Improvement Using Addition By Subtraction

Have you heard of the phrase “addition by subtraction?”

If you have not, I’m inviting you to read ahead, I’ll explain it using simple examples. Otherwise, stay with me, you might be able to share here or learn new perspectives.

Imagine you have a bag of tomatoes, and you noticed one of them is rotten. What do you do to keep the others fresh? You take out the rotten one to avoid contamination.

Same thing with a team. A team General Manager should always look to improve the pack by trading away or cutting the weakest link. That’s one form of addition (or improvement) by subtraction.

The same technique can be applied to everyday life. If you want to be successful, limit your diversions and concentrate on things helpful in achieving success.

Mert of searchforblogging.com, a hard-working blogging-friend of mine, applied similar technique in his blog to improve its traffic. One example he used was cutting his TV hours to 1 so he can focus on more important things.

Now, I will explain to you how I am going to improve this blog using Addition by Subtraction.

If you are new here in this planet, you will not even notice that the BlogRush widget already got the boot. Personally, I think it had potential, as it sent me few readers that stick around. But after its Phase 2, I believed BlogRush went downhill. While the widget is now gone, I haven’t deleted my account yet, just so I can check what kind of action Mr. John Reese is going to take against this blog. (I just checked — there’s now a notice in my control panel that says my account is temporarily inactive until I put the widget back within 45 days).

That’s improvement #1. BlogRush does not deliver. Removing the widget frees up a big space in my sidebar and at the same time, I used that space by installing a new widget called “Entrecard” (the box on the right side with picture/logo, and underneath says “Drop Yours” or “Get One”). I’ll spare you the details of its innerworkings**, but let me put it in simple term: it brings traffic more than BlogRush does. By traffic, I meant more people are clicking on this blog, and it is good, whether they are interested to stay or not.

Next, I decided to remove the ads on this site, more popularly known as AdSense. They are fetched from Google, and if a reader clicks on them, I earn money. When I started this site over four months ago, it was also my intention to monetize using AdSense. However, the earning was not good (less than $10/month) because the click per ad is worth less than .25c. I got smart-priced* which simply means that Google pays me very little per Ad click.

That’s improvement #2. Adsense only works well in niche blogs, not in general-interest blogs. I have learned this from reading useful blogs on SEO, internet marketing, and money making***. If your Adsense account is currently used in a general interest blog, remove it, wait for a few weeks and then use it in a niche blog. Doing so allows your account to no longer be smart priced.

My Amazon widget (see sidebar) is not performing good as far as monetization is concerned. It also takes time to load, therefore, any first time visitor hits the back button or browse away as soon as they enter. Consequently, I will try another variation and see what happens.

That’s improvement #3. Amazon does not perform as expected plus it causes slow page loading. I’ll see if the change I am going to do will have positive effects but if none, I’ll say goodbye to this widget as well.

Via improvement #2 and #3, I am allowing myself to focus on paid/tipped reviews, which will become the main source of income of this blog. However, I’m going to be honest that it’s a big risk doing this after reading this post about PageRank Slap by the Big G (Google). It talks about blogs losing their Google-calculated ranks. I can take that, mainly because I still have a dayjob to support me, and I am experimenting on different niche blogs for monetization. PlanetSaedel is aimed for readers, not money-making.

IN CLOSING

I also did other improvements using the “less is more” principle but I won’t go into details, since they are only minor. The key here is not to be complacent. Always explore your own site and check if there are tweakings to be done.

Planning your own addition by subtraction not only in blogging but also in life, is simply a common sense; but actually doing it and being satisfied with the results is called improvement.

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Resources:
*** SEO, internet marketing, and money making
** Frank of OpTempo.com analyzes Entrecard traffic.
* Court of Courtneytuttle.com explains Smart-Pricing.