Many of the blogs I visit on a daily basis are monetized, and that is fine. The authors of these blogs openly discuss which ad programs they are using and the success rate they have with each. Some programs seem to work better than others, or so the authors say.
I have discovered just in the past few months that its not the number of ads you have that makes you money, but the placement of these ads. I have also learned that it’s a good idea to spread out your ads over a few different networks. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, because if one company flops or you get banned for whatever reason, you still have the others to fall back on.
But, getting back to ad placement… I have been running Google Adsense on my hardware review site for about three years now. The ads have always been in the same place, a “skyscraper” style ad on the left side of the page. Adsense was my first attempt to monetize the site and I was quite happy with the money it brought in. But, over time, click rates dropped and so did the CPM rate. I now make 1/4 of what I used to make with Google Adsense, despite the fact that traffic has steadily increased over the past few years.
I had always taken pride in the fact that my site wasn’t flooded with ads like I have seen at other tech sites. But, pride only gets you so far.
After returning from CES this past January and talking with some other review site owners, it was clear that my earnings were far below what they “should” be. There were several factors to blame for this: me not charging enough for sponsored banner ads, a very dated site design… but most of all, ad placement and putting all of my eggs in a single basket.
A few weeks later I signed up with a new ad program and modified the review layout slightly. I went from large pictures to thumbnails and also integrated ads at the bottom of each page. The results? Amazing! In February, I shattered all of my previous earnings records… by a lot! Sure it helped that I hit the front page of Digg.com a few times, but it was clear I was on to something great… something that I had long since deserved.
So what’s next? At some point in the near future, I am planning a full site redesign. The new site will be easier on the eyes and will also be much easier to update from my end. I will also do some work with ad placement, as I am still nowhere near where I should be in terms of ad revenue for a site as large as mine. I might even experiment with yet another ad program. I still want to keep the site very user-friendly and don’t want to overload readers with ads. 
