We always look forward to the start of summer here at AdThrive because it means it’s time for one of our favorite community events — AdThrive Summer Camp!
In June, we kicked off the fourth annual summer camp, a five-week-long educational series filled with exclusive site optimization tips and resources for publishers of all niches.
This year’s brand new format features downloadable PDF workbooks you can use to track your progress. Our “camp counselors” (aka our ad performance team) created fresh challenges for improving your ad revenue year-round!
At its core, this annual camp is designed to create a collaborative space for our publishers to share ideas with their peers and discover what’s working best for them. We were blown away by this year’s participation in our exclusive AdThrive Community Facebook group — one of the many perks of being a member of our publisher network.
Below you’ll find a summary of what we covered each week, and if you’re an AdThriver, you’ll have access to these resources anytime you want to jump back in for a refresher!
Week 1: Understand Your Analytics
The first week of camp is all about building a solid foundation for using Google Analytics to better understand reader behavior and how that affects your earnings. We know this tool can seem intimidating at first, so this week of camp aims to help you access your site’s data easily and use it to your advantage!
What you’ll gain from this week:
- A breakdown of the four main analytics views
- An in-depth look at the way that browsers, device types, and traffic sources all factor into RPM
- How to set up useful tools to track reader behavior and ways to create content based on that data
Comments from AdThrivers on the week 1 workbook:
“Google Analytics is intimidating so I’ve always just thrown something at the wall and hope it sticks. But now I can use it to see what’s going on and better understand what to concentrate my time on for better income.”
“Worksheet #3 was an eye-opener! Thanks so much for helping us drill down into our posts to see how all these factors come together into our RPM.”
Week 2: Take Advantage of RPM by Page
Building on the knowledge gained in week one of camp, this week combines your site’s Google Analytics data with what you can learn from RPM by Page reporting in your AdThrive dashboard. The RPM by Page tool is essential for tracking how specific pages perform so that you can structure future posts on the success of your top content.
A few of the key takeaways from this week:
- The three main ways to categorize different pages on your site, helping you understand their purpose and earnings
- Steps for using your RPM by Page reporting alongside Google Analytics
- Identify patterns across low-earning pages to find areas for improvement
Comments from AdThrivers on the week 2 workbook:
“This is SO interesting and the worksheet has been incredibly helpful!! Thanks for all of the tips!”
“Wow! Another really good training tool for me. I had never looked at all my lowest RPM pages together and looked for a pattern. I learned a ton here!”
Week 3: Focus on Engagement
Highly-engaged readers are a major factor in your site’s ad earning potential, so it’s important to structure your content to keep them on the page for as long as possible! The challenges for this week are all about making observations on the content where your readers spend the majority of their time and using that information to plan future posts.
In these worksheets, you’ll learn to:
- Set up Google Analytics views that shed light on reader engagement
- Find commonalities on your top content and use that information to structure future posts
- Use our writing tips to brainstorm new highly-engaging content
AdThrive community feedback on week 3:
“Really interesting learnings here when looking at the average time on page in addition to the most popular posts. It has given me great insight and influenced my strategy moving forward!”
“There’s so much I don’t know about Google Analytics! The first exercise was so helpful in identifying content that needs to be improved.”
Week 4: Improve User Experience
Now that you’ve got a good understanding of your most engaging content, it’s time to take a look at your site from your reader’s perspective and discover ways to improve user experience! Meeting your readers’ needs and ensuring they have a positive experience when visiting your site is crucial for the long term health of your business.
This week, we’ve got a full checklist of items for you to work through:
- Quick ways to gain insight on what your readers see when visiting your site so you can identify areas to improve
- How to identify sections of your site that may deter readers and ways to clean those areas up
- Site optimization tools to keep your site running as smoothly as possible
Comments from AdThrivers on the week 4 workbook:
“A good opportunity to step back and take a look at the blog from a customer’s perspective. Spotted a few things that need cleaning up!”
“Another good workbook. It allowed us to catch a couple of things that weren’t working as they should on mobile!”
Week 5: Maximize Your Earnings with Video
For our final week of camp, we’re covering the basics of the AdThrive video player and how to maximize your video earnings! We’ve got useful tips and challenges for both beginners and seasoned video pros.
A few of the topics covered:
- The most popular video styles and our recommendations for creating new video content
- A checklist for reviewing your AdThrive dashboard settings
- Tips for brainstorming new video content that will keep your readers engaged and coming back for more
Comments from AdThrivers on the week 5 workbook:
“Love the idea of adding videos that fit multiple posts. Just getting started with video, so this got me thinking about how to keep improving my video strategy!”
“Love this! I have loads of video ideas in the queue and some fun stuff I was already planning to do. Now my planning is even better thanks to this week’s worksheets.”
We hope you find these workbooks helpful in tracking your progress not only for the rest of the summer but throughout the rest of the year.
If you’re not an AdThriver yet and want to gain access to exclusive resources like this summer camp content, head here to learn more about how to qualify and apply to join our community!
