Why looking pretty isn’t always the most important thing.
I really struggled with the decision to go with Mediavine.
Well, not with Mediavine specifically, more, with any ad platform.
I had worked so hard to build a site that I thought was aesthetically pleasing and I really wanted people I come be involved in a community people talking about like minded things.
People passionate about things that would excite them and people that would want to have conversations with each other.
For this reason, I only ran a couple of ads on the site for the first couple of years.
Actually, for the first 3+ years.
I finally made the decision, to take those off.
It was because I figured that the ads won’t making any money and I may as well just push on to the next phase which was focusing a 100% on affiliate revenue.
It turned out that this was probably not the best decision. I
joined Jon Dykstra course and had access to the fat stacks forum which was filled with people that had a whole lot more experience than me with making money, just off advertising.
I’ve been doing this marketing stuff at 20 years, but when it comes to just displaying ads, I’m more used to booking ads and doing media buys, so it was interesting to hear people in the forum say that I was probably losing out on decent money by no having ads running.
And that for at the time these 58, 000 session that I had should be getting on, or around $20-$25 RPM at least.
So, when I did the math’s, I estimated I’d be making between $35 and $50 dollars US a day just in advertising.
I realized that there was really too much here that I was missing out on just through my stubbornness in trying to have the most attractive site out there.
The other thing you might realize as you build your own website and
try to make money thru blogging is that people don’t really want to be in a community on a site as much as they just want information.
My site is definitely focused on people with purchase intent and buyers who are searching for product and information about products and so I do really quite well at that end from the affiliate side.
But now that I have the advertising running, its definitely added between$1000 and $1500 US a month, on top of what I was getting before.
Because my affiliate still is a lot more than my ad revenue, when I put it together each month it starts to look like a full-time gig.
And after 3 and a half years of slogging in out on the couch every night tapping on my laptop keyboard, and the long weekends spent working, and the equipment that I bought, the videos that I’ve done,
the photography that I undertake, and all the effort I put in to make great content, perhaps it’s finally paying off.
So, what I’d say to you, is if you are focused on just creating the most
beautiful site, you don’t want to ruin it with ads all over the place with a Mediavine or an Ezoic, think about it a little longer.
Don’t worry too much about looks and try to get your unique user sessions to a point where these programs will accept you.
They are doing a much better job of putting ads in good places that won’t ruin the user experience. The end result is that you will earn more money, while the user experiences a site that looks like just
every body else’s, full of ads.
You see, people are used to navigating these sites in a certain
way.
To get to content that you need you get used to skipping bits here and there, we all do it.
If you are interested in learning more about growing a site, make a money from blogging, then jump in the comments below and get touch with me directly or look to sign up for my course.
Peace,
Mark.
