Removing MyBlogLog Increases Adsense Earnings!
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A snapshot of the MyBlogLog widget
I recently removed the MyBlogLog widget from this blog. Why? Because after 15 days of testing, my statistics showed that MyBlogLog reduces your blog earnings!
Lets take a more detailed glance at MyBlogLog Pros and Cons…
MyBlogLog Pros:
1. It makes your blog look busy. Popular even.
2. It could generate a quite a bit of traffic to your blog if your blog makes it to their “Hot Community” section. However, the chances of this happening are quite slim - especially if your blog is not already popular.
3. The best advantage of MyBlogLog is that it is a conversation starter! You can see who visited your blog. And if you see a popular person on your bloglog, you can send them a quick note thanking them to visit - and start a conversation!
(Contrary to MyBlogLog’s official selling point, MyBlogLog widgets don’t make good community builders. Because there is really no way for you to keep in touch with your MyBlogLog blog community. And no pain for your community members to leave your community.)
MyBlogLog Cons:
1. It makes your blog load slowly. Showing images of 12-15 people takes quite a long time.
2. It provides absolutely no advantage to your blog readers.
3. It decreases the click through rate for links placed near the MyBlogLog widget.
MyBlogLog helps the blogger more than it helps the blog readers. Its more of a fashion badge that serves little purpose. And so I decided to remove the MyBlogLog widget from this blog… at least for a little while.
Since I removed the widget, the click through rate for the Adsense ads shown in the sidebar has more than doubled!
I may bring the widget back for more testing. But I’ll never place it in the sidebar again. Where 99% of the bloggers place it. If I do test it out again, I’ll only place them in my blog footers. Making sure that their slow loading time doesn’t affect my blog readers. While providing me the advantage of starting conversations with a few of my blog readers.
Action Summary:
- MyBlogLog widget is not the best use of your blog theme real estate. You may want to remove it.
- If you do keep them, make sure you place the widget at the bottom of your blog where it doesn’t interfere with your blog readers.
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The primary reason I put this up on my blog is to help build a community. That is the point of my blog to help find a community of like minded people who can share information on my little niche.
I do agree that if there are too many images then the time to load would be too much. Perhaps if they had an option of displaying the last 5 poeple who visted your blog thereby limiting the images to only 5 then it owuld load faster.
I have yet to add adsense to my blog so I am not experiencing any drops in click through. Besides I would rather have a loyal following of readers and if this helps me then I am all for it.
Mybloglog does needs some improvements and perhaps you should give your insights to them as well so they can improve the service for us all.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 #
The only reason removing the MyBlogLog widget increased your AdSense earnings was because had had the AdSense ad below the MyBlogLog widget. If you were to put the MyBlogLog widget at the very bottom of your sidebar, I wouldn’t see removing or adding it having any effect on your AdSense CTR.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 #
Richard: Thanks for commenting :). If you spend any amount of time on MyBlogLog, you’ll see that it doesn’t help in building a community. It does help you to see who all are more interested in your blog. But you can neither contact your community members, nor reward them. People neither gain anything by joining the community or lose anything by leaving it. The sticky-ness factor is quite low. I would recommend a email newsletter if you really want to build a community around your blog.
Jared: Thanks. Actually, I tested MyBlogLog in both the positions - above Adsense as well as below Adsense. Both the times, Adsense earnings were affected.
But its not only the MyBlogLog widget that affects Adsense earnings. The “Essential Reading” section decreases Adsense earnings too. But I’ve still retained that section in the sidebar - for now.
Posted 19 Jul 2007 #
hey, thanks for sharing this. i hadn’t heard this before, but i could understand how this would affect ads. anything that distracts eyes away from them can be bad.
Posted 20 Jul 2007 #
Hi Ankesh, so would you say this is really more about improving the positioning of AdSense ads rather than the MBL widget? I agree with you that it can be a draw on the download time.
There was a time when I was a little too “happy” with widget in general on my blog, so I removed them. And true, they don’t really do anything to promote a blog, merely serves to inform the blog owner who has visited them and then, if so inclined, to make contact with them.
I also think that too may blogs have WAY too many icons show up on those things. I mean, what good is it if you have 40 teeny-tiny icons you can’t make out anyway?
Posted 20 Jul 2007 #
I like the fact that I have been getting a few random people visiting and have managed to find a few new blogs through it myself. However right now my traffic is in the 0-20 range per day so it is significant for me.
Interesting post though.
Posted 20 Jul 2007 #
Interesting. This is something that I have been thinking about. It is not going to make a big difference to me until I have more traffic, though, at least not in terms of Adsense. I do have a couple of other possible money makers that I have thought about putting in that spot, though.
Another alternative would be to leave it on there and let it gradually go to the bottom of the page…
Posted 20 Jul 2007 #
Mark: Its not really about Adsense. I just weaved in Adsense because I knew more people would read it. For the record: Adsense in the sidebar isn’t the most profitable place. Adsense above the title beats the sidebar hands down - even though fewer links are showed there.
Would love to know what other “possible money makers” you have in mind.
The big idea is: keeping your blog simple. And only adding widgets that add value. MyBlogLog in my opinion, doesn’t add a whole lot of value.
Forest Parks: Thanks for sharing your view point. I think networking with readers is more essential when your blog isn’t that popular yet. And MyBlogLog does help start conversations.
I do hope that you will read the “Traffic” posts on this blog and implement some ideas to grow your blog traffic.
Bloggrrl: Thanks for adding to the conversation
Posted 21 Jul 2007 #
I would be interested to see if anyone else has experienced this…
Posted 26 Jul 2007 #
hey
nice one. thanks for sharing though , i might remove the mybloglog later..
Posted 31 Jul 2007 #
I ditched mine quite a while ago I really didn’t meet a lot of people that way. I also found it too distracting.
The main way I meet people are searching for blogs I’m interested in or through other blogs.
I brought MyBlogLog back a few weeks ago, but it’s on its own page. I’ll most likely toss it again because I don’t use it.
Posted 08 Aug 2007 #
[…] utilized, it may help you generate traffic into your blog. However, it was also reported that MyBlogLog reduces your blog earnings. Therefore, to keep or to ditch the widget is entirely up to you. If you do plan to keep the […]
Posted 28 Sep 2007 #
I like the look of the MBL widget on my flagship blogs. I don’t plan on putting adsense on any of my flagship blogs, but for my adsense monetized blogs, I’ll steer clear of using these widgets. Thanks for the great tips!
Posted 14 Apr 2008 #
I stopped using MyBlogLog because of the slow loading time. It took a long, long, long time for the widget to load most of the time. I have found that since taking it off of my blogs, it decreased loading times and my CTR for Adsense has gone up a few percentages.
Posted 13 Jun 2008 #
Hi Ankesh,
Does it apply to Blog Catalog too?
Posted 22 Jun 2008 #