Every time I see it reported in the media, Internet Explorer still dominates, but this blog has always had a high percentage of Firefox users - indicating that you are an extraordinarily sophisticated group of readers. Here’s last month’s stats:
Since you are so sophisticated you probably haven’t seen most of my ad experiments, but last month I started putting some on the site. There are currently three:
- Snorg Tees - in the footer.
Last year I saw someone wearing a t-shirt I liked, and I found Snorg when I went online to find that shirt. Later I saw an ad for Snorg at Dumb Little Man. Snorg uses Shareasale to sign up websites to advertise for them.
With Shareasale, the publisher (me) has 2300 stores to choose from, but there wasn’t much that I would advertise. You can pick from the banners or text ads that each store creates. The way the store compensates the publisher varies. It’s usually a 5% to 20% commission. Snorg pays a flat rate of $5 per sale (not per shirt) Last month five people bought shirts for a total of $25.
- Building Green - Amazon link in the sidebar.
I read the book about a year ago and really liked it. Since then I’ve gotten to know the authors. They didn’t ask me to push their book, but I would do it even if there was nothing in it for me. There were several hundred clicks on that link last month, but nobody bought that particular book. There are Amazon links all over the site that bring in a little money, but I used them even before I signed up to make money because I like the information. Last month people bought 11 books and I made $15. However, two of those books were bought by me.
- Adpinion - in the sidebar.
After I saw this service in one of Paul Graham’s essays I signed up. Give an ad a thumbs up, and Adpinion will try to give you ads similar to that one. Give something a thumbs down and the ad will go away. They will also avoid showing you similar things on any other site in the future. The service is pretty decent at finding things I want to look at. They pay by the click, so I have to refrain from clicking on my own ads when they show me things I’m interested in. So far, in one week 28 people have clicked bringing in a total of $2.30.
That income was from an average of 5000 visits per day. This site is hosted by Bluehost for $7 per month. Overall they’ve been very good, but big traffic spikes cripple the shared server occasionally. I moved the site to it’s own domain from Wordpress.com in January when it became apparent that making a little money was a possibility. 9 months X $7 per month = $63 in hosting costs so far. This month I’ll go from amateur to slightly paid professional.
I think Steve Pavlina’s essay about monetizing a blog is probably the best thing I’ve read about it. He makes a staggering amount of money:
If you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.
