Unfortunately, due to a death in the family, my grand plans to implement more of the steps in my Haunt Jaunts Monetizing Project had to be put on hold.
However, the Step 1: Bounce Rate Redux portion of my plan has seen some success. My Bounce Rate has dropped from 78% to 70%.
I have a few more tweaks I plan to make to hopefully decrease that even further. Namely, being more aggressive instituting the 2nd principle of my Bounce Rate Redux philosophy: Lead them to the blog, not away from it.
I’ve done a good job changing most of my widgets to be ones that either point to stories within the blog. Or, if they do direct people elsewhere, it’s to one of my affiliate marketing partners.
The only one I haven’t fixed is my “blogroll.” Instead I’m going to create a Links page and add people there.
I will, however, keep any blogroll buttons I have. That’s one sacrifice of directing people elsewhere I’m willing to keep. Especially if others are willing to display my button and direct traffic to me away from them. I figure that one likely balances itself out over time.
WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP(S)?
Ultimately I have two more steps I need to get in place:
- Increase hits
- Focused ads
Because some of my income is based on how many hits I have, it behooves me to have as many as possible.
Of course, this is easier said than done. But there are things, such as SEO and savvy social media use that can help facilitate higher hits. (Halloween will provide the perfect opportunity to pair ads with social networking strategies to bring more people in.)
But once those hits start coming I also have to be conscious of my ads. This includes:
- Good ad placement
- Ads targeted at my users
- Having a variety of ads and not limiting myself to one revenue source
Basically, it’s sort of a calculated crap shoot combining luck, intuition, and creativity.
We’ll see how it goes. I’ll be sure to report my progress.
PUT IT IN PRACTICE
Have you taken a look at your ads lately? If they’re not generating the kind of revenue for you that you’d like, do you know why? Have you experimented with ways to change that? (i.e. Putting them in different spots on your site, working with their size, changing their color scheme, etc.)
