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Which ads have higher eCPM in Adsense – Text ads or Image ads ?

This post answers the following questions –
Which Ad type in Adsense is good in eCPM ?
Which Ad type in Adsense is good in CTR ?

When I joined the program I was of the opinion that the Text ads get better earnings than the image ads. The main reason of my opinion was that text ads were attracting more clicks from the user. Image ads had lower Click Through Rates (CTR), so after a bit of experimenting I settled down for Text Only Ads.

At a later point, I read through Adsense optimization tips which suggested that a mix of Image and Text was the best solution. Though I was not very sure I still went ahead and changed the ads setting for one of my major site and the CTR went down by eCPM went up. Basically the Clicks went down but the effective Money we make for same page views increased. Let me explain with an example

Say if I have 1000 page views and my clicks are 70 and my earning is $ 3.0 with Text only ads.
Page Views – 1000
Clicks – 70
CTR – 7%
eCPM – $ 3.0

After I changed to a mix of Text and Image the equation changed

Page Views – 1000
Clicks – 50
CTR – 5%
eCPM – $ 3.5

Basically the image ads have more CPC, cost per click say than the Text ads, this could be because typically image ads take space of four different Text links and hence the higher CPC. Also Google Adsense Blog says that Google tries to give either Image or Text based on whichever is more profitable to publisher.

So you can also do a bit of experiment and adjust your ads, according to the following is the order of performance

Text and Image Ads – Best
Text Only Ads – Good
Image Only Ads – Bad (many ads wont have image version and u will end up showing blank spaces instead of ads)

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Broadband plans – Are the limited data plans good for you ?

Internet is as addictive as any drug. So when people take a new broadband connection they always underestimate their usage, for example  open a video in Youtube and you will end up watching atleast 10 videos without even realising, and especially if you have a 2Mbps  plan or something closer, the videos will load very quickly and by the time you close the browser you would have ended up using hundred’s of MB’s.

Also same with say browing/listening to music online etc, and when you have multiple users in the house you can never really predict or control usage. I have heard many complain that their bill was much higher than the plan rent,  the fact is they really dont realise how much they use the internet.

And when they take the plans they only see the actual rent for free usage say  Rs 250 for 1GB data. For someone who uses internet daily 1GB is a very small amount, and the extra charge will most likely Rs 1 for every MB. Say if they end up using 1.5GB instead of 1GB they will have to pay Rs 500 extra. But most customers believe that the Broadband providers are cheating them, In a way they are correct  that these operators do not explain the implications of extra usage.

Whenever I recommend a broadband plan, I alwyas suggest a unlimited data plan (even if it is slower), so they can use the internet without worrying about extra bill and monitoiring their usage.

BSNL – 256kbps unlimited – Rs 750 /month (with a rent free phone connection in Unlimited Plus plan)

Tata Indicom – 400kbps unlimited – Rs 1250/month

– 512 kbps unlimited – Rs 1500/month

Airtel broadband –   256 Kbps – Rs 799 / month

384 Kbps (1 Mbps during off peak hours) – Rs 1099 / month

512 Kbps (1 Mbps during off peak hours) – Rs 1299 /month

I heard recently Airtel has slashed by more than 50%  but their website doesnt show any changes and also the site itself was having problems loading in IE  8 / Google chrome. Also as a caution, I really had bad experience with TATA indicom, both BSNL and Airtel are more reliable.

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Best cheap web hosting providers

After I started maintaining quite a few blogs I have been asked this question several times, and my answer has remained the same ever since I hosted my first website. Initially I was using blogspot for my blogs, but when I realized the benefits of having a proper domain name, i registered through  the default host of Blogspot, godaddy.com.

And when i realised advantages of using WordPress for my blogs, I had to make a choice of webhost. So I researched a little and found that godaddy.com was the cheapest available option andtheir hosting was also the feature packed. It even supported Java (deploying WAR files) in a PHP hosting account.

Its almost three years since I hosted my first website with them and not a single minute  did I have a downtime or performance issues. The basic hosting used to cost 3$ but now it costs 5$ with  unlimited domains (any number of subdomains and domains), 10 different SQL Databases(with unlimited data in each of them), PHP 5 and many more features.

But when I wanted to host JSP/Java godaddy wasnt the best option, as godaddy doesnt provide a private JVM (virtual), the advantage of which is you can deploy any time and you can restart the server. Thats when i found EATJ.com which even provides a free trial (which will need you to manually restart tomcat server every 6 hours).  So here are my suggestions.

PHP/ASP.net / Basic Java hosting – godaddy.com

JSP/Java private JVM       – EATJ.com