theitboy - 11:37 pm on Dec 13, 2003 (gmt 0)

I run a respectable niche site, and have just started with AdSense. I was doing some research over at the AdWords forum, and discovered a thread about negative keywords. One big keyword that was reccomended for blocking was "free".

Well. My site doesn't really give away free stuff, except a fairly popular newsletter. The thing is, it is promoted at the top of every page with the words "Sign up for our free newsletter".

Do people think having the word "Free" on every page is likely to result in a significant reduction of ads served, and average CPC? Should I change it? Every other way I can think of phrasing it seems really awkward - "sign up for our no-cost email newsletter" is about the best, but it's not so great.

I'm thinking that maybe the best answer is to change that line to a gif file without the word "free" in the alt text. Any suggestions? Should I be concerned by any of this?

Thanks.