Tuesday 16 February 2010

5,000 and counting!

And so I continue to trawl through the local blogosphere using the variety of techniques and tools I've picked up on my travels.

But today it's worth shouting about this milestone that I've reached - I have today discovered my 5,000th identifiably Berkshire blog!

Although some are more active than others and there are some which defy description I have to admit I'm quite proud of this statistic.

Now all I have to do is continue trying to categorize them all!

Blog advertising and Google's economic stimulus

Online advertising is defying the economic downturn as it rose 10.2% during the final quarter of last year.

A closer look at the figures shows Google to be leading the field and pulling away as it recorded 'another blowout month'.


Blogging appears to be one of the prime means by which the company is pushing turnover, as the proliferating online independent media gives the behemoth from Mountain View an unprecedented volume of space to sell - which, added to its' popular AdSense and AdWords advertising agent, gives millions of individual hosts the means to be complicit in their success.

My Reading List network is exactly one such source.

So when I recieved through my door a £75 introductory AdWords campaign it was immediately clear to me that Google can - and is - effectively leveraging both sides of the equation to enable it to gain a jump on the opposition.

I was asked a while back what benefit advertising brings to my site, given that the relatively small number of visitors I recieve doesn't amount to any kind of realistic income. So I have to admit that earning money wasn't my primary motive for starting blogging, and nor was it my primary motive for enabling advertising on my sites.

When I outgrew a single blog the simple analytics tool that comes with the package (though fine for most of my needs) became a bit too cumbersome to give a quick comparison of each of my pages, so after some initial experimentation I quickly discovered the advert tracking centre was an excellent complement which could help me better understand visitor behaviour.

Add to this the modest sums accumulating in my name and it gives me a reward incentive with which I can toast myself as and when I recieve it.

Over the longer term, however, any lasting blog project will benefit from having started early - particularly as the economic rollercoaster takes a turn and starts rising again.

So maybe, just maybe, if I can continue growing my readership and online authority any income will amount to more than one can of beans!

Reading List