Google Analytics can be a profitable friend.
A few months after launching one of my blogs, I spent time combing through my Analytics account observing various stats and metrics. One interesting metric I noticed was how many page views my blog category archive pages received. It was a lot, and I didn’t have too much navigation options on my site (just a category menu bar in the right sidebar).
What’s a category archive page? Click here to see one on this site. Basically it’s a page of excerpts organized by categories listing blog posts and excerpts for a particular category.
It quickly dawned on me that those category archive pages can be a huge revenue opportunity. If you can believe it, I didn’t have any ads on those pages. I don’t have to tell you that my first order of business was to figure out how to add display ads to my archive category pages. It took a bit of research, but I figured it out. Actually, using the Genesis Framework made it pretty easy. I’ll step you through it in this post.
But first, just how much revenue are we talking about?
My 4 most popular category archive pages generated $6,281.16 in display ad revenue (Adsense and Media.net ads) in 30 days. That’s not bad and it would have been a big shame to not earn that revenue for failing to invest a little time in adding 2 ad units.
How many ads and what sizes?
I placed a total of 3 ads on my category archive pages. The pages themselves have 10 blog post excerpts with images, so there’s a decent amount of content on the page – enough to use 3 ads without it being too ad-heavy.
Ad sizes:
- 1 728×90 Adsense Unit
- 1 336×280 Adsense Unit
- 1 600×250 Media.net Unit
How do I place Ad units on the category archive pages?
I use the Genesis Theme Framework. This is relevant, because on my blog I install the Genesis Simple Hooks plugin.
Code Used for Placing Ads On Category Archive Pages:
if ( is_archive() ) {?>
<—AD CODE—><hr />
</div>
<?php }
?>
I place this code in the Genesis Hook location which dictates where I would like the ad displayed on the category archive page. If you wish to have 2 ads, use the code twice – the location of the ad dictated by the Genesis Hooks location.
That’s all there is to it. I also recommend once you do this to implement plenty of clear navigation options for visitors to visit your category archive pages. It’s a great way to generate more page views… they visit the archive page and then likely click into another post from the archive page.
How do I drive more visitors to category archive pages?
Read the full blog post on how I generated 293,522 page views in 5 months just from 4 category archive pages on one niche blog.
Where exactly do I place these ads and how do I design the Media.net ad?
Jon Dykstra is a six figure niche site creator with 10+ years of experience. His willingness to openly share his wins and losses in the email newsletter he publishes has made him a go-to source of guidance and motivation for many. His popular “Niche site profits” course has helped thousands follow his footsteps in creating simple niche sites that earn big.
