Layout and Advertisements

I’ve come to the conclusion that the amount of income generated by the ads on this site is hardly worth the effort of inserting them. So over the next few days I will be removing all advertisements on this site, apart from those for my own books, and returning the layout of the blog to multiple postings on the page.

Goal Monitoring Update

I can’t say that my scheme for increasing my advertisement income has worked very well. I ended the month with a daily average of $3.44, which was well below my target. On the other hand for the first two days of this month, the average was $7.12, which just goes to show how much the figures vary - especially as the record for one day’s advertising revenue was obtained on a day when I hadn’t made a blog entry for a week.

I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board on this.

On the other hand my diet continues to work very well. I’m bang on target today, which means I have lost 9 lbs. It’s beginning to be noticeable!

Goal Monitoring - Getting Worse!

My daily average has declined again today - this time by only 1 cent to $3.17. So I have to add another 30 minutes, meaning that I have to work on nothing other than advertising income for a whole hour today.

I learned one valuable lesson though - like many of life’s lessons a pretty obvious one - if I am going to influence the measurement of the average for first thing the following day, I need to do the work early in the day so it has time to have an effect on the figures. Yesterday I did the work in the early evening, so it had much less effect on the average than if I had done it in the morning.

Unfortunately today I am out for most of the day, so it’s going to have to be the evening again.

Getting off to a bad start

The first day of my trial of goal monitoring is over and my advertising income average has declined to $3.18. The target for the day is $3.28. That means I now have to bring in a 30 minute slot during the day in which I do nothing except work on improving the average.

I'm not counting writing blog entries as counting towards the 30 minutes. It has to be "behind the scenes" stuff.

Although starting off with a "failure" like this is a bit depressing, it will be interesting to see what I do as a result - at the moment I have plenty of possibilities but haven't made any decisions - and how quickly it is effective.

Goal Monitoring - II

Here I am, as predicted yesterday, ready to start monitoring the goal of increasing the advertisement income from this site. At the moment I am going to concentrate solely on Google Adsense income - though it may well be that sometime in the future I will need to increase the scope of the goal to cover all types of advertising.

My task today is to decide what my goal is for the rest of the month. I’m regarding this as a dry run for only a week to shake out any problems with the method.

Ok, we start with the current average daily income for January which is $3.21. Since most of the month has already passed, whatever action I take over the next week is going to be limited in how far it can effect this month’s average. So, bearing that in mind, what would be the minimum target that would challenge me? I think $3.50 would be about right. What would be the absolute maximum target that would challenge me without overwhelming me? I’m going to say $4 though I may be pitching that a bit high.

So my range is $3.50 - $4.00. Using the one third rule, that means my target for this month is $3.67.  I’ve got to raise the average by 46 cents from today’s figure of $3.21. I have seven days to do it in, which means I need to raise it by 7 cents a day (rounded to the nearest cent).

So my targets are as follows (measured at the beginning of each day):

26th  3.28

27th  3.35

28th  3.42

29th  3.49

30th  3.56

31st   3.63

1st      3.67

To remind you: every day that I am below the target for that day I add a 30-minute slot into my day in which I do nothing except work on the advertising income. These slots are cumulative - so if I were to be below the target for three days’ running I would have to work for three 30-minute slots on nothing else. Conversely every day I am below the target I can take off one slot (assuming there are any).

So today as I am exactly on the target by definition I have no compulsory time scheduled. But of course not having a compulsory slot doesn’t mean that I do no work towards the goal. Writing this post is actually an important action towards it. Anyway I can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s figure is!

Goal Monitoring

My diet continues to be both successful and easy, so I am looking at ways in which I might be able to extend the principles to achieving other goals.

First one needs a target which can be measured easily, and which can move progressively to a final goal. The one I immediately thought of was the advertising income on this site. How suitable is that? It’s measurable and it will respond to the right sort of actions. It does however fluctuate madly from day to day so I would have to use some sort of average to measure it. That’s easy because Google Adwords continuously reports the average daily earnings during a month.

So the target is ok. I could use the daily average for January as my baseline and decide on a figure to aim for by the end of February. It would be easy then to plot a steadily rising line which I have to keep to as closely as possible.

How should I chose what the target should be for February? On the principle of maintaining flow, a target should be sufficient to challenge but not overwhelm. So I would need to decide what the minimum amount that would challenge me would be, and then what the maximum amount would be that would not overwhelm me. That would give me a range of possible targets. Where in that range should I set my actual target? According to my friend Michael Neil, the target should be set about one third of the way up the range.  So if my range is between $5 and $8 a day, my target should be set at $6. That sets a good challenge, but leaves room for me to surprise myself.

So that’s the target sorted. Now what is going to be the equivalent of the rules which I set myself progressively in the diet? The diet rules are No Seconds, No Snacking, No Sweets, Small Portions, Skip 1 Meal, Skip 2 Meals, and Skip 3 Meals. These are all about what not to do rather than about what to do. How on earth can I find an equivalent in terms of taking actions that will increase my Google Adwords income?

I think the simplest way is to phrase it negatively again. Each “rule” would be a 30 minute slot out of my day in which I am not allowed to anything other than work on the target directly. So if I am below the target I have to add another 30 minutes, and if I am above the target I can subtract 30 minutes.

Hmmm… will this work? Possibly. I’m not sure whether 30 minutes is the right amount of time. There’s only one way to find out - and that’s by trying. I’ve still got a week left of this month. So I’ll set it up first thing tomorrow morning, and see what I can achieve by the end of the month. It’s really just a dry run to see if the concept will work, and to shake out some of the rules before doing it for real in February.