Make More Money Off Your Blog By Milking Your Greatest Hits

Do you run a mildly successful blog and want to get a bit more cash out of your ads? Have you written a couple blog posts that became popular in the blogosphere but have had a hard time turning those successes into a large, steady stream of regualr visitors (and ad viewers)?

I had the same dilemma a couple weeks ago. I thought about putting ads in between my posts for some extra revenue, but I thought it was too obtrusive, ruined the look of my site, and would turn off readers. Then I had a brilliant idea. I have a couple of posts that get a steady stream of visitors to my site from search engines and digg. My Aqua Teen Hunger Force post was the top story on digg a while back and I still get a lot of traffic and comments on the post. Also, our posts on Boston (especially part 2) get a lot of traffic from anti-Boston queries from different search engines. I’m not sure why those posts are ranked so high on google, but I’m not complaining! Since most of the people who visit those posts don’t stick around and check out the rest of the site, I figured why not take advantage of the traffic? I put ads in the middle of the posts and created new channels in google adsense so I could track their performance.

I’m pretty sure the google adsense terms of service prohibit me from talking about specifics, but I will say I was pleased with the results. The Aqua Teen Hunger ads are struggling, but are providing me a bit of extra money. The Boston ad, while having a lower total of page views, have a higher CTR (click through rate) and eCPM (effective cost-per-thousand impressions) than the ads I have at the top of the blog and on the sidebar, giving me a decent chunk of change.

While this simple tip won’t have you rolling in the dough like the monopoly man, it is an effective way of utilizing your blog’s greatest hits and a way of making money off of your blog you otherwise would of missed out on. All without being intrusive to your loyal readers who hit the main page!

In the future, I plan on adding a list of my favorite blog posts on the sidebar that include these posts. It should help drive even more traffic to those posts, and you might want try the same thing if you have a similar set up on your blog.