Learning2.0 : Journey to about2findout.com

A week ago I launched the site with the World Aids Day Quiz. (World Aids Day is held on Dec 1 every year, so it seemed appropriate as the site opened that day.) For promotion I toyed with the Google AdWords advertisement service.
So, how did it go?

- AdWords: I had advertisements for 7 days, and set a maximum of 5 euro/day. In total I spent 32.87 euro, which gave me 327.933 ad impressions. 451 people clicked on the ad, which means a CTR (click through rate) of 0.13% and it cost me 0.07 euro cent per click on average.

- AdSense: On the other hand, I earned 3.03$ the same way from people who clicked on the ads. There were 1835 ad impressions on my site with 22 clicks.

- That already shows the brilliance of the Google business model :-). I must say, AdWords is a very well designed service and very addictive. You can see real time how your campaign is doing and bid on keywords. Is there a medical name for Google AdWords Addiction yet?

- On the site itself, I saw an increase in average visitors/day from 15 to 75. I count 986 visits of which 859 unique visitors. They stay on average 3.40 minutes on the site.

- The 5 countries with most visits are in order: USA, India, Belgium, UK, Canada.

- 73% of my visitors use Internet Explorer, 22% uses FireFox.

- The quiz itself: the 9 questions are answered between 130-175 times, only 15 people created an account.

- The most difficult question is the first one: only 44% knows the actual number of AIDS/HIV infected people. Do you? (Hint: the number went down compared to last year, but only because of improved statistical methods.)

Labels: adsense, Adwords, AIDS, World Aids Day

A lot of web2.0 sites try to make some money from advertising. Flickr for example shows some advertisement to regular accounts, and not to their paying pro account members. Popular sites actually can make quite some money this way. Most web2.0 applications are loosing money.

I want to spend up to 1000 euro of my own money in this about2findout.com experiment, that's why I am largely using free tools. As an experiment, I've added Google adds on my blog and the 6C-learning.org site. It is actually a quite simple process and it works very well.

• Sign up online for a Google AdSense account for your site. You need to accept the conditions (for example you have to promise not to click on your own adds). It takes a few days for Google to review your application and then you can configure the adds. Reasons for declining your application might be an under construction site, not in a supported language, inappropriate, etc.
• On the Google Adsense pages, you can create the HTLM code you need for your site. There are some tutorials on how to select the best kind of adds (links, banners, search pages), where to place them on your pages and in what colors. The HTML code includes your AdSense key. I've chosen for the classical banner with text adds (AdSense for content)
• Copy the HTML code into your web pages on the appropriate place(s). The first days you might get 'public' adds that don't generate revenue. But soon your banners will show adds based on the content of your site.
• On the AdSense pages, you can see your revenue and various other reports on clickthroughts. You are payed for people clicking on the adds and per thousand impressions.
• If you generate more than 100$ of revenue, you can ask for payout. As a one-time setup I've configured my bank account information for payout. As a verification mechanism, Google will put a small amount on your account.

I'm not in it for the money, which is a good thing because in my first month I generated 5.25$ :-). It doesn't even come close to cover my monthly hosting fee for the site. So maybe at the end of next year I can have my first payout. For adds to generate substantial revenue obviously you need the necessary eyeballs for your site. But as an experiment I have to say the Google AdSense service works very well. (As it should being Google's main source of income.)

Similar services are available from Microsoft and Yahoo.

DECISION: about2findout.com will have a limited number of AdSense panels to (hopefully) cover basic costs such as hosting fees.

Labels: adsense, google