Making sure your traffic is worthless is pretty easy. Here are my preferred methods:
- Don’t have a plan for the traffic.
- Don’t test your monetization method.
Assuming that you’re going to make more money because you have more traffic simply isn’t a good idea. You have to make decisions that will turn visitors into dollar bills or you might as well not have the traffic.
A Real Life Example
This weekend I noticed that one of my posts started getting some search traffic. It’s not blowing up but it’s getting about 50 visitors per day, according to Google Analytics.
In this case, I had decided beforehand that the traffic that hit this particular post would be solid traffic to push into a download of a free e-book that’s offered on the site. The e-book offers a free solution and then sells them on a more efficient solution that will save them a lot of time. Once the traffic started to come I decided that I better figure out if I was getting any downloads so I set up a goal in Google Analytics.
This is where the story gets interesting because 12 hours after I set up the goal in GA I hadn’t pushed a single download of the e-book. That didn’t make any sense to me so I decided to have a look at the post and found out that the download form wasn’t working. Thank goodness I test because if I didn’t, that traffic would have been completely worthless and to be 100% honest that isn’t something I used to really test.
I got new code for the form in Aweber and fixed that issue. I then let it run for almost a full day and figured out that I still wasn’t getting downloads – out of the 50ish people that hit that post, only one downloaded the e-book, and I’m pretty sure it was yours truly.
At that point I had to take a look at what was actually written in the post. I realized that the post explained the topic well but didn’t do a good job of letting people know that the e-book was the real solution to their problem. I altered the post and explained that better and let it run for another day.
In the next 24 hour period the e-book was downloaded 4 times from that page. Since I track this stuff I can tell you that 4 downloads of that particular e-book will turn into around $42.88. That means that this particular post is now worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $1286.40 per month which is funny because three days ago it was worth exactly $0, even though it had the same traffic it has now.
Tags: Monetization, traffic
Haha, excellent stuff court. It’s always nice to see what you are doing makes it worth the effort :-}
I’ve just read another post of yours discussing adsense and putting it underneath a post. Since I’ve done this I’ve been getting different ads. I’ve changed the content so that it doesn’t feature words that may red flag the adsense ads but the adverts remain the same. Does it take a certain amount of time to change or do I have to try something else?
Cheers,
Vlad.
p.s you and Griz are awesome
Did you change that ad size? Sometimes some advertisers will bid for one ad size and won’t be there for others. It could be that.
Could you do a tutorial on setting up Google Analytics goals?
I’ll consider that one! There is actually a great video inside your GA account already. You want to find ‘conversion university’ in there and watch that!
Ahhh very good example of how to monetize existing traffic. That actually reminds me that I have a lot of pages I was going to update with better monetization, but put it off long enough that I forgot about it. Better write it down and get started.
Thanks!
Trent
Nope I’ve added a couple of new articles and the adsense has gone crazy offering adverts for alcohol etc, I have since changed the content taking out the bits mentioning drinking and the adverts stay the same. I’m guessing I just have to wait and see?
Thanks for the timely post. We are starting a new site with a lead form that will be the focus of the site. I will be sure to test it multiple times to make sure its working properly.
A few days ago, one of my sites went from displaying ads to displaying PSA on adsense. I took the adsense off to avoid being smart priced but do you know why that would happen? I did add more text to the page but that was to give the bots more to crawl and me to use the keyword more often.
I am new to this and have no idea what you are talking about. I am “old school” and want to become better equipped for the ever changing world of the internet. I am handicapped and need something I can make money at via internet skills of which I have only the basics.
Hi – How did the book generate $42.88? I think i have missed your posts on generating income from ebooks.
Thanks Jon
Hey Court, I finally made it to page one on G for my targeted keywords. Right now I’m bouncing between #6 and #9. The traffic has picked up some, but not as much as I expected.
I’m worried about the AdSense CTR. It’s terrible. Three clicks out of a hundred. I’m sure that my keywords are targeting the right visitors but no one is clicking.
It may require further explanation on my part because I do get a lot of social traffic in my niche. The site title is a bit decieving only to get clicks from visitors who didn’t find what they wanted, but it isn’t dishonest. The info is there, they just have to look for it.
My keywords had 14,000 searches last month according to G keyword tool. Should I wait it out until I hit #1 or do you see something wrong here? Thanks, Ben
Good point – test and test again. If you can’t measure it you can’t change it either. If you tweek the page again you might be able to increase sales even more.