Well, before starting the question, I need to tell u something. Because, I'm utterly clueless of where to post this. In the Adsense forum or the Misc Marketing forum. Well, as my question is more related to adsense than marketing, I decided to place it here. Well, I didnt go for PM too because I think this topic is relevant enough to be discussed by others.

You see, Vangogh; I'm a regular reader of your esteemed Yellow House Hosting Blog. I've been reading it for 6 months. I see you sell hosting. but, the adsense ADs in between the content of posts is pretty always about Hosting too. I mean, advertisements of other hosting firms.You're price is a bit high and their's might ot might not be low. So, arent u conciously pushing out customers from your site ? I think this may not fare good for your hosting business. I know you are a clever and experienced webmaster/marketeer and I know you may have some reason to allow this. Why is it like this ?

You're probably right about those ads. In all honestly hosting isn't really where I make my money even though it's in the business name for the moment. I'm actually planning to change that in the near future with a new name and domain that will de-emphasize the hosting a little and place more emphasis on design/development and seo since that's really more what I do.

I think anytime you use contextul advertising like AdSense you run the risk of losing potential customers to other businesses. The ads on my site are only on my blog at the moment and most of the people who come to that section typically are looking for something other than my services so my thought has been I'm not really losing many hosting accounts because of the ads. It's possible I am though and that's the risk I take by having the ads there.

I look at my website and my business as a work in progress. This business started about a year ago and when I launched it I had certain thoughts about how it would generate revenue and where I wanted to take it. During the year I've learned certain things about myself and my business. I now have some different ideas on the best way to generate revenue for the near future and where I want to see the business go in the long run.

I imagine that some of the ideas I have now will also change somewhat over time. The main thing is I never see a business as being done. I look at it more as a living breathing kind of thing. I started it in a certain way and have since time modified things here and there and am curretnly working behind the scenes to make some major changes to the site and businees. The basic ideas I started the business with are still the same and will continue to be the same, but some of the details and focus will change as well as some of the tactics to get it where I want it to go.

I've said in many other threads that I think testing is important. A lot of things I do on my site are just experiments to see what will happen. With AdSense I certainly hoped it would bring in lots of revenue from the moment I added it to the site, but never really expected that would happen. However in order to really test how the ads work I think they need to be left up for awhile. Not that they are I have some ideas about how to perhaps make them better and also some ideas about how the site might be better off without them.

The main point you're making though is right. Those hosting ads that show up probably don't do much to help me sell hosting through my site. I'm ok with it for the moment, but in time I will do things to change that. I may work a little harder so those kind of ads don't show and I may even drop the ads completely. I haven't decided yet.

By the way thanks for reading the blog. I hope it's helpful.

Well, do anything you want, Vangogh, NEVER EVER delete that blog of yours. Its the best SEO and Marketing blog I've known. Yellow house blog and webmaster-talk are my 2 best Web promotion teachers. Yellow House Blog really active with new updated high quality unique posts.

I always wonder, where do u get all this articles from ? I mean, i used to write blogs and after a month or two I felt it a bit boring( probably bcuz I didnt get that much return) and started blogging about what I feel and all my readers complained that my blog is losing its niche and some of them even ditched it. Is there some secret to this ? Well, anyway, I always recommend your site to everyone who comes to me in need of help regarding SEO and stuff.

Anyway, delete everything but the blog. If u're planning to delete, pls tell me cuz I'm ready to maintain it. I dont want that blog to disappear. I think everyone shud read it. Well, you rock !!

Thanks again for the compliments on the blog and don't worry it's not going anywhere. Neither is the rest of the site. I'm not planning on deleting anything, just reorganizing it to emphasize certain things more. I'm also planning a new look. The blog might look different, but it will still be there and I'll still be writing it.

Sometimes it is hard to find topics. When I first started I had some ideas and then I went through them all and for a time it was really hard trying to come up with a new topic. Sometimes you just have to get through those times.

At first I kept the writing to three days a week and made sure to post on my usual nights. Lately I've expanded that and I'm trying to add five new posts each week.

The ideas for topics come from everywhere. I read a lot and so sometimes the idea is just my perspective on a topic I read elsewhere. I read from a variety of sources too so sometimes an idea for a post on seo or design has come from a newspaper article on something else. Sometimes it's just something I was doing for a client that I thought might be interesting. I've also gotten ideas from this forum. When I see several people asking the same question I figure it would make a good post. And sometimes someone asks a question or makes a comment that simply gets me thinking.

There are nights where it's very hard to come up with a topic and I have little desire to write. Usually I'll find something to say if keep at it. I write down ideas whenever I think of them and have a lot of web pages bookmarked that I think might make for a good post.

Part of the trick is to always be looking for new ideas. The more you keep writing the easier it becomes to see what might make for a good idea and the easier it gets to write something on those days and nights when you really wish you were doing anything else.

Thanks though for the nice compliments. I'm not planning on giving up the blog. I may reorganize it a little, but all the information will still be there.

I'm really glad to hear that. But, I think blogging does bring that much returns. I mean, relating it to the work we do, its not always worth it. And, there's something I've always noticed. When some say " I have 300 uniques per day", people with SEO blogs or sites always say like " I have 14 uniques". Why is it that SEO and webmaster stuff has very little market. Or, is it because SEO is polarised to Danny's Search Engine Watch, SEOmoz, Highranking or any other industry leaders ?

I know SEO is something which needs a lot of professionality. But, is that it ? Well, I think I'm 1321 light years away frm my topic. Well, blogging brings me only $2 a month. This is very bad since I get $100 internet bills.


A Question I always wanted to ask :- Are you a full time marketing guy ? Or a part-time like me ?

And, Vangogh, since you're a moderator, can u change the name of the topic to something else because no body else is participating in the discussion. Its not fair. Everyone should be here. What I'm doing is not the right netiquete. So, as I cant change the name of the topic, pls give it a relevant name. :-)

And, one more thing, just scroll through this topic.....mann.....I've never participated in such a rich conversation because look at the size of our posts.

I think much of the problem with the low uniques is that seo is a highly competitve field and even more that those in the industry know or should know how to best optimize their pages and blogs to rank well. It's not easy to rank for the term seo and will take quite some time to get a few hundred uniques a day for the term.

What can happen with a blog though is you can capture long tail search phrases that don't get a lot of searches, but do add up if you have enough of them. For example I wrote a post recently on how to use css borders to create shapes. I wasn't really thinking keywords when I wrote it or worrying much about optimizing the page, though I did mention css and borders enough that I figured I might get some searches with those words in them.

What happened with that post is it's been getting traffic (not a lot) for terms like:

trapezoid css
sample css design for border curves
how to create shapes in javascript
css border curve
css shapes
cool css borders
css border pretty
css border radius ie
border curve css
div shapes

You get the idea. Now each of those phrases has only brought in one or two uniques each, but when you start adding them up and adding in other pages that can get similar long tail traffic it can add up.

What I've found is that each month with all the new posts I get a couple of extra uniques a day from search engines. It's nothing at all to brag about and it's not resulting in a whole lot of money, but little by little it does bring in more traffic.

I'm not entirely sure what to change the title of this thread to, but how about 'Blogs, AdSense, and Search Traffic'

I get the idea, Vangogh. And, I see u've posted this in your blog recently and I've read it. Thank you dude. Its a really well thought answer.

Yep I took our conversation here and turned it into my post last night. It's one of the place I get ideas.

I forgot to answer your question before about whether I do this full time or part time. I can't say I do the marketing itself full time, but the site in my signature links is my full time business.

A few years ago I was working doing the full time 9-5 thing, but the way the economy was I'd work for a year then get laid off with many others in budget cuts, find another job, get let go again. I got pretty tired of that and never really liked working for other people anyway. A freind and myself started a web design business where she did most of the design and I did most of the development. The business never really went anywhere in part because I felt we were both lacking in business experience. She's gone onto other things and I took what I learned and started a new business, which I've been growing for the last year or so. I started doinig freelance work and somewhere along the way started a business.

Most of my work is usually designing and developing sites, but I have done some seo work, most has been for other SEOs who get the credit while I get to do most of the work. Oh well, you got to start somewhere. I'd like to build the seo work up a little more, but I find that many people still have some great misconceptions about what seo is. Many of the people who approach me still think it's all about making a few minor changes with the words on a page, wave a magic wand, and then you get #1 rank on everything you want in every seach engine.

I do have a few clients who let me do some real work on a limited basis as they can afford and in the meantime I work on my own site. The design work has been enough to pay my bills and I'm working behind the scenes to see if I can get it to pay a little more than just my bills. I look at the business and the site as something that grows from day to day and year to year. I'm taking what I've learned this last year to hopefully improve my services, the way I market those services, and ideally the money that ends up in my pocket.

Fill me in on yourself and what you do with marketing. You mentioned doing this part time. What else do you do? I belive you're still in school if I'm not mistaken. Do you want to do this full time once you're out of school or are you thinking of doing something else and always keeping the seo and marketing as something part time?

I can tell in just the couple months or so you've been here that you've learned quite a bit. I can tell simply from the questions you ask and the answers you give.