How Is My Most Popular Post Not Making Anything?

I recently wrote an article on my site that focuses on the 'luxuries' of using linux. It's by far the most popular thing I've ever created. Somewhere around 17,000 people just this month. i've got a few various ways of monetizing. From ppc's to affiliate stuff, ya know. I feel the ads aren't too ugly and they are appropriate for the topic. Over three weeks now however, only 7 bucks has been made with kiticha. and i truly hate them. This article it too popular and too good to waste guys. PM if anyone would be willing to check out the site and give me a few pointers

First off, it's Chitika, not kiticha. Chitika is not nearly as profitable as Adsense, so your disappointingly low earnings shouldn't surprise you.

Appropriate???

Your site is talking about linux but your sidebar adverts are for a grocery gift card.

Maybe I'm missing something here but how are those even closely related?????

sturose said:

Appropriate???

Your site is talking about linux but your sidebar adverts are for a grocery gift card.

Maybe I'm missing something here but how are those even closely related?????

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lol i know its its spelled chitika and i cant get approved for adsense because of lack of content. the grocery ads have only been up for a day. Ive tried a few other ads but they didnt work and honestly, who couldn't use some grocery money? at least that's my way of thinking. I've tried others like fixing your pc software and stuff, but no clicks. The grocery ads at least have gotten 9. They didn't have any ads for Ubuntu on maxbounty. My options are slightly limited because i am talking about free things like linux. so the main group who read don't need Windows programs or whatever. Ya know? I suppose i could try amazon affiliate links for computer hardware or something? I dunno. I'm tryin though

dadangle said:

lol i know its its spelled chitika and i cant get approved for adsense because of lack of content. the grocery ads have only been up for a day. Ive tried a few other ads but they didnt work and honestly, who couldn't use some grocery money? at least that's my way of thinking. I've tried others like fixing your pc software and stuff, but no clicks. The grocery ads at least have gotten 9. They didn't have any ads for Ubuntu on maxbounty. My options are slightly limited because i am talking about free things like linux. so the main group who read don't need Windows programs or whatever. Ya know? I suppose i could try amazon affiliate links for computer hardware or something? I dunno. I'm tryin though

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My advice is to have some patience. Keep writing content, get about 15-20 articles then apply for AdSense. Your niche may have much traffic but not many of them are buyers, most come for a quickfix (for free), not to spend money. Adsense would be better because it could deliver ads based on their previous searches too, not only your niche, so you get a much higher chance for them to see relevant ads.

I think that's what I will focus on. Writing. I think that's about the hardest part for me. Not writing the article itself, but picking what it should be about. Narrowing down is not one of my virtues.

dadangle said:

lol i know its its spelled chitika and i cant get approved for adsense because of lack of content. the grocery ads have only been up for a day. Ive tried a few other ads but they didnt work and honestly, who couldn't use some grocery money? at least that's my way of thinking. I've tried others like fixing your pc software and stuff, but no clicks. The grocery ads at least have gotten 9. They didn't have any ads for Ubuntu on maxbounty. My options are slightly limited because i am talking about free things like linux. so the main group who read don't need Windows programs or whatever. Ya know? I suppose i could try amazon affiliate links for computer hardware or something? I dunno. I'm tryin though

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Hmmm, 9 clicks may be better than none but no conversions is still no $$$. The point I'm making is your site is talking about linux, the people who are visiting your site, are they even the age group that would be interested in grocery shopping vouchers??

Also I didn't have time to read the full article, are you giving so much information that people don't need to bother looking for more? Sometimes less is more as they say. You could then offer a clickbank product or as you stated, an amazon ebook for more reading material on the subject. Make it seem like more of a review kinda site for the product you offer.

Good luck anyway whatever you decide to do.

Yeah, I'd love to check the post out if possible!

-II

Why would someone be looking at a linux article and need pc fixing services?

Your article does not lead in any way to buy anything!
If you can sell something to your readers you will do a lot of money!

Move from PPC to Affiliate marketing and sell linux softwares from Amazon!

You should probably learn more about affiliate marketing and how to properly target your ads with your content. It sounds to me like you need to get the basics down.

Firstly, was it 17,000 real people or having you been buying any traffic. If real you should definitely be seeing more $$ with that number, but I cant see your page to comment.

I know with one of my popular posts on a site, facebook traffic alone makes it about $60 a day, but it only seems to go crazy with traffic 3-4 times a month. Also Chitika is rubbish, I used it for a day to compare it with adsense, I got something crazy like 94 clicks and $0.39 back which doesn't even make sense in regards to click count, so I would remove them and focus solely on affiliate links/clickback or something like that if you cant use adsense yet.

Do as lord1027 says, keep working on it and get approved for adsense. Also like you mentioned yourself, you can never go far wrong with joining amazon and putting a banner on for top selling computer software or something

Keep writing and updating your site OP. Maybe you can spy on your competition and see how they're monetizing their site. It's always a good idea to see what other people are doing to make money instead of relying on your intuition.

Paper-Boy said:

Keep writing and updating your site OP. Maybe you can spy on your competition and see how they're monetizing their site. It's always a good idea to see what other people are doing to make money instead of relying on your intuition.

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Understood. I've sorta figured some stuff out since I first posted this. I changed my ads around and I've been using Shareasale quite happily. I picked just two types of ads to promote and one of them has been getting a lot of clicks in the last week. The product is a new exciting gadget that nerds of any sort would love, so people are clicking, but no sales. In one week its gotten 153 unique hits. Does that mean I'll get money from epc? Per 100 clicks right?

Well, even though you had 17.000 visitors in one month it doesn't mean that all of them clicked on the ads. Try working with AdSense and maybe you will be satisfied. As for your content, keep writing daily, one good post doesn't assure your success. Be creative and try to attract your audience in some way because the more time they spend on your website, the more likely it is to click on some of the ads. Those 17.000 you were talking about stayed on your website or they just created a bounce rate? Check this up and if the bounce rate is too high it means that your visitors did not spend a very long time reading your article, hence the lack of money from advertisements. Here is a purely theoretical calculus for a possible earning, make one of your own and see what the expectations are.
17.000 visitors X 0,04 = 680 visitors (and 4 % is a really high number to click on a ad!)
680 * 0,25 = 170 USD

sturose said:

Appropriate???

Your site is talking about linux but your sidebar adverts are for a grocery gift card.

Maybe I'm missing something here but how are those even closely related?????

Click to expand...

So no ads are Linux, OS, technology or computer related?

There are only two ad network in the world; adsense and others.

If am not doing adsense i would prefer to work at MacDonald rather than use any other ad network simply because they only pay peanuts.

In IM if you are not using adsense or monetizing your website with affiliate products, your own product, CPA offers then you should be selling your services otherwise how would you be making money.

Affiliate marketing and email marketing goes hand in hand just like tube and tire.
You should be building your list because "money is in the list", not worthless list.

In IM, everything has to be in place for you to earn money.
If you have the best product and website and no one knows of it then you will be wasting your time.

Are these traffic you are talking about targeted?
Out of these 17,000 visitors how many of them are actually closely relevant to your market?

If you can answer or do all these correctly, you will excel.

I've only had one ad that wasn't tech related. It was that grocery ad when i first posted this. The rest of them have all been tech related. And to clear things up, I purely use shareasale, ebay and amazon now. No chitika or any other bs thing like that. My intentions for this site is not to just be a linux blog, but a site that focuses on getting the most out of your electronics in general. I just happen to like linux and android, so i write about. I do understand that my current articles don't really sell anything. I was relying on the banners alone. So the next articles I write, I will change that. You guys look at this like a science, I've had more of an artistic mentality that prevented me from being a salesman I guess.

My current problem is a classic case of writers block. I can write things for other people all day but I haven't been able to create things for my own page. Perfectionism + a racing mind.. doesn't equal anything productive. That ontop of being super busy with my real work. But I have been making my site look better and working on traffic. After doing seo work, submitting to various types of sites, building up my social media following, creating positive backlinks, and other stuff, I now easily average 1k people a day. Even with just six articles, I've done the right work to get free traffic. All of which are from techy sources. Actually, the last few days in Sept and the first day of Oct, over 100k people stopped by.Someone with a ton of followers tweeted my stuff and boom. which resulted in a couple hundred clicks but it's only been a week now.

By the way, does it matter if I tell everyone which site it is? I know bhw is a little strict about certain things. I don't mind if you all check it. I could use more specific advice.