One of the most intersting things about my job is that I get to look behind the scenes at dozens of websites ranging from small ‘mom and pop’ style blogs to large web magazines run by multinationals and do you know what I’ve discovered? We’re all in the same boat.

Statistically that is, we’re all pretty much the same. There’s a theory in retail advertising which states that assuming all other aspects to be equal, the only determining factor between revenues is square footage. Simply put … if there are two stores in town selling hockey sticks and each has a good location, spends the same on advertising and treats customers well then the only reason one store sells more sticks than the second is because it is bigger. I think there’s a similar concept at work on the web.

Size Matters

Assuming that your website is the same as another and that you have roughly the same visitor volume, you’ve both been online for the same amount of time and you both practice roughly the same traffic building strategies, in theory your two websites should earn roughly the same amount of revenue but if your website posts twice the volume of content, your website will generate additional traffic and therefore money.

Content Matters

The other determining factor to your income level is content. Say for example that the two websites described above each produce exactly the same volume of content, logic dictates that they will generate roughly the same volume of advertisement clicks right? Wrong. Once of the more interesting things that I’ve noticed watching dozens of websites is that some sites such as cooking and home repair websites generate a significantly higher volume of clicks over technical websites such as mine. This isn’t to say that they get more clicks overall but that they receive a higher click rate pre thousand visitors.

The other reason that content matters is the value of the ads located on your website. Renovations for example has an average cost of $4 per click through for ads as opposed to $2 for web design. If you take both the value (50% higher) and the increased click through rate per thousand of non-technical website, you’ll notice very quickly that websites which focus on non computer content are more likely to earn money.

Why is this? I actually have a pretty simple explanation for it in that ads on web design sites tend to be repetitive and people surfing for technical details are more immune to advertising due to increased exposure to web content.

So, how can I make $100 from my blog?

Step one, if my analysis is correct … don’t run a technology blog :) Actually that’s great advice but since I am running a technology blog (actually I run closer to 20 blogs on a variety of subjects) what I really need to do is understand the statistics of running a blog which luckily, Google makes available for free with Analytics and Keyword Tools.