Now that I have kept this blog alive already for a few weeks, I hope there are already some regular readers (I write this three weeks before the day I have programmed this article to be published!). Thus I should at least now be thinking about changing the template from Minima Lefty to something fancier.
Or should I?
In fact I have started to like the template a lot. It is simple and clean, and it lets the reader concentrate on the content. And content should be the most important part of any blog, not the AdSense ads in the margins or between the articles.
On the other hand, if people find it too unattractive they might not bother to read even the first article. They would probably just return to the Google search results and move forward to the next hit. Bad for me. And for my readers.
There are many good templates that claim to be optimized for AdSense. At least they are designed to look good and they have nice places ready for ads. But are they really optimized in the sense that they give higher click-rates? So far I have not found any conclusive analysis or comparison made between different free blogger templates. And I do not intend to do such a time-consuming comparison at the moment myself. I need my time for other, more important things. Like for writing this and several other blogs.
Minima is a very functional theme and I value functionality very high. But do the readers see it in the same way? Does the blog just look plain and boring? Does it look (too) unprofessional?
If the template is too plain or unprofessional, the visitors to blog might just jump to the next Google result and not read a single article of the blog. In this case, they most probably will not click any ads either.
At the moment, I am testing Thisaway Blue. It is one of the default templates available in the Blogger. It's pretty simple but still a bit prettier than Minima.
Showing posts with label blogger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogger. Show all posts
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Friday, 20 February 2009
Adsense revenues with free niche blogs
At the moment my main business idea for this blog is to monetize it using AdSense banners. It might not be the most lucrative source of revenue but it is easy to use and Google as owner of both Blogger and AdSense has nothing against using AdSense on Blogspot blogs.
In fact, the combination of a free blog platform and advertising limits our search for possible ways of monetization somewhat. On one hand some free blog platforms like Wordpress do not accept any advertising on the freely hosted blogs. On the other hand, some advertising affiliate programs do not accept blogs that are published on free hosting services to join the program.
But AdSense and Blogspot combine well together. The Blogger menus for setting the layout of the blog even include AdSense widgets that are extremely easy to add to the blog with only a few clicks (blog layout -> monetize). Thus it is not at all surprising that AdSense is the most popular advertising program used by a growing amount of bloggers who use the Blogspot as the platform for blogging.
There are many other good reasons for the choice besides it being free to use. As it is one of the most popular platforms, there is a huge selection of free templates to use. The default selection of templates is pretty boring, but the Internet is full of nice themes that can be used with any Blogger blog.
So far I have used several different Blogger templates that are "AdSense ready". Some bloggers might argue that this does not mean anything, as any Blogger template can be used with AdSense code. But for those of us who are not html and css code wizards they certainly make the life of a webmaster easier. At least I have been pretty happy with several free adaptations of popular Wordpress themes.
On the other hand I have used the very plain Minima white on one of my most lucrative blogs. So it seems that even the plainest design can be used for a money-making niche blog as long as there are customers who are interested in the content of the blog. I think I will use Minima also with this blog at least in the beginning. Keep it simple, Stupid!
I will return later to the theme of blog branding when I myself have to start considering the branding and visual image of this blog. Even if I don't consider it as the most important part of successful blogging it certainly helps to have a well designed blog template that is designed with AdSense in mind.
In fact, the combination of a free blog platform and advertising limits our search for possible ways of monetization somewhat. On one hand some free blog platforms like Wordpress do not accept any advertising on the freely hosted blogs. On the other hand, some advertising affiliate programs do not accept blogs that are published on free hosting services to join the program.
But AdSense and Blogspot combine well together. The Blogger menus for setting the layout of the blog even include AdSense widgets that are extremely easy to add to the blog with only a few clicks (blog layout -> monetize). Thus it is not at all surprising that AdSense is the most popular advertising program used by a growing amount of bloggers who use the Blogspot as the platform for blogging.
There are many other good reasons for the choice besides it being free to use. As it is one of the most popular platforms, there is a huge selection of free templates to use. The default selection of templates is pretty boring, but the Internet is full of nice themes that can be used with any Blogger blog.
So far I have used several different Blogger templates that are "AdSense ready". Some bloggers might argue that this does not mean anything, as any Blogger template can be used with AdSense code. But for those of us who are not html and css code wizards they certainly make the life of a webmaster easier. At least I have been pretty happy with several free adaptations of popular Wordpress themes.
On the other hand I have used the very plain Minima white on one of my most lucrative blogs. So it seems that even the plainest design can be used for a money-making niche blog as long as there are customers who are interested in the content of the blog. I think I will use Minima also with this blog at least in the beginning. Keep it simple, Stupid!
I will return later to the theme of blog branding when I myself have to start considering the branding and visual image of this blog. Even if I don't consider it as the most important part of successful blogging it certainly helps to have a well designed blog template that is designed with AdSense in mind.
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