Unfortunately it took 2 months to make that 90p!
Since Rob and I rebuilt CS Blogs in 2016 neither of us have really done a lot with it. Whilst I am accountable for some of the 3,000 monthly page views the most I have done with it operationally for some time has been to ensure that the servers & domain keep being paid for.
I think that at some point because of this I started seeing CS Blogs as an expense which I should try to break even on despite the fact that it started as a labour of love.
To try and recoup to small amount of money I throw at it each year I thought I could simply include the Google AdSense Auto Ad script and let that take care of monetisation.
Auto Ad itself is quite nifty and takes all of the effort out of adding adverts to your site whilst still giving you enough flexibility to tailor them to your content and audience. However, just plugging in adverts was somewhat low effort and so unsurprisingly didn’t yield good results. I would go so far as to say that adding adverts was a negative as it didn’t cover the CS Blogs bills but did have a negative impact on the user experience.
To put the matter right I have now removed all ads from the platform and will be taking another look at ways to improve both the software and the reach of the platform (perhaps by marketing directly to Computer Science departments around the UK).
If you’d be interested in helping with these efforts please get in touch.
Danny
dannybrown.blog 