Today, I’m going to try to explain CTR. CTR stands for Click Thru Rate. A lot of people and companies use this term when showing how many people have “clicked” on a certain ad or link. Generally, the higher the CTR, the better the performance of the ad. A high click thru rate on a link can be good and bad for your blog though. Here’s why:

• A high CTR on a link generally means that you’ve linked to a great site, or had some awesome anchor text that you used. This means that you link only to high quality content, which is good!
• High CTR on your link also equals a higher bounce rate, which could mean people are leaving your blog as quickly as they come, which is bad.

You can form your own opinion on this of course, and I would like to hear it, so please leave a comment.

Keep in mind that click thru rate is very important when it comes to making money online. If you are interested in doing this, you should know how well your ads perform, and this is one of the metrics that is involved in determining it. For example, a zero CTR on an ad is terrible, and you should examine how the ad looks, it’s placement, or if its even appropriate for your blog.

You can calculate CTR using this simple formula:

#clicks / #impressions * 100% = CTR

So, if you have 1 click on 100 impressions, you have a 1% CTR. Pretty simple, right? Now that you know what it is, all you should worry about when it comes to Ads is improving it. People also use CTR to promote their sites, showing you how high the CTR generally is on their website/blog. Look for high CTR if you are going to purchase advertising.

If you use Google Adsense, they show the click through rate of their ads on your site. How good is yours?

Image Courtesy of www.davegreenbaum.com.

I’ve been using Auction Ads for a while, and I have to say I was a bit disappointed because it is so hard to convert. I had thousands of impressions, but only a couple clicks which never led to any sales. I had a few referrals too, but nothing ever came from them, so I’m assuming they had just as much difficulty as I had.

Anyway, there is good news about this. All US traffic has been converted over to CPC instead of CPA. This is great for publishers who got a ton of clicks but never any actions. Non-US traffic remains as CPA. However, the CPC scheme only applies to publisher accounts which have been made into premium accounts. The email says that they will be evaluating all accounts to determine if your account is a premium account. I don’t specifically know what that means, but I hope that my account stays a premium account. I may try the ads on this site, and let you know how it converts.

If you have lots of US traffic, I suggest you try out ShoppingAds as an alternative to Google’s Adsense program. It may end up being a bigger earner now that they have switched to CPC.

What do you think?

• Wordpress
• Blogspot
• Writing
• Problogger, John Chow, John Cow, etc.
• Twitter

However, I think that an extremely important aspect of blogging is reading. I’ve already expressed before that getting out there and reading feeds in a feed reader is important. However, to expand on the concept of reading, you need to go out and find some other blogs or websites to read in addition to your own, or just your friends, especially if you want to establish your blog in the blogosphere. Without reading other blogs, you can’t really have much say on what you are doing right or wrong when it comes to writing your own posts, promoting your blog, or even running ads on your blog. Yes, you can do fine without it, but I highly suggest that you don’t!

What other people have to say often has high value, especially if they are writing about what you are trying to write about (or are in your niche). A good example of a good blog post is a response to something someone has blogged about. Didn’t agree with a film review? Write your own review and link back to the other review as well. That way you can start a conversation on your blog about what other people thought of the movie, and will likely gain from getting feedback from the other person. Who knows, someone might stumble upon your review and really like it, finding that they hated or really liked a movie as well. It can only increase your authority in a niche.

So where to start reading? Some great blogs that I read that provide tips for blogging are:

• Problogger
• Daily Blog Tips
• John Chow
• More Merchant
• John Cow

You can also improve your writing by leaving comments on these blogs. Often times they will draw readers back to your site, to read the quality posts that you’ve made. Of course, you have to master the art of commenting, which I will write about later. Just keep in mind that Reading and Writing are both important aspects of blogging, and you can’t really do one well without the other.

Now think about the thousands of other bloggers out there who are trying to get the word out about their own blogs. There are so many bloggers out there, and a lot provide valuable information. It’s just really difficult to visit each and every single blog every day in order to read up, and leave comments which aid to the conversation. This is why I suggest getting a feed reader. Personally, I use Newsfire. Of course, this is only available for Mac, but there are plenty of other ways to subscribe to a feed.

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• Live Bookmarks
• Email

It may also help to know what an RSS feed is. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, it is doing exactly what it says, it is syndicating your blog. All of your posts and images will be transferred into your feed. When setting up your feed, I suggest using Feedburner. You can direct your feed through them, and gain many statistics and widgets telling you how many subscribers you have, live visits to your feed, as well as click throughs on your site. Feedburner also has many tools which allow you to promote your blog, so get over there and check them out!

Now that we know how to subscribe to a feed, and what a feed is, why is it important for YOU to read other people’s feeds? I feel that this is very important because it allows you to stay current on all the blogs that you might be interested in, and is a free way to help those that help you in your blogging endeavors. Many people are proud of their feed counts, and often have contests geared towards people who subscribe to their feed. This is actually a really good way to promote your blog, and I will likely be doing something like that really soon. Anyway, using a feed reader can help you get your daily dose of blog reading, and allows you to click through and leave comments easily, all while keeping track of the blogs you read the most!

I hope this has helped you understand why feeds are so important! Why don’t you sign up for my feed to find out more?