Capitalising on unexpected traffic
As a freelance website designer, I run various sites of my own, most of which have some form of advertising on them to help cover the running costs. One or two of them do provide some income, all of which helps us with our ‘Simple Life of Luxury’ and making the most of modest means in Wales.
Even this site that you are now reading, which has a relatively small audience, has a few Google and Amazon ads that help cover the costs of hosting and running the site. If people click on a Google ad I earn a few pence and if they buy something via an Amazon link I earn some commission. With such a small site, with low traffic it won’t make me rich but it all helps. The website was never intended as a money-making exercise, if it was then it failed and I would have stopped blogging ages ago. I simply write this site because I enjoy doing it, but if I can make a little money here and there whilst doing something I enjoy, then all the better.
Stats Spike
Every now and then a particular post will of course attract more attention than others and boost traffic to the site. On such occasions the income from the site can increase slightly too, so it is always good to see the traffic stats spike. Normally I know exactly why the traffic stats have increased and it is usually down to the fact that I have covered a particular event and promoted it elsewhere in order to generate some interest.
However, this week I’ve seen a sudden increase to a certain post and views of that post have increased hugely. It was an insignificant post about some toy dinousaurs and the lack of scientific integrity that I posted a month ago, but it has become the most viewed article over the past couple of days, increasing total views to the site by about 4 times!
I’m not entirely sure why, and hits are still quite low in the grand scheme of things, but it seems as though the article has been featured somewhere on ‘Stumbleupon’ so lots of people have seen it and have followed the link through to this site.
Typically the post in question wasn’t monetised in any way, so always on the lookout for a way to earn a little extra I quickly added an Amazon Affiliate Widget to the post. It probably won’t amount to anything, but you never know, someone visiting the page might buy something and I might earn a few pence in commission.
