I confess, I was the kind of guy who never clicked on an ad. My eyes were trained to ignore ads in all shapes and sizes to the point that I didn’t even noticed them. That changed when I added AdSense to my blog.

To click or not to click

At this moment I only use AdSense, but I guess everything I mention in this article can be applied to other means of online advertising too. I deliberately do not provide any links in this article, nor do I mention any company names. If you want to find the sites and companies that I mention here, you will just have to look at the ads on my blog.

The idea for adding ads to my blog was suggested to me by a penpal and I thought of setting a modest goal for myself, namely to let my site pay for itself within a year and a half. I am too much of a down-to-earth kind of guy to believe those getting rich while you are sleeping schemes. I also didn’t want to overload my site with ads and I certainly didn’t want any pop-ups.

Soon after I added AdSense to my blog I started wondering why no one was clicking on those ads. From a spiritual point of view this is very understandingly, if I do not pay attention to the ads on other peoples sites, let alone actually click on one of them, why should anyone bother with the ads on my site ? Click and thou shall be clicked upon (gospel of Johan 1:1).

I decided to take an active interest in online advertising. And what better place to start than the ads that appear on my site. After all, those ads are based on the contents of my blog and since I write about things that interest me, the ads, at least some of them, should be interesting too.

Disclaimer. I am fully aware that clicking on the ads on my own site is prohibited by Google. When I signed up I agreed to Google’s terms, conditions and program policies. And while I do not think that if I should click on one of my own ads an alarm would go off at Google’s headquarters, I am aware that they can track this. So I looked at the ads on my site and then typed in the URL or did a Google search on the company’s name.

Studying ads

Not only did I learn from studying my own ads, I actually benefited from them too, even financially. What did I gain from studying my own ads ?

• I received a free ebook about virtualization in exchange for my email address. Let me rephrase that, in exchange for one of my email addresses.
• I have this idea for a new website. For this project I can either use my current shared hosting company or choose a new one. I already had a shortlist of 3 possible candidates who meet my requirements obtained via Google search  and thanks to the ads on my blog I was able to add 2 more.
• Another pet project of mine is to have my own virtual private server (VPS) and I would like to start this project in the second half of this year. I already found 2 affordable VPS hosting companies and thanks to the ads on my blog I was able to add 3 more to my shortlist.
• I started buying books online more then 10 years ago. Thus far I probably shopped at 7 different online bookshops, always looking for the cheapest prices and the best service, and yes, it is possible to have both. Availability is also an issue. The last 2 years I ordered at the same company offering a speedy delivery for the cheapest price, but thanks to AdSense I have found another bookstore that is even cheaper for quite a lot of the books on my wish list. On my first order of 2 books I saved 30% and you have to admit that is impressive.
• A site with useful blogging and Wordpress tips.
• One site for making money online that was good enough to bookmark

Some other sites for which I have no immediate use, but are interesting enough to mention them here:

• 2 sites for self-publishing books or ebooks
• professional VPS hosting companies
• some good deals on ebook readers, but I already have one and I am very pleased with it

I did discover some funny ads too: an ad for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 in an article about installing a virtual ubuntu server on Mac OS X and an ad for a psychic palm reading in an article about my BeBook.

I also learned to my surprise that not all advertisers expect you to spend money: some advertisers just want some attention, others want your email address in exchange for something, but a majority indeed hopes to gain a new customer.

What did I learn from my own site ?

I realize that I should either limit the scope of my blog or set up a couple of blogs. There are currently too many topics for one blog: iPod, ebook reader, Linux, PHP, virtualization, Mac OS X, book reviews, … That’s enough topics for 3 blogs and I have 2 more topics in mind. The result of this variety of topics is that people who read a fantasy book review, can get ads for virtualization or website hosting. This is definitely not good. No wonder I do not get that much clicks on my ads. So as soon as I have enough articles I will probably split up my blog in a personal, LAMP and Apple blog. By the way, my goal of letting my site pay for itself in a year and a half from now looks realistic.

The added value of ads

The last 2 months made me look at ads in different way, I now know that they (can) have an added value for a site. And I started using them. It’s not like I am clicking on every ad on every site that I visit, but when I read an interesting article I now scan the ads and when I see an interesting one I click on it. Doing so might guide me to some extra bit of information and it also helps a fellow blogger or webmaster. After all, the worst thing that can happen, is that I will have wasted a couple of seconds.

Ideally, it comes down to this. You, the visitor, can find some additional information, get some free stuff or discover a new ecommerce shop that offers a product or a service you were looking for (or never knew you needed) or is good enough to bookmark for later use. The website owner, the publisher, makes a buck. Google makes a lot of bucks, which allows it to offer a lot of services (Google search, Gmail, Google Calendar, …) for free. And the advertiser gets the attention he wants or gains a potential customer. Actually, it is a win-win-win-win situation. Think of it, you can effectively help yourself and the world economy, the troubled world economy with just a mouse click. What are you waiting for ? Start right here, right now!

I started this blog on January, 1 2009 mostly out of curiosity. I had no prior experience with blogging, I just wanted to give it a try. Never did I expect it would be this much fun and excitement: the writing, the attention, the response, … When I activated my blog I thought of attracting a 100, maybe a 150 visitors in the first month, but I didn’t expect it would reach 1639 unique visitors.

Data Jan 2009

Four days after my blog came online my post about Running PHP CLI shell scripts got picked up (on a Sunday) by the Zend Developer Zone, resulting in 255 visitors in 1 day, and another 2 days later by PHPDeveloper, with 177 visitors that day, without any intervention on my part. Two of the most important RSS feeds for PHP developers syndicated my post, waaw, I mean WAAW!
I can really recommend entering the blogosphere, writing is fun, you meet new people with a common interest and the response is (mostly) welcome. Some people just say thank you and others point to something you’ve overlooked … well I live and learn. Before you start blogging, know that it does take a lot of time to write a review or step-by-step how-to.

Statistics

Chart Jan 2009

Not only does my host provide me with stats for my domain and subdomains, but there is also a plugin for Wordpress, namely StatPress Reloaded, that does a very good job at this. In this post you will find a screenshot of a spreadsheet with the stats on operating systems and browsers, including versions and distros and another screenshot with 2 charts based on the same data, but grouped per OS and browser, regardless of version and distro information. I do not think that my blog attracts the attention of the average surfer, but it does show that there is diversity out there. Something that doesn’t show up in these stats, but that I’ve noticed, is that when I publish a new post the share of Linux and Mac OS X is higher than average (not a majority, just higher) during the first days and then Windows users seem to catch up. A possible explanation is that Linux and Mac OS X users are more alert and/or that the use of RSS feeds is higher among the users of those operating systems. StatPress Reloaded doesn’t offer these kind of statistics, but this information must be available in the database somewhere, so maybe I will try to extract it with some custom scripts.

Conclusions:

• Windows is the dominant OS
• Mac OS X is more popular than Windows Vista
• Firefox users keep their browser (software) more up to date
• FireFox 3 is the most popular browser
• Firefox and Internet Explorer (excluding version info) have the same market share
• almost 2% of the visitors used a cellphone, PDA or other mobile thingy, mostly iPod Touch or iPhone
• Ubuntu is the most popular linux distro
• almost 3/4 of the IE users use an outdated version versus only 1/9 of the Firefox users
• there are more linux users than Mac OS X users
• there are more linux users than Windows Vista users

Eindelijk!

Ik heb een eigen blog. Ik heb de software zelf geïnstalleerd, ik host het op mijn eigen website en zal zelf ook bloggen.
De eerste twee stappen waren gemakkelijk, nu komt de derde stap. Waarover zal ik schrijven ? Welke verhalen kan ik vertellen ? Zal er iemand in geïnteresseerd zijn ? Nou ja, dat heeft nog nooit iemand tegengehouden om te bloggen, nietwaar ?

Screenshot blog

Onderwerpen die aan bod kunnen komen: de BeBook ebook lezer, linux, PHP, vogels kijken, Tao, SF & Fantasy, … Aangezien het een persoonlijke blog is, hoef ik me niet te beperken tot 1 onderwerp.

Ere wie ere toekomt. De layout (december 2008) van deze site is gebaseerd op iNove van mg12. Ik heb echter alle verwijzingen verwijderd, omdat ik zelf één en ander heb veranderd: eerst enkele groottes van het lettertype, dan enkele marges, dan de breedte van de rechter kolom, dan moest ik de achtergronden wijzigen, dan de voettekst, … Uiteindelijk is het niet langer zijn layout, maar is het ook niet echt de mijne. Het lijkt me wel een uitdaging om in 2009 een eigen layout of thema te ontwerpen.

De meeste berichten zullen in het Engels zijn, maar ik zal waarschijnlijk af en toe eentje vertalen naar het Nederlands.

Finally!

I have my own blog. ‘Having’ meaning that I installed it myself, I host it and intend to use it.
The first two steps were easy, now comes the third one. What will I write about ? What stories will I tell ? Will anyone be interested ? On the other hand, that never stopped anyone from blogging, right ?

Screenshot blog

Likely subjects for this blog: BeBook ebook reader, linux, PHP, birdwatching, Tao, SF & Fantasy, … time will tell. This is a personal blog so I do not have to restrict myself to one particular subject.

Some credits: the current theme (December 2008) is based on iNove by mg12. I have removed any references because first I modified some fonts, then some margins and paddings, then the width of the sidebar, then I had to modify the backgrounds, then I changed the footer, then I removed some of the hardcoded widgets, … Well it is no longer his theme, but I do not want to take credit for making it either. It looks challenging to make my own theme in 2009, but for the moment this will do.

Most posts will be in english, but I probably will translate some of them into my native tongue, namely dutch.