Google AdSense Success Story-2

This is continuum to my series, Google AdSense Success Story, aspired to be an 'aid', to my fellow 'blogosphere' community friends to join AdSense and pursue their 'Success' and 'Who Knows', may be their 'Success Story', honour them to dawn a place as another 'Google AdSense Case Study' like the following one !
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Woot.com increased ad revenue more than 3x by optimizing with Google AdSense. Case Study: Woot, Inc. : www.woot.com

At first glance, the business proposition may seem dubious: sell a single different product each day, offer little to no customer service — and make fun of the products in the daily promotions. But Woot, Inc. does all of this, with great results.
The company's "one day, one deal" closeout site woot.com has garnered plenty of attention (and more than 300,000 registered customers) since launching in July 2004. Time magazine named the company one of the "50 Coolest Websites" in 2005. When woot.com posts its latest deal each day at midnight, Central Standard Time, customers flock to the site to buy the latest "Woot."

Challenge

Woot, Inc. began life as a wholesale distribution company in the early 1990s, selling a variety of products to retailers in large volume. Creative Director Dave Rutledge joined Woot, shortly after the creation, in July of 2004, of the woot.com retail site. The idea was to create a website where leftover products from the wholesale side could be sold directly to consumers. It didn't take long for the site to become popular.
Here's how a typical woot.com sale goes: At midnight, a new product is posted to the front page of the site with a photograph, creative description, product specifications and price. "Distributors send us some crazy, hyped-up information about the products they want to sell," Rutledge says. "Our visitors already know a lot of what we're selling isn't the newest, most advanced stuff on the market, so we throw out their copy and write our own, poking fun of the weaknesses." For example, a recent description of a wireless headphone system explained that "mere words cannot convince you that the A350 sounds great, too, so we won't try."
The product description is posted as a new entry on the Woot blog and as a new thread in its community forum. Typically customers then begin posting in the forum, discussing whether the price is right, asking if others have used the product, sharing previous experiences with the product or manufacturer, and pondering whether or not they will purchase this particular Woot.
If it's a popular item in particularly limited supply, it may sell out within hours, or even minutes. If not, or if it's a relatively expensive item, sales throughout the course of the day may be steady. Either way, visitors keep coming to the site, Rutledge says. If not for its advertising revenue, Woot.com would essentially stop making money when a product sells out.
Rutledge had previously participated in Google AdSenseTM with his own blog. "After that, it stuck in my head as the right way for this kind of thing to work," he says. Now AdSense provides supplemental income for woot.com while providing relevant information for the site's visitors.
"Our store's a little strange in that when we sell out of something, we don't sell anything else for the rest of the day," Rutledge explains. "In the forums, the early discussion is all about the product, finding reviews, comparing prices. After we sell out, you get people in saying 'Oh no, I waited too long' and asking about any similar products around. AdSense works great for both groups: early people can find other places to compare to, and later people who miss the deal can still find the product elsewhere through the Google ads."

Results

Ad Placement

After implementing AdSense on woot.com, the company worked on maximizing the effectiveness of the ads running on the site. Early on, Rutledge learned that he was missing out on what would become a key ad placement: at the bottom of individual blog post pages. Many of the site's users receive product updates via an RSS feed, which links to the daily Woot blog post.
Rutledge placed a 336 x 280-large rectangle ad unit below each post. He was surprised at the resulting increase in revenue. "I hardly ever have a reason to go to that individual blog post entry, so it hadn't occurred to me that people were viewing it," Rutledge says. "That implementation boosted our revenue from $40 a day to $150 a day. It now seems there are a ton of people who click this ad because it's what they see after reading the post."

Forum optimization

Another place Woot visitors go is the community forum. The site has a very outspoken following of deal-seeking visitors who chime in with product and pricing evaluations, comments about the overall Woot experience and plenty of non-Woot banter. Rutledge followed the six optimization tips for forums he read about on the Inside AdSense blog to improve his ad performance.

Site targeting

In true Woot form, the site site-targeted its own front page through its AdWords account. One such ad demonstrated the company's taste for the goofy as well as its enthusiasm for AdSense. It read:

Advertise on Woot

Site targeted campaign beats

sharp stick in eye

Most recently, Rutledge added a 250x250 square to the front page of Woot. "Our front page gets 5-10 times the hits of the other pages, but we knew the clicks would be low. When we heard about the site-targeted ads, it made sense to try. Now we have companies writing ads specifically for our users, with some even using a similar bluntly humorous style to draw their attention." The new adblock tripled Woot's ad revenue again. During Woot-offs, (48-72 hour stretches where Woot sells one item right after another, which triggers many front page impressions), daily revenue has been up to 10 times higher than prior to AdSense.

Sitemaps

Something else Woot has been able to take advantage of is Google Sitemaps. Rutledge has used the Site Overview feature to view statistics and error messages on Woot.com, and notes that "the extremely specific error messages helped us clear up a couple of configuration settings on the servers."

Better experience for users

While product sales are still their main source of revenue, Google ad revenue enables the Woot team to offer a better deal on a product than they would otherwise be able to. On the whole, though, Rutledge says the main benefit of AdSense has been providing users with relevant information. "You end up with somebody who's happy they came to woot.com, whether they bought something from us or through the ads," he says. "Even if people don't buy something from us the first few times they come, they seem to keep coming back."

About Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a program enabling online businesses to earn revenue from serving ads precisely targeted to their site. Through AdSense, website publishers can also provide their visitors with site search and Google web search, earning revenue through Google ads on the search results pages. AdSense publishers are a part of the Google Network, which includes many of the Top 100 Media Metrix sites such as AOL, About.com, Amazon, Ask.com, and Lycos.

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