From Stat Counter to Google Analytics

Today I switched from Stat Counter to Google Analytics because although it takes 24 hours for data to accumulate, Google's service really offered more. I paid for more log space on Stat Counter but I was afraid it wasn't tracking all my stats because when I was at my college library, Stat Counter was blocked by the college firewall. Well upon switching I also learned that Google Analytics tracks Adwords conversions as well and I can set goals that I want achieve in terms of converting clicks. This is great and I hope switching to Analytics is the best decision.

PPC Conversion Test

During my marketing of Free Guestbooks through Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing, I did a test at which one would have better conversions. I spent $100 on each service and the results were sad because Yahoo Search Marketing is supposedly the 2nd best competitor to Google Adwords. Keep in mind these campaigns are highly optimized and I was using each service's conversion tracking code. Out of $100 with Google Adwords I got about 10-15 conversions per day with $10 being spent a day and with Yahoo Search Marketing I got around 3-5 conversions per day with the same budget. The CPC bid was around the same for both as well as the ad position. It just goes to show how much Google dominates the ad market and how their traffic is of higher quality than any other competition. I didn't use Microsoft's new Ad Center because after numerous phone calls to their support service and waiting my ad was not displaying and it was not inappropriate in any way or form. I may just start using Google Adwords as my sole PPC advertising program from now on.

Monetizing Adsense

So I run Google Adsense on my Free Guestbooks website and I was just using the regular templates that Google provides. Well it turns out I wasn't making much money and visitors (even though the ad is positioned in a good spot) seemed to ignore the advertisement. I brainstormed through some ideas and I came up with one that now gets me 2x the amount of clicks that I used to get. Google Adsense has a great feature that allows a certain ad to use multiple color palettes. So I came up with 7 new ones that make the visitors notice the ads in an unobtrusive way. I have listed the colors below, enjoy.

• Sunshine - Border: #FFCC66; Title: #FFFF66; Background: #E1771E; Text: #FFFFFF; URL: #FFFFFF;
  
• Freaky Green - Border: #2D8930; Title: #CAF99B; Background: 38B63C; Text: #000000; URL: #000000;
  
• Pinky - Border: #CC0000; Title: #000000; Background: #E895CC; Text: #000000; URL: #000000;
  
• Lucky (Dog's Name) - Border: #000000; Title: #333333; Background: #FFFFFF; Text: #7F7F7F; URL: #000000;
  
• Murple - Border: #61613B; Title: #E895CC; Background: #800080; Text: #FFFFFF; URL: #FFFFFF;
  
• Candy Cane - Border: #CC0000; Title: #FFBBE8; Background: #940F04; Text: #FFFFFF; URL: #FFFFFF;
  
• Bluey (Favorite) - Border: #0066CC; Title: #C3D9FF; Background: #3D81EE; Text: #FFFFFF; URL: #FFFFFF;