What Percent of Organic Traffic Should a Blog Get?

What Percent of Organic Traffic Should a Blog Get?

This is a great question but one that’s not necessarily complete. I get asked this a lot and the quick and simple answer is this: It depends.

As we discussed in the last blog post about Adsense and organic traffic one will generally see a higher CTR (click-through rate) on their advertisements with organic traffic as compared to direct traffic and/or referral-based traffic.

What that means, naturally, is if you’re trying to make a lot of income through an Adsense-based blog and/or website you’re going to want to concentrate on developing a blog that has a lot of search engine traffic.

But here’s the catch: Concentrating too much on SEO-based traffic might cost you in the long run as the formulas change and algorithms shift – you always want a good balance between the top three: Direct Traffic, Referring Sites, and Search Engines.

If I had it my way I’d try to find a good balance between the three but you can’t always have a “perfect” mix – in fact, there really isn’t a perfect mix and it entirely depends on your monetization strategy short and long-term.

For example, here’s a screenshot of one blog that I manage that is destroying it in terms of organic traffic:

With over 80% organic I’m making some great money via Google Adsense and the like (and it’s not really that optimized either).

But, what happens if Google shifts their formula and/or ranking? I might lose that entire line of financial income! I’ve banked on it continuing to be a profit center but I’m not hedging my bets, so to speak, as wisely as I could. And, I’m not building a successful long-term brand with exposure through social media, social networking, and referral sites.

In addition, direct traffic increase not only brand awareness but also long-term followers and subscribers, extremely targeted traffic, exceptional loyalty (which can be capitalized long-term), and lead-generation for products, services, and small businesses. All good, right?

The point is this: Diversifying your sources of traffic is wise idea and you should try to balance your efforts from social networking site as well as organic search and depending on your particular goal (direct monetization vs organic monetization) you’ll focus on one more than the other.

It’s up to you. Cheers!

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How Much Traffic Do You Need to Start with Adsense Successfully?

A good question that you should ask yourself is whether or not your blog has the right amount of traffic to start monetizing it with Google Adsense.

There are a couple of reasons why this is generally important and what I think:

• Developing your killer content first should be your top priority, especially as a new blog. Any energy in any other direction is wasted in my book.
• You should also seek to “earn the right” to offer advertising to your users. I think waiting, especially if you’re just starting out, is a good thing for you and your community. This goes hand in hand with providing exceptional value as well.
• Testing is your greatest weapon when it comes to optimizing your Adsense units, position, design, and more. To do so requires that you have an adequate amount of traffic to make good estimates and to test thoroughly. As a result I still hold pretty firmly that you should wait until you have 250 unique visitors per day. In fact, I suggest even more.
• Without enough traffic you inevitably won’t have enough organic traffic to make the conversions necessary to make you competitive financially as well as give you enough motivation to continue. Most people quit at this point and never see it through to the end of their true earning potential. But, you need to have enough traffic!

Ultimately though you should wait until you have both the time and interest level necessary to set it up properly and to optimize effectively. If you don’t have either (or just small amounts) you should wait. And never start if you aren’t sure or are uncomfortable with it!

Varying Degrees of Success

It is irresponsible of me to forget to mention that there are definitely a varying of success that can be achieved based on traffic. All of us know this intuitively but it’s worth noting explicitly.

For example, a site about the mortgage industry (and how to solve your mortgage woes) with 7,500 uniques per month could make $150+ per month while a blog about what you ate for breakfast with the same amount of traffic could earn $10 (or less).

How you fare will depend on your success as well as your content, community, and commitment to optimization.

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How to Choose the Perfect Smartphone for yourself ?

We can never deny the role of our smartphones in bringing remarkable changes to our life. It has not only made our life easy and convenient but also helped us with many useful features in just one device. Whether you want to know road map of a location, share information and pictures with friends, listen to music or watching movies or just stay connected to the world, a smartphone does it all for you.

Now, one of the most typical questions asked by the smartphone users these days is, with so many options available out there, how to choose a smartphone, which meets all your requirements perfectly?

There are certain factors that we should focus on before making a decision. Based on my personal experience, I will offer a few useful tips to help you in your buying decision. Hope this will serve your purpose!

The first time smartphone users usually have lots of hesitation in their mind like which platform will be the best or how to get a non-expensive plan, etc. You must also check whether your network is compatible with the phone you choose and most importantly, whether you really need a smartphone or not.

Still, if you are really willing to buy a smartphone, it is very important that you put some effort and do a little research to identify what kind of smartphone features would really suit your needs or how much money you can afford for a smartphone.

Here, are some tips, which should help you take the decision with ease and clear all your doubts.

1. What do I need?

The first thing you need is to be clear about your priorities. Think, what do you need from a smartphone? You have to be sure that the phone you choose has all the basic features as par your need and expectation. Anything extra you get in the phone should be a bonus for you. Remember, before going for a high end phone, make sure whether you really need those features; otherwise you will end up paying lots of money for the features that you will hardly use. After all, price is the ultimate deciding factor when purchasing a smartphone.

2. Which is the best brand?

Ah, that’s a great dilemmas for most of the buyers because it is one question that is definitely going to pop up on your mind when thinking of a smartphone. We may have certain prejudices towards one or the other brands sometimes due to personal experience and sometimes from other’s experience. But, the fact is every brand has its best and worst products. All of them are equally good with some features better than the others and come with some drawbacks, as well. Carry out a search over the internet to find, read and compare before taking a decision. Difference in opinions will help you to arrive at a certain conclusion.

3. What platform to choose?—-Android, Blackberry or iPhone?

That also depends upon a number of factors. You will find several phones running on android OS right from budget phones to high end smartphones along with plenty of apps in its app store that are compatible with multiple platforms. The Blackberry, on the other hand, is ideal for chatting and web browsing. iPhones, too have one of the biggest number of apps, but the problem with they can’t be used on any other platform.

So, android is the best option for downloading a lot of free applications, whereas Blackberry will be the perfect choice if you want to stay 24 hours connected via messenger and email. The Apple fans, on the other hand, will definitely go for iPhone.

4. Choose a Suitable Carrier

Choose a carrier according to your budget. You have to be careful whilst choosing a network plan because you may find a lot of them offering discounts and packages, but most of them will ultimately cost you much more than what you actually paid for your phone.

Some important points to remember:

1. Decide your purpose of using a smartphone.

2. Go for an unlimited plan if you use your phone mainly to download apps from the internet or chat a lot.

3. If you make frequent calls, choose a plan with discounted call rates. Also, check out the penalty amount for breaching contract.

5. The Features:

Now once you decide your phone, platform, plan and carrier, it is time to check out the features and experience it personally.

You can test your phone features in the following way:

1. Check the keypad, which should be comfortable for use.

2. Take some pictures to test the camera quality.

3. Play music and video player for satisfaction.

4. Run a few apps on the phone to see whether they run smoothly or not.

A smartphone being a multitasking device, make sure that the phone you choose is up to your expectation, and the drawbacks you found in the phone don’t have an impact on your decision.

Smartphones being a costly investment that you will use for at least 3-4 years, you must be satisfied with your choice before you make the final purchase. I hope that the above tips will help you in making the right choice for your phone. Did you find this post helpful in deciding your new smartphone? You can also add some more points to the list that are missed out. Let us know your views in the comment place.

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Increase Your Adsense Earnings with a Focused Niche, Content

Increase Your Adsense Earnings with a Focused Niche, Content

No, not that type of niche...

One of the things that might be holding you back may be most simply your content focus (or the lack thereof).

To be honest you could have a huge amount of traffic due to being a long-standing blogger, offline popularity, or any other factor but if your content isn’t focused then you may be unable to convert Google Adsense to a point where it’s worth your time.

You see, the more focused your content, the more focused your niche within a particular market segment or content area, the more likely you are able to have the CTR necessary to take you to the next financial level for your blog.

For example, if you blogged generally about your life, what you ate this morning, how the person in front of you was really loud in line at your local Starbucks, and how you really had an incredible day at work despite your boss being a bit upset – then don’t expect a very high CTR!

But, if you concentrate and focus your content in one particular and specific niche, and really uncompromisingly keep the path straight and do not veer too often, you can have lower overall traffic numbers than the previous example and make 10x as much!

Why is this true? Simple really – you see, the more focused your content the more targeted your blog becomes for answering people’s questions via organic search engine traffic which means they are more likely to click on an advertisement that solves a direct and felt need.

What does this mean for you? It could mean that you spend more time with posts like this one (Content Focus) and this one (Focused Categories) before you even start with the Blogger’s Adsense Series.

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10 Reasons Why You Should Use Google Adsense

At this point you might have already committed to moving forward with Google Adsense but even so I wanted to share some candid thoughts on why I have chosen to use it for not only this blog when I first started advertising but on many other blogs as well.

I’ll admit that I haven’t always been a super-fan of Adsense and on some blogs it just doesn’t “fit” well with the content focus and/or the community – but there’s always a possibility of executing well with it if done wisely and strategically.

It’s definitely not the financial “ringer” and obviously not the only monetization strategy that works but there are some amazing benefits of not just from fattening your wallet but it can also help you learn more about your blog, how it interacts with search andSEO, and how better to serve your visitors and readers with strategically placed content and call-outs. Heck, there’s a lot that you can learn just through the research required to do well with Adsense!

But naturally the most important (and powerful) reason for using Google Adsense is that if you do well then it can provide you a significant financial channel from your blog and some people make tens of thousands from it every single month. Now wouldn’t that be nice?

Without further ado, here’s my Top 10 list that might just sway you if you’re sitting on the fence:

1. Quick Start – It’s incredibly easy to get started with Google Adsense and if you’ve registered and joined other advertising networks you know that some of them can be incredibly arduous and long-winded as well as hard to get in (some require a personal phone call!).
2. Very Few Restrictions - Many other advertising programs require some levels of site traffic and/or earning potential to make it into the program as well as having certain caps and/or limitations/requirements on the sites that you use. With Adsense you have very few restrictions and that’s a good thing.
3. Customization and Options - You can easily customize the look and the feel of your advertisements to make sure that it fits nicely with your blog and website. It’s surprising that many other ad networks don’t even have that level of customization! In addition, the amount of options for types of advertisements, sizes, and placements are great too.
4. Robust Reporting - The reporting is pretty much second-to-none with advanced reports, specials templates, and other such features that give you the ability to optimize to your heart’s content.
5. Optimization Tools - You get great reporting but it’s not just for looks – they give you all the tools that you need to maximize your earning potential (and trust me you’ll need them).
6. Incredible Network - The number of advertisers that are available is also top-notch and you can’t really find an equal when it comes to the number of available advertisers to fill the spots that you create.
7. Contextual Targeting - When Google Adsense says that there advertisements are contextual they really do mean it. Most other advertising networks say that they can target but their algorithms and software aren’t even close to being as good. This also works well with the large network too.
8. Great Payouts - Of course you need to make sure that you optimize and execute on strategy but the payouts and financial earnings are actually quite good and you can start earning from the first day you put some ads on your blog. Few other networks can promise near-instant returns on your time commitment.
9. Global Monetization - This works in tandem with the last point but you can truly monetize global traffic instead of just domestic. If you’re blog gets global traffic (which many of them will) then you’ll want to make sure you’re working with a network and system that can provide global monetization, and Google Adsense does.
10. Doesn’t Require a PH.D. - Finally, most people can not just start easily but start making money without having to know much about anything! I like the idea that the bar is lowered and that bloggers from all shapes and sizes (and education levels) can make it, but you’ll need to educate yourself to beyond just the basics to do as well as you’d like to!

There are definitely more than just 10 reasons I enjoy Google Adsense but that should help you get a better feel for where I sit!

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