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I am surprised by how motivating it is to have a PayPal debit card attached to my PayPal account.

It’s great being able to buy a cup of coffee, or a meal, or gas, with money that comes directly from my passive income streams. Someone in France, the U.K, the U.S or god knows where else - buys a download. Then the money goes automatically into my PayPal account, where I can access it instantly through the debit card.

Previously, I would have to transfer the money to my bank account before having access to it. Somehow the immediacy of the debit card makes the income more real and more emotionally satisfying.

And a brief note about Google Checkout. I mentioned in a previous ecommerce post, that I added Google Checkout as a payment option to my e-junkie shopping cart. I do not have the exact figures in front of me, but there has been a substantial increase in sales. I’d estimate it at 20%.

While looking through my google adsense and analytics results last month I made passing notice that one of my niche websites (a blog) had a clickthrough ratio that was over 7%. Meaning that for every 100 people who visited my site at least 7 clicked on a google adsense ad. That’s a damn high click-through ratio.

But just a few minutes ago, I looked at the stats again. So far this month, the site has a click through ratio of over 12%. I am somewhat stunned. I am used to my sites only having a 1 - 4% click-through rate.

Why has the click-through rate increased so dramatically?

The website has not changed in many months. I have not re-designed it nor changed the ad-formatting. Neither is it getting more traffic. So why the increase in clicks?

Looking at which specific posts are getting the traffic and clicks, I realized that the clicks are coming from a “sub-topic” within the niche. The niche is about a specific resort town in the intermountain west. Recently the town added a concert hall and I began writing about the venue and the artists visiting it. When people search for the concert venue on google (and yahoo and other search engines) they end up finding my website before they find the website about the concert hall. And the concert hall uses google adsense to place ads on my website. The ads are highly-targeted and highly relevant to what the people are looking for so they click the ads.

There is another factor to consider. My content on the blog gives people important information about the concert hall, but it does not give them everything that they need to know. They can find out about the concert hall, who is playing there, and when, but if they want to buy tickets, they have to click on the google ad that will take them to the concert hall website to buy tickets. I believe that is what accounts for the high clickthrough rate.

I didn’t intend it to turn out that way, it just did. Now, I am wondering if I have found a way to increase google clicks for a variety of topics.