Monthly archives for January, 2008

Don’t Let Your Blogging Income Drop Because Of Smart Pricing



If you monetize a blog then you want the maximum blogging income possible. The one thing you don’t want is to waste the value of any clicks.

Let me clarify ‘smart pricing’. Whilst Google does not say much about it, they will cut your income by 90% if you don’t have a site that is performing to their standards. Their standards equate to CTR of around 3% or better. If your CTR is below then Google will only pay 10% of the standard click rate. Instead of a keyword click being worth $0.50, it will only be worth $0.05. This is a huge drop – but it gets worse.

If you run more than one site then your return is based on your lowest CTR site. If you have three sites, one with a CTR of 5%, a second with a CTR of 4% and the a third with a CTR of only 1%, they will all return the value of the third site – 1%. This is known as ‘smart pricing’. Is it fair, probably not. Whilst Google can tell you every thing about a user and about a blog, they cannot account for different web/blog sites.

How do you avoid ‘smart pricing’? First, make sure you have good analytics on each of your ad units. Secondly, if any ad unit is performing at less than 3%, either reposition it or remove it altogether.

You can reverse ‘smart pricing’. Simply remove the poorly performing ad units. Once you stats are showing a better than 3% CTR across the board your income level will return to full value. This can take from 3 to 10 days.

In brief. Your blogging income will fall across all ad units if just one of those ad units has a CTR of less than 3%. Keep good statistics on each ad unit. Remove any poor performing ad units. Another good tip provided to you by the best blog marketing journal around.

Posted in Blogging Income - Tagged

Blogging Income – Have You Heard Of The Rubicon Project



There are many blogging income streams available ranging from the traditional Google ads, Yahoo, affiliate marketing and PPC. The Rubicon Project on the one hand is no different to the traditional methods and yet it is in it’s own right a fairly new concept. It has certainly created a deal of hype.

The Rubicon Project has partnered with traditional advertisers like Google, Adbrite and Shopzilla to name just a couple. The concept is that you place advertising units on your blog or website in much the same way as you do now. You can specify banner, skyscrapper or box units of various sizes. You can also nominate which advertisers, which geographical area and even which demographics you want ads targeted towards. You can also nominate the ratio of ads from the different advertisers.

Once you have set up and placed your ad units, the Rubicon Project then goes to work to display ads according to your setup.  For the publisher, you no longer need accounts with each of the advertisers. The Rubicon Project collects all the statistic and collects your income on your behalf. You only need the one account.

The plus side. You get to publish ads from a wide variety of advertisers. Every time someone visits your site they will view a completely different ad. You only need to keep track of one ad company. Another plus are the comprehensive statistics that are available to keep track of your blog marketing efforts.

The down side. Not all ads will be targeted to your sites content. If you include Google Adsense you are still constrained by Google’s three ads per page rule. The biggest downside for me is that I have not been able to determine what percentage of revenue I receive from each advertiser.

As a blogging income stream the concept has merit. I have trialled it on one of my other sites and income from this ad stream is almost triple what I experienced before placing the ad units (similar ads units too). The Rubicon Project is still in Beta, however it may be worth a visit to see if it fits in with your blogs aims.

Posted in Blogging Income - Tagged
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