Just a brief announcement before I move on to my next task of the day: I’ve decided to delete/give up on the Google ads on EMUTalk.org. They ain’t worth it.
I had no illusions about getting rich from this little site, but I had hoped to more or less make enough money from the ads to make the site a “break even” proposition, which would mean making about $75 a year. Besides clicks on the ads themselves, I think the main way a site with Google ads makes money is by getting hits/page views from a lot of different users. But this is a site that gets a fair number of hits (nowadays, typically between 100 and 200 a day) from the same users. And as the same people keep coming back, earnings dropped. So, in the first two months of the Google ads, I “made” about $20. Last month, I “made” 24 cents, bringing my grand total up to $30.30. And I put “made” in quotes because Google only pays out after you make $100 or more on your site.
By the way, I’m going to keep the Amazon.com ads not because I am making money off of those– I’m at zero on that one right now– but because a couple of people have told me they like the ads of books by EMU authors.
Anyway, this might mean some combination of a couple of other options. I’m thinking/hoping/planning on doing some site redesign and reorganization, and that might feature some sort of space where I could run ads for a month at a time or so. Nothing fancy and nothing expensive– maybe $20 to run some sort of “public radio like” ad for a month where the Google ads used to be. And/or, also in the spirit of public radio, I might have a fund drive. I did this the first year of EMUTalk.org, and that went reasonably well.
