Is my blog ready to monetize?

[Robin Andrews]

I've been blogging about learning programming and Computer Science for about 18 months now and have clocked up about 110 posts.

My daily traffic is around 200 users from organic search.

My question is - is it worth trying to monetize my blog at this stage?

If so, what would be a great place to start, in my particular situation?

My site is here: Python Programming and Computer Science Blog - Compucademy

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

 

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[jdm667]

I've been blogging about learning programming and Computer Science for about 18 months now and have clocked up about 110 posts.

My daily traffic is around 200 users from organic search.

My question is - is it worth trying to monetize my blog at this stage?

If so, what would be a great place to start, in my particular situation?

My site is here: Python Programming and Computer Science Blog - Compucademy

Many thanks in advance for any advice.

Congrats on the work you have done so far. 110 posts is a lot of work.

Go into Google Analytics and see what your top 5 to 10 highest traffic blog posts are.

Out of those articles, can you think of any product or service that would help someone searching for one of those topics?

That way, at least you know that a good number of people are searching for info & solutions related to that topic. You could then promote the product within that article and to your email list.

Ads won't make you much money at this point. However, you would be able to see what advertisers are promoting to your audience. You could get some product ideas that way too.

 

[SEBASTlAN]

Why don't you ask your readers what they want from you? A course? A book? Software? What would they pay for?

Talking to them is the best way to find out.

 

[Madame Peccato]

How big is your mailing list?

Start from there. Those are the people committed to reading your blog. Ask them what they'd like to see beyond what you're already doing.

Consider promoting your blog. You have put a lot of work into it. You could reach out to big sites in the programming space, like Codecademy, and pitch them a guest post on their Blog.

A suggestion for the blog itself: your blog's tags feel a bit weird. I'd reorganize the tag options below your photo to make them easier to navigate. These word clouds with words of various size are confusing.

 

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[Spino]

How big is your mailing list?

Start from there. Those are the people committed to reading your blog. Ask them what they'd like to see beyond what you're already doing.

Consider promoting your blog. You have put a lot of work into it. You could reach out to big sites in the programming space, like Codecademy, and pitch them a guest post on their Blog.

A suggestion for the blog itself: your blog's tags feel a bit weird. I'd reorganize the tag options below your photo to make them easier to navigate. These word clouds with words of various size are confusing.

Totally agree, focus on tha mailing list and building audience.

Try to increase the visitors and pageviews. 200 is a good start, especially if organic, but try to grow more.
Something I could pick up quickly is the favicon missing (I know I am pedantic, sorry) and the loading speed of the website is not optimal so with the next Google update you might be penalized in SEO.

Monetization options:
- Promote a course or a service (not really fastlane)
- Build your own course
- I wouldn't go with Google Ads, wouldn't expect that much income and it's not fastlane

 

[Robin Andrews]

How big is your mailing list?

Start from there. Those are the people committed to reading your blog. Ask them what they'd like to see beyond what you're already doing.

Consider promoting your blog. You have put a lot of work into it. You could reach out to big sites in the programming space, like Codecademy, and pitch them a guest post on their Blog.

A suggestion for the blog itself: your blog's tags feel a bit weird. I'd reorganize the tag options below your photo to make them easier to navigate. These word clouds with words of various size are confusing.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. My list is growing very slowly - just 268 on it to date. I recently added a free email course as a lead magnet and that has definitely helped, and I'm looking into A/B testing to try and increase uptake.

 

[Robin Andrews]

Ads won't make you much money at this point. However, you would be able to see what advertisers are promoting to your audience. You could get some product ideas that way too.

Do you have any suggestion for getting started with ads? I'm thinking some full-width banner ads just beneath the nav bar with relevant products and services, but I'm completely new to this so wouldn't know where to begin.

 

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[Andy Black]

is it worth trying to monetize my blog at this stage?

Yes!

• Just start already

 

[jdm667]

Do you have any suggestion for getting started with ads? I'm thinking some full-width banner ads just beneath the nav bar with relevant products and services, but I'm completely new to this so wouldn't know where to begin.

I waited to get into an ad network, which does ad placements for me. However, these are the highest to lowest revenue ad types for me:

• In-content
• Adhesion (sticky ad at the bottom of the page)
• Sidebar sticky (on sidebar, moves down as you scroll down the page)
• Video (in bottom right corner on desktop, have not added to Mobile yet)
• Sidebar (does not scroll down with user)

I do not have the header ad you mentioned, I don't know how they would perform.

The thresholds for some of the ad networks are:

• 10k sessions for Ezoic
• 50k for Mediavine (I am in their network and I like them)
• 100k for Adthrive

You could try Adsense yourself, place a few ads, and see how they do. I have never done it though.

You can also check out the ads on other sites like yours to see their layouts and what products are promoted (search some of the top terms you rank for and see who else comes up).

 

[Robin Andrews]

The thresholds for some of the ad networks are:

• 10k sessions for Ezoic
• 50k for Mediavine (I am in their network and I like them)
• 100k for Adthrive

Total noob question - what are those figures? Daily visits needed to qualify for the program?

 

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[jdm667]

Total noob question - what are those figures? Daily visits needed to qualify for the program?

I should have been more specific about that. Those figures are the number of sessions per month each ad network requires to qualify. A session is one person visiting the site, and one session can have multiple page views.

You are at 200 page views per day (about 6k per month). I'm not sure about your sessions, but I would guess you are not too far from getting into Ezoic. Their ads would likely pay much better per session than AdSense on its own.

Check out your rankings on some of your high-traffic posts (or those you think have high traffic potential). If you can update/upgrade and improve those posts to rank them a little higher, you could increase traffic to the point where you qualify for Ezoic. Then you could use some of the ad revenue to fund development of a product or course for later on.

If you can make $100 per month, you can use that to help you scale things up faster to reach $1000 per month and beyond. I think you are close.

 

[Robin Andrews]

If you can make $100 per month, you can use that to help you scale things up faster to reach $1000 per month and beyond. I think you are close.

I really hope so. I've put a LOT of work into my blog and much as I enjoy sharing content, I need it to pay its way.

 

[Robin Andrews]

Something I could pick up quickly is the favicon missing (I know I am pedantic, sorry) and the loading speed of the website is not optimal so with the next Google update you might be penalized in SEO.

Thanks for your reply. One thing that's confusing me is that I have set a favicon on my site, and it shows up in my browser, but when I add my site to my mobile home screen, no favicon. I contacted my wordpress theme company and they sent images of the favicon showing on both desktop and mobile, so I'm baffled. Is this something you know how to sort out? The image is currently a png. Maybe I need to use .ico or something?

 

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[Spino]

Thanks for your reply. One thing that's confusing me is that I have set a favicon on my site, and it shows up in my browser, but when I add my site to my mobile home screen, no favicon. I contacted my wordpress theme company and they sent images of the favicon showing on both desktop and mobile, so I'm baffled. Is this something you know how to sort out? The image is currently a png. Maybe I need to use .ico or something?

Yes I am quite sure it has to be a .ico file and there are also considerations to be done with the resolution, don't remember exactly but a quick search should give you the answer

 

[Stargazer]

Is the GCSE exam a paper or practical or a combination of both out of interest?

I'm getting a bit of deja vu here, is there a textbook GCSE students follow? Like in the old days we had textbooks for everything but kids nowadays don't seem to have any.

Dan

 

[Robin Andrews]

Is the GCSE exam a paper or practical or a combination of both out of interest?

I'm getting a bit of deja vu here, is there a textbook GCSE students follow? Like in the old days we had textbooks for everything but kids nowadays don't seem to have any.

Dan

One exam board has moved to online assessment for programming (Edexcel). The others use paper based for everything. I would say most of the syllabuses are somewhat outdated and in need of modernising. This could be part of my USP somehow - targeting learners who want the best possible preparation for a career in the modern tech industry.

There are text book - some better than others.

 

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[Stargazer]

I see.

I was thinking that if there were a couple of standard textbooks kids follow and you made a video for each chapter then you could approach the publisher, eg Pearson who also own Edexel, and do some sort of deal.

Failing that you would have a logically structured course as textbooks go in order.

Dan

 

[Spino]

One exam board has moved to online assessment for programming (Edexcel). The others use paper based for everything. I would say most of the syllabuses are somewhat outdated and in need of modernising. This could be part of my USP somehow - targeting learners who want the best possible preparation for a career in the modern tech industry.

There are text book - some better than others.

If you plan to sell courses/mentorship you can consider Clickfunnel, perhaps check it out