

1. having a sizable portion of my income come from one company.
2. the constant worry of a click attack and getting booted without warning.
3. no good backup plan to monetize
4. not understanding the details of how and why I get paid how much I get paid

With affiliate marketing, I get:

1. income coming from many different merchants
2. no worry about click fraud — no conversion, no revenue
3. plenty of backup plans (I won’t bother in a market if I can’t find multiple affiliate programs)
4. I understand how each and every affiliate relationship works. It’s spelled out in the contract terms and the payout is predictable.

Yes, it feels pretty sweet.

But it’s not for everyone. If you can’t (or don’t feel like) creating content that’s geared towards the buying cycle, you’re going to find it much harder to get conversions. And if you have an established, respected blog, the thought of starting a new one in ‘the buying cycle’ might make you tired just thinking about it. But if this stuff is feeding your family (or yourself), my advice to you is to get on it, and pronto!

p.s. Sorry I didn’t give more concrete examples of sites/niches, I normally like giving examples… I just didn’t want to reveal my niches But if you want some examples of blogs geared towards ‘the buying cycle’, you can check out Manolo’s Shoe Blog or Digital Photography Blog.

p.p.s. the alternate title for this blog entry was: “Affiliate dollars… they just taste sweeter”

Can You Afford Not To Blog? Maybe.

Scrivs posted today that he was surprised by the amount of freelancers who don’t blog to promote themselves. On the one hand, I agree. Blogging can be a great way to position yourself as an authority in your service market. On the other hand…

1. Are you a natural writer? Most people… aren’t. There’s little point in blogging unless it’s going to make you look better. Say you have bad grammar — or even if you have perfect grammar but are boring or can’t express your ideas clearly — is writing really going to help you look better? Could it possibly make you look worse? I don’t know about you, but I think 9 out of 10 blogs positively suck, and if you’re not gonna be in that top 10%…

2. Do you expect your plumber to do your taxes? (disclaimer: this doesn’t apply to copywriters) So you’re a designer and I’m thinking about hiring you… I don’t give a HOOT if you can write something interesting. I want to see your homepage’s design, and your portfolio. If you’re a programmer, I want to play with something you’ve built, and know what technologies/languages you’re good with. What does your blogging ability have to do with it?

3. Vacuous time waster If you have a lot of down-time, then maybe blogging is a good (and cheap — main cost is your time) way to build your business. But then, once you GET those new clients, and suddenly you ARE busy, you’ll probably either a) not have time for your blog anymore, and let it site around looking ‘dead’, or b) get the bug and spend too much time at it, and not enough on ‘real work’.

Now, take this all with a grain of salt because a ton of people have built profitable businesses off their blogs (Scrivs included)… but I don’t think it’s a no-brainer.

And I also think we should mind the standard FTC disclaimer: Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.

YPN Continues to Disappoint

Yahoo!, when you announced YPN, I, and a million other Adsensers, jumped for joy. With another “real” contextual ad solution, the rewards of publishing on obscure topics (potentially) go way up, while the risk goes way down (two baskets for your eggs).

You started slow, fine, no sweat. We were promised improvements, and we waited patiently.

But somehow, EIGHT months later, YPN is still a huge dissapointment for me. It just amazes me how terrible their offering is.

• Internartional? What’s that thar? Section 11.1
  Abuse of Services. You agree not to:
  display all or part of the Ad Unit to any user located outside the US;
• The short tail From a WMW thread:
  

  I am seeing vonage ads all the time while my site has nothing to do with vonage.

  So far, the targetting is terrible: lots of generic “Mortgage Loan” and vonage ads. I would say that, if I’m lucky, one out of 4 ads in a skyscraper is at all remotely targeted to the page. Usually, none are.

  i got rid of the vonage adds, but I agree about the florist and ftd ads, they are still there after a couple days and I’ve blocked every url (including ftd.com/folder, ftd.comfolder, ftd.com/folder/ etc. w/ and w/out the www)

Of course, some pub’s are making more with YPN, but that’s not because YPN is a more efficient market (HA yah right)… it’s because YPN is too stupid to use any type of Smart pricing, which is only going to sour advertisers completely on YPN (even more than they are with the Google contextual network).

[Not that I have a problem with pub's using this inefficiency to its full potential -- hey milk it while it lasts!]

Maybe it all started with Overture

I think one of the problems is that Yahoo’s CPC offering (based on the old Overture) is still clunky and annoying. With YPN built on top, it can’t help but inherit the problems of its parent.

Yahoo!, perhaps you could hire a usability consultant (or three) to take a look at your CPC program and interface?

And when you’re done with that, please hire a business consultant to take a look at YPN (someone who knows what the “Long tail” is, and why having it is the critical success factor in contextual ad platforms).

And then switch the “International button” to ON.

…

Sigh. Google “gets it” 90% of the time. Yahoo, please, please get your head out of your arse. Otherwise you may find your contextual product to be #3 behind MSN’s. And that’s just plain humiliating.

Profitability: a Game of Inches

I finally broke down (thanks to my partner Jimbo’s pressuring), and took a bit of time to sort out my company’s to-do list. (“Small business productivity”) While I’ll miss seeing the snazzy Notepad interface smiling up at me, the gains of using Ta-da list are already impressing me.

The thing about me is, I’ve never ever had a “great idea”. All I ever have is little 2 minute ’slight improvement’ ideas. You know, those quick chores you think of when you’re surfing (and hopefully get around to later). These are the details that make a decent Web site good, and over time make a good Web site great. And they also make a mildly profitable business much more profitable (if you commit to doing them over a long period of time).

The problem being, during the course of a day I think of a dozen of these things that need to be done, and I either:

a) email it to myself or Jimbo to be done (and half the time we never get around to it because there’s no follow through), or
b) just plain forget about it.

Recently Jimbo made the jump to fulltime blog overlord, and he has a lot more hours in the day to actually do all the things we want to do. So rather than continuing to half-a** it, we finally got (semi) serious, and setup an account at Ta-Da list. (Neat little app by the way, but I’m not ready to name 37Signals the ‘next big thing’ quite yet).

Our productivity gains have been staggering. I finally have a clear overview of what work’s being done by whom, how long it takes, and where our strengths and weaknesses are. Which, if I’m getting real about building a business, is a necessity.

There. I did it. I made a post about productivity. See that transparent haze floating away? That’s my soul