The Motivation Metric

If your content gave you no benefit whatsoever until a year after you post it, would you still take the time and effort to put it on the web?

You probably wouldn’t. But you know who would?

Virtually everyone else on the Internet except marketers and people trying to make money.

Who complains about Google not indexing them? Is it professors publishing their research for others in their field #no or is it affiliate site owners? #yes

This is a metric, a ranking metric, and an easily identifiable one.

I really think trying to monetize your content too quickly is one of the most common mistakes on the web.

If you design a new site and one of your biggest worries is where the ads will go, you are messing up and setting yourself up for disappointment. Your motivation isn’t the content it is money. It is woefully easy for Google to see your motivation. Motivation is a metric… whether you like it or not.

If you want to do well on the web and you are trying to do so with content and you are serious about wanting to make money from the Internet than I would concentrate on what is lacking in your niche, not what ad format to use, or where the perfect ad placement is.

I ask myself a very simple question when I make a new site…

What can I do with my ad real estate that will improve the users experience? 

Most of your competition is using all that great webpage real estate on ads, that is a crack in their armour! You can do things they can’t and offer a more pleasant rewarding experience to your users than they can because they are using that space for ads.

The days of instant ranking are over. You can instantly rank something, but it wont be there   for long. If you want quality results, have quality content.

Pleasure your users and you cant go wrong.

Take a moment and ask yourself what you would do with your adspace if you weren’t serving ads.

Want to still make money too? Be cleverer. How can you make money below the fold… that is the future baby.