As I mentioned last month, I made $120 from 357,617 pageviews.

That’s awful.

What Didn’t Work So Well

The primary way I was monetizing Awesomeology (before it was discovered by StumbleUpon) was through Google AdSense. I made about $4 from 10,000 pageviews between Nov 1st and Nov 13th. Once the site became popular with StumbleUpon on the 14th, I made another $51 from AdSense between Nov 14th and Nov 30th.

That might sound like a lot more, but it’s about a 13x increase in income on a 35x increase in traffic. Not good.

Clearly, my site was not monetized well for StumbleUpon.

My Plan To Increase Revenue

• Videos - A LOT of Awesomeology’s content is humorous videos, and most of them are embedded YouTube videos. In the future, I’ll always search Revver to see if the video is there. If it is, I’ll embed the Revver version instead of the YouTube one. Why? Because Revver features a video ad after the video itself plays. If the person watching the video clicks on the ad while it’s playing, I (as an affiliate) get a cut of that. That’s a great program that will be non-intrusive for my visitors.
• Affiliate Ads - Affiliate products typically do NOT do well with StumbleUpon users. However, I have one on Awesomeology that I think would be attractive to my demographic. It’s for Double Your Dating. The program has gotten rave reviews, has an irresistible sales letter, sells for $20 and pays out $40 (yes, that’s not a typo. It pays 200% commission). Also, there’s no minimum payout. I had one sale in November, and have already gotten paid $40 for it.
• Pay Per Lead Ads - These seem like they would work far better with StumbleUpon visitors than Affiliate programs. Why? Because the user doesn’t actually have to spend any money in order for me to get paid. And some of them can be lucrative. If you visit Awesomeology, you’ll see the two that I have running now. The ad that flashes “Get the brand new iPhone! Up to $1500 is available today!” pays $19.50 per lead, and the one that says “Lose up to 12lbs in 2 Days for Free!” pays $21 per lead. I found these offers through a Pay Per Lead network called Copeac, which I highly recommend.
• CPM Ads - I just applied for the Tribal Fusion ad network. It makes a lot of sense for me for Awesomeology to be on a CPM model (where I get paid based on the number of ad impressions rather than clicks or actions). Anyone have any experience with Tribal Fusion, or suggestions for other CPM networks?

Check Back For Results

I’ll be tracking these changes over the next 4 weeks, and will report back then. In the mean time, can you think of anything I’m missing? Do you have any experience with monetizing SU traffic?

What’s The Big Idea?

John Chow is well known for generating income with his blog (over $27,000 in November 2007!). At the end of each month he blogs about how much money he made in the previous month. He’ll always break it down by source and gives some helpful advice that he’s learned along the way.

Those posts are always inspiring to read (and among his highest-viewed and most linked to), but they always lack visuals.

I figured that I’d take the initiative to create some graphs for John (and run a little experiment of my own at the same time).

And so John Chow Graphs dot Com was born!

I grabbed the domain name and got to work. Because I knew that the site would be static (except for adding one new chart each month), I went old-school when creating the site. I mean real old-school…straight HTML with the help of NVU. No CSS, just a bunch of tables. Quick and dirty. Including the graphs, the whole site was done in less than 5 hours stretched over a few days. If you were wondering, I made the graphs with Adobe Illustrator CS3.

How Much Did It Cost?

My total cost was just $7.15 to register the domain name for one year through GoDaddy. I’m using Nearly Free Speech for hosting, so that will be fairly negligible (well under $1 per month).

I plan on driving traffic to the site by getting myself in the top few slots of John’s Top Commentators for a week or two. Think about it…who would be a better target audience for a site called “John Chow Graphs” than visitors to JohnChow.com? Commenting on John’s site under the name “John Chow Graphs” will also ensure that John himself sees it.

What Do I Expect To Get Out Of It?

I expect to generate a small amount of income from the AdSense and affiliate links that appear on John Chow Graphs, but the real goal is to get visitors and subscribers for the launch of this site (365 To Freedom). That’s why I have “John Chow Graphs dot com brought to you by 365 To Freedom” under each image. When you see that over and over again, you’ll eventually click on it out of curiosity.

Want To Use The Graphs On Your Site?

I know there are a lot of people who mention John’s results on their own blogs each month. If you’d like to use my graphs on your site, here’s the deal:

• No hotlinking! Host the images yourself.
• Don’t alter them in any way (i.e. don’t remove the “by John Chow Graphs dot Com” at the bottom).
• You must link to both JohnChowGraphs.com and 365ToFreedom.com in the same posting that you use the graph.

John, if you’re reading this, you may use the images on JohnChow.com as much as you wish. If you’d like me to create a new graph in time for you to include with each monthly income posting, just contact me with the numbers 12 hours in advance.

Check Back For Complete Results

At the end of December, I’ll break down my stats for the John Chow Graphs dot Com experiment. This will include Unique Visitors, Total Pageviews, and Income (if any) for that site, as well as how many visitors and subscribers 365 To Freedom got out of it.

If you want to see the results, subscribe by email or full feed RSS.