Here is an update for the first full week of my Google AdSense on a blog case study. From October 1st to 7th the blog made $179.16, or $25.60 per day. Assuming this average holds for the month, the AdSense income should come in at just under $800.
The number one performing AdSense unit was the 300×250 box. The top 468 banner followed this. Last place goes to the bottom 468 banner. The click rate on the 300×250 box is twice that of the bottom 468. No doubt about it, when it comes to banner performance and placement, nothing can beat a box ad inline with content.
Blog traffic for the week 1 was 32,799 unique visitors and 61,422 page views. That works out to an effective CPM of $2.92, which is not bad, but I know it can do better. The modest eCPM level was due to two stories that made it to the Digg front page. Digg sends a lot of traffic, but that traffic does not convert very well. I feel eCPM should hit $4.00 to $5.00 once more search engine traffic kicks in.
What Is The Full Potential?
At the moment, the blog is monetized with Google AdSense. However, AdSense is not the only game in town. Additional revenue streams can add to the blog’s income potential without affecting AdSense income. For example, I could sell text links. According to the Text Link Ads calculator, a link on this blog is worth $50 a month if I offer 10 links. That adds $500 extra to the monthly income. The price of those links will go up each month as well because of the blog’s improving Alexa ranking. Right now, it’s at 15,800, but it is dropping rapidly – the 1 week average is 2,930.
The other income stream I can add in Vibrant Media IntelliTXT. At the blog’s current traffic level, IntelliTXT would add $500 to $600 per month. Google is inconsistent when it comes to IntelliTXT. Well, that’s not really true. If you’re a big site, like Teche Blog, they don’t have a problem with you running AdSense and IntelliTXT on the same page. However, if you’re a small site, IntelliTXT may not be an option that is available to you. Vibrant Media requires 500,000 page views per month for IntelliTXT publishers.
Adding the two extra advertising streams could easily add $1,000 per month extra income to the blog. $1,800 per month for blogging is still not full time income, but it is starting to get close – it is decent part time income. I’ll keep you updated on the progress as the weeks goes by.