The past couple days I have been playing around with different means to make DotWeekly worth the amount of time I put into it. I have been struggling with trying to decide if I should keep blogging with DotWeekly or not. I love doing it but it takes a lot of time and I really do not profit that much for the amount of time it takes.

So if you look at it from my standpoint, I work daily on DotWeekly but get paid really nothing (money wise) to do. Making money off ads is not an easy thing to do. It’s like going to your 9 to 5 job and NOT getting a check at the end of the week.

So I am going to try and change this so I can keep doing what I am doing, without changing DotWeekly to "something else".

Some of the things that keep me from stopping are:

Positive: I learn so much by blogging and doing research for things to write about

Negative: It takes a great deal of time to come up with good things (helpful) to write about

Positive: A lot of people know who I am

Negative: None

Positive: Lots of bloggers make a living blogging

Negative: I do not know any "Domaining" bloggers that solely make a living of just blogging about domain names

Well, I could just keep going on an on and that is what makes it hard. There are a lot of good’s about blogging and a good deal of bad’s to go along with it. Making Money would change a lot of the negatives clearly. So, I have always tried to keep "ADS" very low on DotWeekly because I myself do not like reading things that are filled with ads. It makes it "ugly", can slow page load times and who really likes to be slammed with ad after ad.

In trying to put in more ad spots on DotWeekly to help increase income, I tried doing so that you as the reader do not get overwhelmed with ads, but still show relevant ads to something you may be interested in. I hope by me adding in more ad spots and placing them differently will help the income of DotWeekly and still keep you around as a reader. Here is how I added the ad spots to the DotWeekly wordpress blog and why.

In-text Ads

In-text ads are and will be your highest seen and clicked! Readers come to DotWeekly to read and learn. Putting ads in the text makes them seen the most. I decided to use Google Adsense for the in-text ads because they scan the specific article for keywords and I think provide the best ads that are relevant to the wide ranges of things DotWeekly covers.

Now since many people come to DotWeekly different ways, I didn’t want to bomb readers with ads all the time. So I decided to only put In-text ads in, when people visited a story I wrote Directly. This means that if somebody clicks into a story from Domaining.com or a search engine link, they will see an ad in the text of the story. If somebody visits DotWeekly.com directly and reads a story without clicking the title link, they will not see the in-text ad. By doing this, I hope to keep my everyday readers happier, as they are likely to visit DotWeekly.com directly and read through the site that way.

How did I put this into my Wordpress site to work like this? Add adsense intext ads with Wordpress. Scroll down to the section near the bottom of the page titled "Adding Adsense to the Content of Posts" . I read several different write ups and I think this one is the clearest and easiest to follow. Now be sure to play around with different sized ads, the colors of ads, the location etc.

Between Posts Ad

I have wanted to ad an ad block between posts for some time. This is mainly for those who come to DotWeekly.com directly and read. I personally show "Full Posts" so people do not have to click Read More. By showing the full post, allows readers to just keep reading stories until they have to go to the next page. Since I am showing Adsense for Specific articles, somebody simply reading DotWeekly directly, really will not see an ad.

I choose to put a Domain Related ad with this spot as the majority of readers to DotWeekly are domain related. I wanted one that would change a little bit as well, so the banner is dynamic and changes come directly from the advertiser.

So how did I put in the ad to work? Ad Adsense Between Posts. Again, I found several people who wrote how to’s but this one I thought was the easiest to follow and works. You can adjust the ad to show under the 1st first post shown, 2nd post shown etc. It is going to depend on how many "posts" you show per page and which one you think is good to put it. I show 3 posts per page, so I put it under my 2nd post.

Sidebar Ads

Sidebar ads are better for Exposure then clicks IMO! Sidebar ads are good for direct advertisers to your site but affiliate ads do work as well. I put in 5 different spots on my sidebar. 350 x 250 top spot, followed by 3, 125 x 125 spots under the search bar, which is under the main top spot. These spots will differ depending on your theme you choose. One last spot is a widget ad. Under the widget area, I simply selected Text and insert your ad code.

I likely should have something in my footer as well, but I am leaving that open for now. I may put a large banner down there but I just have not decided yet.

Tips

Keep in mind that Google Adsense allows for a max of 3 adsense blocks in a window. This will likely force you into getting creative with how and where you place your ads.

Affiliate ads will convert better then Adsense, if you can get them to convert.

Test, Test and Test again. A lot of times it’s the little things but be sure to keep trying new things. I wasn’t going to put a 160 x 600 Adsense block in my sidebar but figured I would give it a try. Interestingly enough, it get’s a good deal of clicks and converts pretty well. I think the reason behind this, is because no matter how a reader lands on DotWeekly.com, that ad block is always shown!

If you are not sure what you are doing with "code" and you want to try changing things, always save the untouched code first in notepad and then change it. That way if it screws up something, you can paste in the good code and reset things.

Other means of making money on your site can include: Products, Donations (these really never worked for me), Subscriptions, Downloads or services to name a few.