Adsense and Content Sites vs Blogs

[affiliatechick]

Hi everyone....

I'm wondering if anyone here currently owns a Blog and a Content Site could share what the differences are in your CTR on each.

I'm thinking that for some the CTR for a blog would not be as high for a content site simply because of the feed availability. The adsense is not served on the feed, right :confused:

I realize that blogs do offer the advantage of quick indexing but other than that, why would one choose to "blog it" rather than build a content site if the publlishers goals are to earn adsense revenue?

Any thought??

[Sbabb]

A blog is simply a content management system. If you set it up with permalinks, then it looks almost exactly like a site with a lot of articles all on different pages and the front page being a "What's New" page.

It's probably easier to create a "content site" in a blog than do it with manually edited HTML pages. Decent site development tools like Dreamweaver are much better than manually edited HTML files, but it's still much cheaper ($0 in many cases) and faster to create a blog, choose a page template, and immediately get to the task of creating content.

My blog is too new to get any traffic yet, so my CTR is still 0%. Besides, it's an experiment and a learning tool right now. Right now it's at http://gas-mileage-tips.blogspot.com but I'm going to move it to its own domain and make changes based on things I've learned.

I'm not sure how many people use feeds to read a blog as opposed to going directly to the blog in a web browser. I don't read feeds at all. I believe that it's possible to put AdSense in a feed on some blogs. I also write my articles so that they often reference other articles I've written with links to those articles, so people who read feeds may end up in a browser on my blog site anyway. I have had a couple of visits from people who came in from Technorati and Newsgator, according to my web stats monitor.

Scott

[M9919]

Regarding blog tools, Sbabb, I notice you say you're moving your blog from a blog service (blogspot) to your own domain. As someone with no blogs in the "traditional" sense up, I wonder if there is a "monetizing" reason why you're making that move?

I've been thinking of doing a couple blogs that would be easy topics for me to yammer on a few times a week, but I'm not sure if search engine traffic would somehow automatically be less at mywhatevertopics.blogspot.com than at mywhatevertopics.com, simply because it's using a blog service like blogspot.

Anyone have insight into this they'd like to share: blog service vs. blog at your own URL--which is better and why? (Or pros and cons, etc.)

Thanks!

- Mark

P.S. Sorry if this seems like thread hijacking, affiliatechick, but maybe we can get two-for-one insights here. :rolleyes: And the pros/cons of not having to mess with setup and maintenance when using a blog service is obvious, so no need to address that. I'm interested in the SE traffic angle here.

[M9919]

Oh, and in reply to the issue of ads not being included in RSS feeds....

I haven't seen any google ads in rss feeds in my reader, of course, but I have seen others included by using an <img> tag.

For example: Load this feed in your RSS reader (I'm not connected with this, just a reader)...

http://feeds.feedburner.com/shanghaiist

and at the bottom of each post in your reader, you'll see an ad, which is accomplished via (I've replaced their ID with yadayadayada)....

<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/shanghaiist?i=yadayadayada" border="0"></img>

I don't know if that's available only via feedburner, but at least it shows there is a method of getting some ad links into your RSS feeds.

Now, just don't go using it for evil... ;)

- Mark

[Sbabb]

My reasons for going with a blog on my own domain are (in no particular order):

1. I can run Wordpress blog software which is considerably more flexible than the Blogger software. Wordpress has lots of features I want and it also has plugins to do cool things like ad rotation (for affiliate ads) and interval posting (write a bunch of articles and queue them up and WP will post one a day, if you want.)

2. I can create static web pages for things that don't really work well in a blog. Do I really want to put in blog posts for my legal pages (privacy policy, terms of use, etc.)? Also I can create pages that cloak affiliate links if hijacking becomes a problem.

3. People think that "your own domain" makes you a more "serious" business than an account at a blog host. www.gas-mileage-tips.com looks better on a business card and is somewhat easier to remember than gas-mileage-tips.blogspot.com.

4. I may create an e-product in my niche and my own domain gives me a place to host and sell it.

5. I already have a virtual server with no limit on domains, so all I have to pay is the annual domain registration fee to add it to my server.

I have somewhat bigger plans than just AdSense for this particular business, so going to my own domain makes sense to me. I would think that many people have blogs at blogger.com or other blog hosts and they're making a lot of money with AdSense, minimalls, etc. so that might work for you. It might even work for me, but I've got this server sitting there hosting a few sites...

Regarding the RSS question, Wordpress lets me post only summaries of each post on the blog and in the RSS feed. The reader has to click on the summary to read the full article (and see the ads on the page.) I think I found an option in Blogger to post only summaries to the RSS feed, too, but I'm not certain that's what it does.


Scott