NoisyNeighbours.net - improve monetisation

[melat0nin]

Noisy Neighbours - improve monetisation

Hello all

After some experimenting for the past year with minisites, my best performer has been NoisyNeighbours.net. Over the past 18-odd months it has earned around £400, which is not bad considering it cost me £1(!)

Recently I moved over to a Wordpress theme so that comments would be handled better and whatnot, but I've noticed that my adsense income has reduced. I think the previous design might have had better adsense placement, but I'm not sure.

The site gets very reasonable readership - it's 1st/2nd in SERPs for "noisy neighbours" and gets a fair few long-tail hits also. Current traffic is around 50-60 uniques a day. However adsense revenue is generally under $1 a day. The recession seems to have hit adsense quite a bit!

I think it has potential to earn more and I'd like to maximise its potential.

Does anyone have any ideas on how best to develop the site? Suggestions welcome

If i can help anyone else with their minisite endeavours i'd be happy to!

 

[ribble-valley]

Nice site, glad it's working for you. I like the simple, clean design and the colour scheme is welcoming. I'm pretty impressed overall.

I even saw you in Google when researching this exact subject just recently.

You could remove some of the google ad placements on the right hand side, this will reduce the amount you're placing on the page at once - in theory the remaining ads will have a higher cpc. I did this on one of my sites and it made a significant difference.

Then with the empty space, push up those visitor comments. Make them appear on the page without having to scroll down. If you give them more space it will also appear to be a busier site - visitors love to hear what other people are saying.

Poll's - I'm 50/50 on this, I see you've got 33 hits on your poll, any of those yours? Personally I think they're a waste of time unless you're getting serious hits and can use them as a tool.

Hope this is the feedback you wanted and is of help. I'll PM you some extra info.

Paul.

 

[melat0nin]

Nice site, glad it's working for you. I like the simple, clean design and the colour scheme is welcoming. I'm pretty impressed overall.

I even saw you in Google when researching this exact subject just recently.

You could remove some of the google ad placements on the right hand side, this will reduce the amount you're placing on the page at once - in theory the remaining ads will have a higher cpc. I did this on one of my sites and it made a significant difference.

Then with the empty space, push up those visitor comments. Make them appear on the page without having to scroll down. If you give them more space it will also appear to be a busier site - visitors love to hear what other people are saying.

Poll's - I'm 50/50 on this, I see you've got 33 hits on your poll, any of those yours? Personally I think they're a waste of time unless you're getting serious hits and can use them as a tool.

Hope this is the feedback you wanted and is of help. I'll PM you some extra info.

Paul.

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated!

I wasn't aware that CPC changed depending on the number of ads on the page.. that is very good to know.

Re the poll - none of the votes are mine although i find it slightly bizarre that people would go out of their way to vote 'no'. I was trying to gauge whether the site would have enough traffic to merit a small forum, as I think that might be the next step. I'd like to develop it into more of a 'community', and since lots of the commenters reply to one another I thought a forum might work. But I'm aware that there's a tipping point for successful forums and if they look empty they can do more damage than good.

I'll certainly implement your suggestions and would be interested in any other thoughts you've got!

 

[ribble-valley]

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated!

I wasn't aware that CPC changed depending on the number of ads on the page.. that is very good to know.

Re the poll - none of the votes are mine although i find it slightly bizarre that people would go out of their way to vote 'no'. I was trying to gauge whether the site would have enough traffic to merit a small forum, as I think that might be the next step. I'd like to develop it into more of a 'community', and since lots of the commenters reply to one another I thought a forum might work. But I'm aware that there's a tipping point for successful forums and if they look empty they can do more damage than good.

I'll certainly implement your suggestions and would be interested in any other thoughts you've got!

The CPC itself doesn't change. What you're doing is reducing the number of 'cheaper' and less relevant adverts on your page. Therefore the odds are when someone does click an advert you're getting a better price for displaying it. :O) (quality vs. quantity)

Forums, well you're in the right place to ask about those! I've not much experience of setting them up. I'd assume you need a decent amount of visitors to make them worthwhile.

I've been using Wordpress just one day (Drupal 2yrs+) and finding it really amazing and quick to setup, especially for some of my upcoming less complicated projects. What's the widget/plugin you have at the footer of your site?

Paul.

 

[melat0nin]

The CPC itself doesn't change. What you're doing is reducing the number of 'cheaper' and less relevant adverts on your page. Therefore the odds are when someone does click an advert you're getting a better price for displaying it. :O) (quality vs. quantity)

Forums, well you're in the right place to ask about those! I've not much experience of setting them up. I'd assume you need a decent amount of visitors to make them worthwhile.

I've been using Wordpress just one day (Drupal 2yrs+) and finding it really amazing and quick to setup, especially for some of my upcoming less complicated projects. What's the widget/plugin you have at the footer of your site?

Paul.

Paul

Thanks for your comments. I've altered the adsense and comments layout/number and will see how it goes.

I assume you mean the social networking icons - that plugin is called Sociable and is one of the very commonly used ones on the Wordpress codex.

By the way - you said you're new to WP. If you intend to host a lot of WP sites on one server, you might want to look into Wordpress MU (multi user). AFAIK it allows one WP install to handle many sites, meaning you don't overload your server/database with multiple WP installs.

I havent tried it yet myself but I intend to give it a go in the near future.

HTH

-Laurence

 

[melat0nin]

I've just had a thought - how about a little store for things like earplugs? Is that likely to be of any use?

Until now I've only used Adsense because it's simple and it works, and I can check amounts and whatnot from one interface. BUt it would be nice to diversify a bit.

Any thoughts?

 

[dashu1]

You can have 3 adblocks on a page. I usually have 1 at the top where yours is, one in the sidebar, and one at the bottom.

More blocks should increase the clickthroughs I think.

 

[melat0nin]

Thanks for your comments.

Some developments.. bizarrely, two weeks ago I was contacted by a researcher from Vanessa Feltz's BBC London radio show (!) and asked to do a short interview. I did that and got a few extra hits from her repetition of the URL, which was nice. Something to put on the Twitter feed too (which I've added to the page).

I've also added another ad block at the top, more prominent this time. I've noticed that Rectangles perform significantly better than Title Bars at the top of content (I did a A/B comparison test using a randomised display if statement in PHP). That was quite interesting.

I've added a legal statement as that's in the Adsense TOCs (although I've never perceived any negative impact from not having one, but what the hell).

I'm also working on a forum. I'm still not sure whether the site can support it, but of the 51 people who responded to the poll asking whether there should be one, two thirds said yes. If I launch it it will be quite open, so people can post without registering (but with good spam protection in place) in order to promote free discussion. Not completely sure though - I don't want to damage the site by having a graveyard forum.. I've seen them before and they look awful.