Some Changes Around the Blog
Posted on March 22, 2007 by
Adie 
General 
21 Comments
I have a bit of an administrative update for you guys today. I’ve changed around a couple things here on the blog and am going to see how they work out. Most of the changes aren’t written in stone and may be reverted or altered to make this blog an overall better place for the readers.
I have removed MyBlogLog from the sidebar due to the extremely slow load time it had. I’ve been told by more than one person that the blog loads extremely slow, so I am taking measures to improve the loading time among other things. From what I saw MyBlogLog was the slowest loading element of this blog. In addition it seems to be hardly bringing in any visitors, so I’m starting to question its usefulness. It was nice having an updated block of photos on the sidebar to check every now and then but if it adds an extra 2-3 seconds on the page’s load time I just don’t think it’s worth it. I’ve also taken BUMPzee off of the main page due to the loading time. You can still bump posts from the single post pages, however.
I removed the top Adsense block to reinstate the Adbrite block. Originally the top Adbrite block was slowing down the load time too much, but after I removed MyBlogLog it seems that the load time is bearable. Adsense just has not been performing in this position - almost all of my clicks come from the in-line ads. This is a prime position so I would like to see it generate more revenue than it is currently. I believe selling top ads through Adbrite will bring in more revenue overall for that position. I see no reason why it should be earning significantly less than the top banner.
I have added a 125×125 sponsor block to the sidebar, and it is currently available for purchase. I believe I have one of the least cluttered sidebars of all of the business blogs around, so adding a small ad block here is not a big deal in my opinion. This block is in a great position with no rotation (meaning it gets about 100,000 impressions per month).
Speaking of rotation, starting as soon as the current banner advertiser runs out I’m going to be switching the top banner to a 5 banner rotation at $100/mo per banner. I decided on this price change after looking at my CPM for my ad positions a little bit. Right now the top banner costs $150 but receives over 100,000 page views per month. That is an insanely low CPM especially for such targeted traffic. I do, however, want to keep advertising on this site affordable, which is why I decided to go for the 5 banner rotation rather than the no rotation, high cost option.
If you are interested in purchasing or preordering any ad positions, feel free to contact me.
And one last thing, I’ve updated my About page with a lot more information on the blog and myself for those of you who are interested.
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I like the idea of a rotating banner. Gives others a chance to advertise at a more reasonable price while it still being a “win-win” situation as Covey would say.
I like the updates. I, too, am attempting to figure out the proper ad mix. Looks like it’s working for you with more tweaks sure to come. Best of luck!
Good changes Matt - I also ashcanned MyBlogLog from my sidebar last week. It was giving me far too many coding validation errors and I wasn’t particularly inspired to tweak it to work.
I think it might be nice idea to replace Recent Posts and Archives with Categories on your sidebar, too.
Deep inside I hope that guys from MyBlogLog will fix it, soon. It looks like they chocked on its popularity…
Seems like MyBlogLog is about to take a dive in popularity.
It does seem less cluttered along there now though!
Hey Matt your blog still takes its time loading, but it’s good to see you paying attention to this issue!
Maybe he’s got too many readers :)
It does take a long time for MBL to load all the images, but the reality is that it does this after everything is already loaded, so you don’t have an interruption in tracking or anything like that, but there is the psychological side effect of seeing the page still loading that makes people freak out.
I know you’re busy, but you might also consider trying to figure out why your top commentators is broken. :p
On my site MBL delayed the loading of the background image. But you’re right it did load all of the content first, but if the text is unreadable until it’s done that is no good! :D
Is this an IE issue? I never had any trouble in Firefox.
You’ve inspired me to revisit AdBrite! :-)
You can use MyBlogLog without javascript.
Temporarily change your site domain to …wordpress.com or myspace.com to get an image only code.
Interesting to here you say that about MyBlogLog. The site does seem to drag a little bit but it’s not too awful bad.
How not? I removed it too
You have a really good emplate and also a neat sde bar..But the topmost position of side bar is a little weird……
Has anybody got the Spam from DAMNZ on MBL..I am getting that for a day or two now…
I too use the inline text ads and have a good return, albeit a lower cost per click, and my adsense seems to tick along. I am very interested in your adbrite ads and would like to know how well you do with them.
i’m just glad bumpzee is no longer on the front page cause its ugly
ugly
[...] how many avatars to display. I’m sure a lot of blogs have had problems with My Blog Log (take NetBusinessBlog for [...]
Those who acquired MBL for $10 millions throw their money away, if Bumpzee would have smarter admins it will replace all mbl widgets
Your site is perfect!