Comments on: Are site traffic and pageviews directly related to income?

By: Roy Phay

Roy Phay — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:03:51 +0000

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By: James | PinoyMoneyTalk.com

James | PinoyMoneyTalk.com — Sun, 11 May 2008 05:11:31 +0000

@Chris, I had the same thing before. During the FrancSwiss scam saga, a lot of visitors were visiting the site everyday sending our daily income to around $100 a day. When the frenzy died down, everything went back to normal.

It’s true that a lot of traffic does increase one’s earnings but, on the average, I’m not sure about the correlation of traffic and earnings, because as seen in my experience with the site, the relation is not that direct.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 10 May 2008 08:16:52 +0000

There was one time when my traffic supercharged my income in my site Starmometer.com. Last year, May 21, 2007, i posted about Miss USA being booed by Mexicans during the Miss Universe competition:

http://www.starmometer.com/2007/05/21/miss-usa-booed-by-mexicans-during-the-miss-universe-national-costume-competition/?cp=1

The post alone generated 21,000 unique visitors within the day and it spiked my one-day income to US$95.

The next day though, everything went back to normal.

By: James | PinoyMoneyTalk.com

James | PinoyMoneyTalk.com — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:30:56 +0000

Fitz, I agree that site layout play a very major part in the ad-clicking process. It’s true that if the ad is located in a place where it can’t be missed, even returning visitors will click on it. But I still believe that readers tend to get ad blind over time. That’s why I solve this by moving the ads around and by changing the ad format once in a while.

Re: your last question, Rex has already answered it. Thanks, by the way, for posting your thoughts on this.

Hi Glenn. PMT is running on a VPS server, our webhost is ModVPS.com.

BusinessGeeks, very good question. I was actually thinking of that while writing this article and I figured the topic deserves a separate article so I might write about that too some other time. Personally, I don’t think traffic and page impressions don’t directly correlate with income from non-CTR based advertising. However, I believe that any site must have a decent amount of traffic to be able to attract advertisers.

I don’t remember it right now but I think it was John Chow or Darren Rowse who wrote before that although his site traffic stagnated, his online income continued to grow. The growth, however, was not due to Adsense or other pay per click (PPC) networks, but from paid reviews and direct advertisers. So yes, I can say that regarding advertisements that are not based on PPC, traffic/pageviews and income are not necessarily correlated.

By: Businessgeeks

Businessgeeks — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:32:16 +0000

thats an interesting analysis… pero does it apply to sites who carry advertising that dont depend on ctr?

By: Glenn

Glenn — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:02:24 +0000

impressive traffic!!! james where do you host this site?

By: Rex

Rex — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:25:31 +0000

@Fitz
The graphs for the visitors ang pageviews use different scales (left and right respectively).

By: Fitz

Fitz — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:40:55 +0000

Income is INDIRECTLY related to traffic, which means with more traffic, you have higher chances of clicks. Only a higher chance, but not guaranteed.

I believe that the factors that DIRECTLY affects income are 1. site layout and 2. content.

Site layout is related to ad visibility, while content is related to the types of advertisers that would contextually show.

Layout is important so that your readers can “find” your ads. Even if they are returning visitors, by putting your ad in places where it can’t be missed, the ad will have a chance to seduce and tempt a click.

Furthermore, if the content keyword has a lot of advertisers, then the bids are usually high. Which translates to higher earnings.

In my site for example, the posts about personal development would have more adsense clicks than those about business and investing. And yet, the income from the latter content would be three to four times higher than the former article.

Just my two cents. :D

By the way, in the graph above, why is the page views lower than the visitors on April 21? Doesn’t it follow that one visitor automatically translates to at least one page view? It doesn’t make sense to me. How can that happen?