The Official CEnt Blog

Increase Blog Pageviews and Revenue

// March 29th, 2009 // Technology

Almost religiously we are asked the same question over and over again, “how do we increase revenue with our blog?” If you generate revenue based on banner impressions, then the most obvious way is to increase pageviews. However, the balance between editorial content and presentation vs. revenue is usually skewed to the left. I took a quick look at Alexa.com and plugged in a number of blog sites. The results are rather surprising with the average pageviews per visit to be between 1.3 and 2.7. This is extremely poor in my opinion. Let’s keep in mind that if your blog is sponsored or generates revenue from other sources, then this post may not be as important to you. But most blogs aren’t so lucky.

The math is simple. If you have 250k visits per month X 1.3 average pageviews per user, then you’re generating about 325k pageviews. Now let’s say you have a 728×90 (top), 160×600, 300×250 and 728×90 (bottom) — 4 ad zones per page. Ok, so you’re generating 1.3 million banner impressions and if we calculate a CPM of $0.50, there is a potential of $650 per month in banner revenue. So what’s the big difference between 1.3 and 1.5? An extra $100 per month. At 2.0 pageviews per visit, and we’re up $350. The assumption is that there is no increase in visits per month. We’re just looking at pageviews.

Here’s a list of comment problems that need to be stated every few months because they are always overlooked. Still.

Problem 1: “Giving away the milk and the cow.”  Most blogs provide 5-10 full posts on their home page. A visitor to the site will read all of the latest posts as soon as they get there. You’ve now lost them.  Unless they comment on a post or there is some engaging content in a sidebar, they have now left the site.  In practice, only a small portion of visitors to an average blog will post a comment.  Think about how many visitors you have in relation to how many comments you receive on posts.  This problem is evident in 20 of the 25 blogs I visit every day.  You want to engage visitors from your home page to click further by providing an abstract of the post and giving them a “read more.”  Some blogs do this successfully, most do not.  The assumption is that you’re making it hard for visitors if they have to do a 2nd click.  This is quite the opposite and by reducing the amount of clutter on your home page, you will be making it easier for your visitors to grab a quick overview of the latest content rather than having to scroll multiple pages to find what they may be interested in.

Problem 2: “Walk This Way” (sung to the tune by Run DMC & Aerosmith).  So you’ve gotten them to read a post that you spent some time writing, great!  You  need to give the visitor something to do after reading the post.  Most bloggers just assume that the visitor will look into the left (or right) sidebar.  More than likely you have ad banners there so its probably coming across as white noise.  Provide the visitor with links to posts that are related to the one they’re currently reading.  Not only do you help drive traffic to other pages on your blog, it also allows them to read some of the back story (assuming you’ve covered it).

Problem 3: “Hot or Not”.  Popularity, like in high school, carries over to the web.  Visitors are engaged by what other people think is interesting as well.  There are numerous plugins for your blog that will track visit and comment counts.  Including this will quickly draw your visitors to possibly exciting or heavily discussed topics on your blog.

Problem 4: “Take it and go.”  Everyone blog app allows for RSS feeds to be subscribed to.  However, these are one of the most overlooked components of your blog.  Most blogs simply include a link in the footer of the site.  Promoting this in the masthead or top of the sidebar makes it more visible.  Instead of having people link to your blog for RSS feeds, use a service like Feedburner. Not only can you include widgets with subscribed counts, but you will also benefit from not having additional load placed on your site once your feeds become popular.  Also with your feeds, don’t include the full post in it.  Just use the abstract / excerpt and give subscribers a taste but not the whole thing.

Problem 5: “Spread the love.”  With the number of social bookmarking and networks out there, its still surprises me that blogs do not include some sort of component which will allow their visitors to share the posts. ShareThis and AddThis are two sites that provide a simple plugin or bit of Javascript for your blog. Simply add them and your visitors will be able post a link to your post in about 2 clicks. Much easier than assuming they will copy/paste your permalinks to friends by email or IM. Not only will this increase your pageviews and possibly revenue, but you’ll be providing a service to your visitors at the same time.

Problem 6: “How much is too much text.”  Normally, there shouldn’t be any limit.  However, include images and photos that relate to your post as it helps to break up the task of reading so much content.  With that being said, its usually a good idea to paginate really long posts.  If the content is engaging enough, people will click through to read more.  I know for this post, there is nothing to break up the content so if you made it this far, thank you.

I don’t believe there are any silver bullets to increasing pageviews and subsequently, revenue.  Each blog is different but it only takes a few minutes to put any of the above in place.  And if you’re using an analytics app like Google Analytics, you can easily tell within 2-3 days if there is a noticeable difference.

Also, there are numerouslists on the internet so I’ll leave it up to you to discover other methods. If you have any really effective ones that you’d like to share, please do.