I added Google AdSense to my blog in December of 2005. As I said back then, I was curious how it would work for me.
I had no expectation when I started of making any real money. My exact words back then were “… I’d be surprised if AdSense generates more than a buck or two a month for me”. How prophetic…
To date, Google’s AdSense has generated $19.05 in revenue: that’s pretty much a buck or two a month. For the curious, Google won’t pay out a red cent to you until your revenue tops $100, so the almost-$20 my site has “earned” in the past year isn’t even sitting in my wallet. Five years from now, though, I’ll be rolling in the cash! 🙂
More interesting to me than the revenue is looking at the statistics Google Analytics generates. About 90% of the visits to my site are first time visits; only 10% of the visitors come back a second time. Hmmm: something to be said for having compelling content, I guess. 80% of the visits to my site come via Google searches: I think the sitemap feature, which keeps Google indexes of my site current, is helpful in that regard.
What is the most “popular” content on my site? A post I made entitled “The man with exploding arms” has been at the top of the hit parade pretty much since I first posted it. Don’t ask me why. Second or third place is usually something about Teresa Noreen, and similarly usually one of my “techie” posts (currently my Vista posts are generating some traffic). To be clear, a “highly rated” post on my site only generates about 300 clicks a month: the top five are all in the 100-400 visits per month range.
Is my site generating more traffic now than a year ago? Unfortunately, I don’t have a full year of data yet. Comparing two dissimilar months (E.G.: September to February) is generally not very helpful: different times of the year generate different amounts of traffic. However, I compared May 2006 to February 2007 : if that’s any indicator, it looks like total unique visitors is up from about 50 per day “then” to about 150 per day “now”.
Statistics are fun! Okay, I’m weird…