Hopefully I'll make more than a few pennies...
You may have noticed a few additional elements around the blog here as I’ve begun experimenting with advertisements on both the sidebar and select blog content.
The key here is to understand that it’s truly an experiment – and it should be since maximizing your advertising spots and limited blog design real estate requires that you do robust experiments with varying providers, A/B split testing, pricing, location, and more.
It’s actually quite fun and it will provide some great lessons learned for myself (and for you guys) as I begin executing on generating direct advertising revenue for this blog. It’s pretty amazing to believe that only 10 months ago I had one single subscriber (check that image out!) and now I’ve got an entire community that I’m engaging with daily!
Two months after I first started TentBlogger I decided to put a BeaconAds test advertisement and shared candidly that I wouldn’t start advertising for some time and that I wasn’t even sure when that time would be (although I knew that it wouldn’t be “now”) – I purposely chose to wait and to build up the content and the community around this blog as my primary focus.
And it’s been quite a ride! 367 posts later with over 15,000+ comments and nearly half-a-million pageviews I think I’m ready to start experimenting with direct monetization and I couldn’t be more excited and thankful for you guys to allow me the opportunity to do it!
Locations and Stock:
In classic TentBlogger-style I’m going to explain my strategy and share my thoughts as the experiment progresses so that you can learn from my experience and take away a few tips for your own use.
Currently I’ve made available advertising spots for both direct sales advertisements and spots via an advertising network system called BeaconAds.
You can see that my current sidebar has them spaced between links to existing content and pages with varying sizes:
5 total spots on the home page.
As you can see there are 5 zones available on the homepage’s sidebar, 3 of which are through the advertising network and 2 of which are through Google Adsense:
- 300 x 250 pixels – 1 x Large Sidebar via BeaconAds for $500.00 per 30 days
- 300 x 125 pixels – 1 x Medium Sidebar via BeaconAds for $5.00 CPM
- 125 x 125 pixels – 2 x Small Sidebar Ads via BeaconAds for $250.00 per 30 days
- 300 x 250 pixels – 1 x Large Google Adsense for $CPC
- 160 x 600 pixels – 1 x Large Vertical Google Adsense for $CPC
I also have two advertisements specific to each blog post – a wide single post 570 x 125 pixel ad between the content and the comment layer and a 336 x 280 pixels via Google Adsense but only on blog posts that are older than 7 days:
I did this because I really do value my community – so much so that I want my content to be front-and-center for you guys when I first publish it with as little distraction as possible. Heck, I spend so much time on each blog post that I don’t want anything competing for your attention when you first read it!
But, if you’re headed back into the archives or want to review some old content and blog posts you’ll find an advertisement to greet you at the top of each blog post.
So that’s what I’m starting with and I’ll probably stick with it for the rest of the calendar year unless it really doesn’t make sense or something dramatic happens to my strategy that would require me to make some changes (like a redesign… … …).
Your Thoughts on the Advertisements?
My hope is that you guys will find my placements and strategy as unobtrusive and inoffensive as possible – and if you’ve been around here for some time I hope that the content that I’ve already created for you is so overwhelmingly positive, good, and beneficial that you won’t mind supporting my efforts in monetizing the blog!
Most bloggers though unapologetically put ads up and then let the community just “deal with it” but I’m really not like that nor do I want to be “just another blogger” who’s monetizing their blog.
As such, I’d love for your feedback! I’d love to hear your thoughts on advertising, timing, size, placements, and whatnot! I can’t guarantee that I’ll actually change anything but I can guarantee that I’ll listen to your opinion!
Thanks all and appreciate your support already! I hope that with these experiments I’ll be able to export some of the learnings in real-time to you so that you can take advantage of my work and monetization strategy as well!
Support Me (and the Community) and Purchase a Spot!
Of course, if you have any questions or want to talk about sponsorship and advertising you can always email me directly (see bottom of that page).
Give BeaconAds a few days to reconcile the traffic numbers but most of the other metrics are accurate.
Finally, please let me know if you see any advertisements that obviously should be banned – for example, there’s going to be a lot of advertisements (at least in the beginning) for “camping gear” as Google Adsense interprets “tent” in their queries. Just need to do some curation for a bit:
Google thinks this blog has to do with tents...
Go figure, right? Silly Google!
I wonder how many subscribers actually came across your site while searching for tents and camping supplies? As always, I am really looking forward to hearing the results and conclusions.
haha… not too many… … i’ll have to check.
Likewise.
… i have a lot of ads i had to kill, that’s for sure.
Congrats brother on the new monetization!
Send me 10% of all those pennies.
i’ll send you half of one. how about that?
so far it’s definitely more than a few pennies…!
Congrats on this milestone John
“Google thinks this blog has something to do with tents” remark had me crackin up!
…
it’s true…
At the moment, I see that the google ads are served via geolocalization, which gives me adverts in a language I don’t understand, eg: Gratis AdWords hulp? Bel onze AdWords experts voor uw eerste (my fault for living in Belgium and not speaking Dutch I suppose
) The last banner on the left also gives some kind of scantily clad manga girl advertising a game, alternating with a forex (scam?) advert.
I was wondering about the Christian ‘niche’: do you think it would be difficult to provide google ads that actually provide ANY value whatsoever? I would have to block a LOT of advert sellers (eg the ubiquitous ‘Church’ of scientology and other ads with questionable doctrine). I was thinking more about affiliate marketing of products I know, use and like. Will your experiment also cover this?
i’m not necessarily interested in targeting the christian and church segment directly as my blog caters to a much wider audience… i do bring this perspective but not too explicitly.
John,
I really have to be more faithful to reading your blog. I learn something new with each visit. Thanks for the great content. Be sure to let us know your results with this experiment.
-Greg
greg,
awesome! thanks for being a part of this community! make sure to get a gravatar: http://tentblogger.com/gravatar/
New beginning for ads – it’s all good! Let us know how everything goes!
you guys will be the first to know.
As always, a great post. I’m just getting into blogging and learning about things such as monetization. It will probably be a while before I jump into that. Like you, I want to focus on content and building a crowd. You can taught me a lot about it and gave me a lot of ideas.
eric,
awesome. the way that i’ve done it isn’t the only way but man, i really love how i’ve built up a community of passionate bloggers and haven’t asked anything from them… and i hope that continues…!
Exciting! I genuinely hope that this is fruitful for you. You deserve it. The content here is awesome, and you deserve to be rewarded handsomely for the good that you are doing.
thanks james!
Once I turned of AdBlock Plus I could see the ads. Will leave it off to support your site.
wow. john, this is so supportive of you. thanks man. humbled.
Sounds like exciting stuff!
I assume with Beacon Ads you’ll be able to approve any ad that gets submitted?
Also how will you insert Google Adsense to posts older than 7 days? Plugin? Manually?
Just curious.
This blog provides so much value I’m sure the majority won’t mind seeing the ads!
with beacon i’ll be able to choose the right ones that get submitted. and with adsense it just requires some code.
John,
Great news for you! My only comment is regarding timing. I hope to include ad spots someday. My challenge (that I’m overcoming) is consistency of posts and becoming a trust agent.
ah. shoutout to chris brogan on that “trust agents”…!
Nice! I’m actually pretty glad to see you start advertising, and just so you know, I admire that you waited so long to do it.
calvin,
wow, this is a really encouraging comment. there’s a reason i chose to start this past week and i’ll be definitely sharing that in a bit.
Nice
Looks good! Just adding an ad myself, will be really interested to see your results!
Thanks as always for the great info John!
sure thing calum!
Thanks for the insights, John. I think the way your monetizing works out overall. I don’t think it’ll make it look too muddled up, but I’m also waiting to see what ads you get.
The only thing I don’t really like is the 160×600 ad. My only gripe is that it doesn’t feel like it fits well with the rest of the side bar. Maybe that’s why you chose it. Is there a specific reason you chose that size?
160 x 600 is one of the higher converting sizes that google provides.
Everything looks great! I also saw a CleanMyMac add… I seriously heart this product and would recommend it to any mac owner!
ah, for sure! i use that app…. weekly!
Good luck with this! Personally I’d rather see ads for tent supplies (I don’t have a tent) than dating sites (I do have a wife). If you could switch those off that would be great, or perhaps people who use blogging sites like this are also big customers of the dating sites?
thanks david for your thoughts.
Hey just a thought, Tentblogger:
What if for tone month, you used one of those spaces to advertise a blogger who has been active here in your community? You could give one blogger that space for a month, and then after that time you could use the stats as part of a media kit or something for people who wanted to advertise. Plus, whoever you chose might just want to keep their spot and might be willing to pay for it. Some people that come to mind are Dustin Stout, Ashley Pichea (she even used one of your free themes for her 3n30 site), or the guy who used Standard Theme to customize his blog about his cooking adventures with his wife.
Just a thought–I’m super excited though to see you able to capitalize on all the great stuff you do here!!
this… is a great idea. … let me think about how we could do this best…!
Exciting stuff
. Thankful for all you do!
hey john hope to get together soon. do you have the ability offer geotargeting (Atlanta for instance).
Todd
I’d love to see a tut on placing the beaconad code into the sidebar (are you coding in or using a text widget?) i’m trying to figure it out on my site and am struggling.
maybe that doesn’t fit here, maybe it does. let me know
david,
it’s not too tough… i just copied and pasted the code into a text widget…! and then i just adjusted the css slightly in the admin panel.
From the comments above, I see you are not using a plugin for Adsense placement. Therefore, where and how do you add the code so it shows up at the top of posts after 7 days?
you can customize this code in your single.php file.
i’m working on a plugin that’ll give people this.