04 May 2011

Giving Back to the Community

Shameless Self-Promotion 10 Comments

OK I have a sense that the blog readership is a lot higher now than it was, say, a year ago. So I’m going to try the Google Ads again and see how that goes.

If it looks like they bring in a decent amount of revenue, then I can justify blogging more. There are easily three or four posts that I consider making each day, but I don’t because I realize they would take too much time and I “have work to do.”

10 Responses to “Giving Back to the Community”

  1. Argosy Jones says:

    Bob, if you really only have a “sense” of your web traffic, there are ways of getting detailed information about it.

    http://www.google.com/analytics/ it’s free.

    I’m kind of surprised that you don’t have something like this working already, but I guess if the blog is primarily a hobby, you wouldn’t need it.

    • bobmurphy says:

      I had that installed when the blog was on the other platform (name is escaping me at the moment). But I would get into the trap of looking every few days and wondering, “Ooh ooh, why did so many people read that one? Maybe I should write a post on Keynesian lesbians?!”

    • Argosy Jones says:

      There… I clicked on an ad. Google is doing a fine job of delivering relevant content… Relevant to my interests rather than the general readership of the blog.

  2. RG says:

    You probably have a planned use for the tens of dollars that will be rolling in from the ads, but I’d like to see the Krugman debate number hit the $100G mark.

  3. MamMoTh says:

    I recommend the ad-blocker plug-ins for Firefox.

  4. von Pepe says:

    I like it. More posts.

  5. Matthew Murphy says:

    WordPress does not seem to allow Google Ads on my blog, perhaps because I have a free account.

    I wouldn’t mind seeing a few ads here, though I will have trouble keeping up with more posts since I frequent about 5-10 libertarian sites a day already.

  6. Jonathan M. F. Catalán says:

    I ran Google Ads, and then had my second paycheck canceled because they figured I had illegal clicks. I won’t confirm nor deny. 😉 If people legitimately click frequently you can get a nice revenue stream, but you’d probably need over ten thousand visitors per day to make a real income.

    Btw, WordPress has a plugin that collects statistics on traffic.

  7. Blake says:

    Its not going to go that well. Mainly because whatever natural traffic you have will be here to read your blog and not to click links. People who make money on blogs monetize it well. In other words they select a subject people are searching about for example “xbox repair” or ‘weight loss’ and the blogger will write relevant articles so that google will generate the related ads and it will lead to people clicking on them.

    Not many people search for economics articles. So you’ll have a tough time. LRC does make money but its because of their sheer traffic. They have been online for what 10-15 years?

    Not to discourage you ofcourse but if you do want to learn more -> http://passiveincomeseo.com

    Those guys made 500 $ in their first month merely by promoting their website on various forums. Their blog is scattered with affiliate links. Obviously its easy for them because ‘Make money online’ is a hot topic.