Monday, January 23, 2012

What is AdSense CTR, RPM and CPC

After adding AdSense ads on your site you want to find how successful is your AdSense combination placement with a help of performance AdSense reports. To analyze AdSense reports first you should learn what abbreviations like CTR means.


Here we will discuss most important AdSense report indicators like:

  • AdSense CTR (Click Through Rate)

  • AdSense RPM (Revenue Per thousand iMpressions)

  • AdSense CPC (Cost Per Click)


What is AdSense CTR (Click Through Rate)


AdSense CTR (Click Through Rate) is the number of the ad clicks divided by the number of page views.

CTR = (Number of ad clicks * 100) / Number of page views

If my blog have 10,000 pageviews per month and 40 AdSense ad clicks then my CTR is 0,04%.

CTR = (40 * 100) / 10000 = 0,04%


Higher CTR (Click through rate) more AdSense ad clicked means more earnings. So every AdSense publisher want higher CTR.

What is AdSense CTR - Click Through Rate

How to calculate CTR for whole page

When you calculate CTR (Click Through Rate) for whole page or site you should sum up CTR for each individual ad. For example, if my site have two ads, one ad have CTR 0,15% and another ad have 0,25% then my site have total CTR 0,40%.

When you calculate CTR for whole page you could get all ads on your site not only AdSense ads.

What is a good or bad CTR

It is not easy to tell what is good or bad CTR. Click through rate (CTR) depends on specific niche, type of site, design of site and many other factors.

Important is to find your current CTR and keep an eye on CTR during time when you make various action to increase your CTR. Ad placement have great influence on CTR, so try to optimize your ad placement. After you make changes on ad placement keep track how it affect on your CTR. Something similar to my article: Increase blog adsense revenue real case scenario.

To help with AdSense CTR benchmark I will give information what I consider as good or bad CTR:

  • under 0,10% - it is bad CTR, my blog have this CTR before any AdSense ad placement optimization

  • 0,10% - 0,20% - it is acceptable CTR but it can be better

  • 0,20% - 0,30% - it is good CTR

  • above 0,30% - excellent CTR

  • above 2% - by some sources on internet it is suspicious high CTR

Please, leave a comment about CTR on your site and your opinion what is good or bad CTR.


What is AdSense RPM (Revenue Per thousand iMpressions)


Page revenue per thousand impressions (RPM) is calculated by dividing your estimated earnings by the number of page views you received, then multiplying by 1000.


Page RPM = (Estimated earnings / Number of page views) * 1000

This is good indicator to estimate your earning in future, for example if your RPM is €1,12 then you can predict if you will have 15,000 pageviews your earnings will probably be around €16,8 (15 * €1,12).


What is AdSense CPC (Cost Per Click)


The cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount publisher earn each time a user clicks on his ad. In publisher reports, CPC is calculated by dividing the estimated earnings by the number of clicks received.

For example if your CPC is €0.26 then you need around 285 click to earn €100.


Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Make a blog plan for next year

New year 2012 is come. It is time to evaluate how my blog is doing in 2011 and to think about actions for improving blog results in next year. In first part of this article I will show some blog statistics in last year and in second part there will be a list of planning blog activity I intend to do in new year.

How successful was 2011

    To better describe 2011 year there will be shown:

  • number of visits per year

  • AdSense blog earning per year

  • traffic source overview

  • a few words about guest posting

Number of visits per year and next year expectation

In the image below is showed number of visits in 2010 and in 2011 year. There is growth of 79 percent for 2010 to 2011 or 42260 new visits. I am satisfied with this result and hope that on the end of 2012 I will get at least 42260 more visit (in this case sum will be 138.876). Or even better if growth will be 79% in 2012 I would have 172.227 visits.

Blog visits per year











AdSense blog earning per year

AdSense earnings in 2010: 11,49$

AdSense earnings in 2011: 112,61$

My AdSense earning raise much more than traffic. While traffic increased about 2 times, AdSense earning raise 10 times. Why?

Well, one reason is that I optimize my AdSense placement and type. In article Increase blog adsense revenue real case scenario you can find more details about my attempts.


Traffic source overview

My main traffic source is Google 89%, and 10% my blog get from direct traffic. In my opinion it is good to get lot traffic from search engines but I believe that my blog can get much more traffic from referring sites and I intend to work on it this year.

Traffic source overview for my blog












Guest posting

In this year my blog reached PageRank 3 for two months and fall again on PageRank 2. In that period I used myblogguest service and get more than 30 guest posts. Unfortunately those guest article bring me very little traffic. In my opinion those guest posts are not bad but are written without proper keyword research and on page optimization techniques.


Blogging plan for this year


In this year I plan to:

  • get more SEO driven traffic to my blog

  • make a blogging tribe as described in article Increase website traffic - tips from the best

  • improve blog structure - plan to make a few main sections pages which will lead to content pages of some topic (section). Something similar to Javascript effects tutorial. Links to those main section pages will be on main page of my blog

  • improve monetization of my blog - plan to try with buysellads.com service. Unfortunately they do not accept blogspot subdomain so I will think about changing domain name

  • prepare exact instructions for guest posting on my blog and put a visible offer for guest posting on my blog

  • try to buy articles with earned money using a site www.freelancer.com

  • publish some guest posts on A blogs. This is great way to reach audience.


Monday, January 2, 2012

Increase website traffic - tips from the best

How to increase website traffic? Many bloggers ask themselves this question and struggled to find the answer.


A few day ago I bumped on interview with Ana Hoffman on Michael Alexis site. In this interview Ana described her way of generating more and more internet traffic.


After a few minutes of interview I figured out that this interview is very helpful and give some new ways (unknow to me) of generating blogs traffic.

Learn how to increase website traffic from interview with Ana Hoffman










Why Ana Hoffman opinion is relevant?

Recently, I visited Ana blog trafficgenerationcafe for the first time. My first impression was that it is quality blog which stand out. This blog currently have Page Rank 4 which is good, but Alexa rank is around 8500. According to Michael Alexis, Ana started her site 1,5 year ago. In this light Alexa rank at around 8,500 is amazing achievement.

So, I believe that Ana is authority and her interview have real value based on two facts:

  • Ana blog is interesting for reading

  • her blog achieved high Alexa rank in only year and half



How to increase website traffic interview with Ana Hoffman


Original interview length is over one hour and you can find it by following the link on the beginning of this article. Here are interview notes I make and decide to share in this post.

How to pick a niche

  • become authority in a niche, when you one become authority it is much easier to generate new traffic

  • to choose a niche you have to find something that is in demand

  • to succeed you must have passion for business, if you have passion only for niche it is not enough

  • to find topics in demand you need observe and reading other blogs, comments and forums, find what a people want to learn more about

  • pick a niche you have knowledge about, for example if you just start a blog, write about starting a blog not about how to make money with blog because you can't know how to make a money when you even don't have established blog and practically earn nothing

  • start from your experience, it won't go to write about something you don't know about it, people will know that you faking it

  • you must not just a talk about topic but show you know how to do it (like Ana generate traffic on her blog about generating traffic)

  • don't write about topic everybody write, try with different approach from others, put your spin at a topic or different opinion but the most important do something different

How to establish authority

  • there is no secret trick!

  • content is very important, also pay attention how you represent your blog and how you stand out

  • people have come to your blog and say : "Wow, I never read this before, this is amazingly helpful to me, I must come back!"

  • write plainly, write the way you talk

  • don't write fancy, do not put too many words in you post

  • blog content should be simple and helpful

  • you can't do it alone, you need a help of other people

  • find blog that share a niche with you, try with established but not most popular blogs (because it is almost impossible to connect with A blog, they have many various proposals every day)

  • try to form your own tribe (community) with 15 - 20 other blogs

  • try to find a people who are good solid bloggers and a hungry for more attention

  • spread a shares and comments on each other posts, with this method you give a life to your blog plus you learn from each other

  • comment on another posts builds your brand and recognition

How to find and reach member of your tribe

  • identify blogs in your niche

  • start commenting on those blogs

  • it is better chance to be noticed on blogs that doesn't have too much traffic, for example commenting on CopyBlogger or ProBlogger give minor chances to be noticed

  • when you are noticed on this smaller blog send him request for mutually social sharing and commenting

  • pick a blogs who have solid content

  • keep your group small, up to 20, if a group is bigger it is difficult to control

  • you can use facebook group to organize tribe

  • if someone in a group doesn't comment or share he couldn't be member of the group anymore

  • so, if there are 20 members of the group you will get 20 comments and shares per new post

Find traffic sources

  • there are short term traffic (like social media) and long term traffic sources

  • social media is just a way to find people who could be interested in your blog

  • job for you is not to build relationship with them but to introduce and bring them back to your blog

  • find something that works and concentrate on that (Ana is focused on twitter and facebook)

  • stumbleupon have low conversion rate

  • facebook have higher convert rate than twitter

  • choosing right social network depend on niche

  • when you find what work for you stick with that

  • facebook like widget on your blog can be negative social proof if you have small number of facebook followers

A few words about twitter

  • post 4 tweets one after another to make attention, 2 tweets would be links on other blogs, solid posts, 1 tweet a quote because people love quotes, a last one, a tweet to your blog (it will be at the top of tweet stream and chances are that people will click this one first)

  • 25% tweets should be self promotion the rest just useful to other people

  • it is important to provide a lot of value

Conversion

  • pick exactly conversion goal

  • put a call to action in post, for example "thanks on coming, now do this please"

  • it must be only one call for action per post

  • no to popups!!!

  • in middle of quality post add this "if you like to hear more, I talk a more abut that with my subscribers" or lead a visitor to other page which have call to action

Two tips for increasing website traffic

  • think like a regular visitor, if you are a casual visitor will you stay on your blog and read it, would you even scroll down?

  • write a guest post it is best traffic generation strategy


I hope that my interview notes will help you to increase your website traffic. Please, leave comment does tips listed in this article are helpful for your website traffic.