Selling out?

I’ve thought long and hard about optimizing my google adsense units on my site. I’ve had adsense for a couple-three months, now, and haven’t yet made five dollars. In order to – hopefully – increase my revenue through adsense, I’m going to be optimizing my ad units.

The biggest change is the addition of a 768×90 leaderboard at the top of every page. While this may seem intrusive, it actually flows rather well with the site, and does not intrude on the overall design. A simple change to my spacer in CSS, and I’ve got a decent-looking ad unit at the top of the page. I added this unit since my original unit (on the right sidebar) originally existed “below the fold.” This way, I can have decent placement.

I will continue to keep the smaller two-ad segment on the right sidebar, although I may change the “Gratuitous Capitalism” header to read “Please support,” though I need to check the adsense TOS and make sure I’m not violating a rule.

Additionally, I will keep the google search box on the right-hand side. This box allows searching of both the web, and this entire site. When searching the web, viewers are given targeted advertisements (to their search) at the top of the page, much like a standard google.com search. Clicking on these targeted ads will credit me a few cents each, much like an adsense unit.

I realize all of this may seem rather preemptive – and a bit presumtuous – to most of the readers of this blog. I am not well known, I may never be. I do not pull in hundreds of readers per day (to be honest, I average 10 page views per day, currently), nor do I write brilliant, exciting entries. I am, however, hoping to increase my traffic as time goes by. I am, of course, hoping to write more brilliant entries as well. heh.

Essentially, I’m a guy who is underemployed (I’m not yet making profit from the business I started earlier this year), is barely scraping by, and needs all the extra income he can get. Even if it is just a little bit from adsense. Hopefully, over time, that will grow.

If you – my loyal and valuable readers – feel that I have completely sold out, or that I should not have the ad unit at the top of the page, please state your case in comments. I – as always – welcome any input you may have.

As far as entries are concerned, I hope to be writing more, soon. Currently, however, I am working on opening a second blog at Taximan – Memoirs of a Houston hack. More on this, later.

No comments.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.