As I visit a lot of website I’ve noticed that ads galore are all over your site. Its okay in a sense if you’re using multiple companies, however if you are using one company you want to have your CTR (click thru rate) high and your impressions vs. clicks high. The more ads shown the more CPM shown granted, but the less clicks per impressions.

What happens is lets say for example I’ve been using Yahoo Ads. And I look around their site they even say not to place too many ads up since you’ll be showing the same text ads and it will just decrease your CTR VS. CPM

Some places pay based on CPM so hey if you get stuck with a place like I have based on CPM then by all means put your ads all over the place! But really don’t spam your visitors though.

On Pajama Mommy which is my main money maker, I use Yahoo Ads! I also had azoogle which was crap since no one ever bought any, if it works for you great it didn’t work for me. Heck, my own mother forgot to sign up through my azoogle ad which I lost out on a $52 commission :|

On the site I place one ad on top, main view and I’ve received a dozen clicks already from it.
Then on the side bar I place my Text Link Ads sponsored links, Sponsored Review banner, and a Job Board widget.

As you can see its the only way I monetize the site. On the forum for Pajama Mommy I however place the ads on both top and bottom maximizing the views. Which brings down the CPM Yes but unlike the website the forum has more things on the bottom for people to actually go down and read. Not everyone will read the entire front page of a blog but they will sift through forums.

This is a sponsored review by Mayzer Software Downloads

This is actually a pretty nifty site. Its poorly designed, so I think they will attract more attention with a better design but the idea is there. Its a user submitted software site, so you can potentially find a lot of cool software there.

The main idea of the site is to download multimedia software, however the potential for growth is there. You can find some paid downloads, but they also have free ones as well, and as every savvy blogger knows free is good for me. They offer free screen savers, font viewers, image morphing software. For this site it has quite the variety I must say.

My main tip to them is to ditch the layout and create new, most people judge a book by its cover and having a layout that screams that the site is reputable enough to afford a well done layout will be helpful. I don’t like to throw my money down the drain and sometimes its the fact that it looks like you’re about to and some seedy sites come out good and some are bad but when a site makes an effort not to look seedy its so much better.

I’ve been sitting here thinking to myself hmm Pajama Mommy is getting more and more popular but I’m not making a whole lot.

I’ve made $62 dollars on TLA for Pajama Mommy.

Which doesn’t seem like a lot but hey when you get that money coming in from a variety of sources all into your paypal account at the same time boy does it add up!

However, I’ve been thinking to myself when should I raise my prices. Pajama Mommy is a baby blog and a parenting blog to begin with so I of course scoped out the competition. I displayed it going via alexa ranking and noticed that the other competition I have thats a domain with low Alexa sells her ads at the standard $15 to start and has sold 3/8 spots available.

Seeing as thats not helping me I section it now by price. I am the 2nd highest priced website in the Baby section at $65 a link, the highest is another website that charges $150 dollars a link.

What do you get for $150 dollars:
5/10 Page rank
400K Alexa Ranking

plus marks: the ad will be displayed on over 1,000 pages.

What you get for $65 dollars:

6/10 Page Rank
76K Alexa Ranking
Ad shown on over 200 pages.

Now with my ranks alone compared to other website I should be higher. However the number of pages the ad being shown on is rough on me. Typically TLA and other places prefer the links to be on just one page. However, if I am an advertiser I want my link showing up everywhere so they finally say FINE I WILL CLICK YOU! correct? I don’t know if thats good marketing or I’m an idiot but thats how I like to get it. However I feel I should raise it.

I know a lot of other people are going through the problems, so I contacted TLA and said hey do you think you could recommend a new price for me since my rankings have been up they basically said if you want to raise it you have to tell us what to raise it to. This was not helpful, I just wanted a re-evaluation of the price of my links if it should be up even if only by $1 just a bit of information on their point of view, since they of course are the professionals. I wish I was given more help as I know many of you do. So basically I learned this from all of it:

Do thorough research, every possible keyword you can think of surf it and try to find competition. See why they are selling, what their PR is, ALEXA and how many pages do they have on their site. If you have less then try to make more! It could be one of the reasons of why you are not selling as many. Don’t lie about the pages but don’t under price yourself either. If you feel your site deserves more and no one is willing to re-evaluate do it yourself.

Looking at it, I felt my site should be at $85 my rank blasted over 40,000 spots since I was originally added. My links are starting to sell. So I will wait about a week or so let my ranking improve and ask for an increase and see how that goes. It’s only $20 dollars more so its not a huge step up but still its a decent up start.

Also change your categories every now and then, once I played around with the categories and keywords I sold 3 more links!

I was just accepted into Yahoo! Publisher Network!!! I am very excited this is the first time I have been in a PPC program that I hear actually pays you.

It is a very sought after program to the point where people were selling invites for $1500 dollars, I was offered one I am like no thank you, you’re a rip off and you could totally get reported.

I have managed to place them and limit the number of ads on the site so it should look a lot nicer now that I have cleaned it up I am going to let you know how it works and what not please let me know what you think of the less ads better worse?