david_uk - 6:19 am on Oct 15, 2005 (gmt 0)

I did try it recently, but only broke even. My ctr to the ads remained stable, and I think I ended up buying approx. 5 cheap clicks in for each expensive click out. I will probably have another go at some point having learned a few lessons.

The things I learned were:-

a) The scrapers that buy clicks are very good at writing ads that encourage clicks - a skill I don't posses.

b) If you have a lot of good content that the visitor is interested in then they are much more likely to stay and read the content than click the ads.

c) By blocking all MFA sites I no longer see the sexy ads that encourage click outs and have high click out rates! Lets face it - a lot of the small businesses that use adwords are as good at writing sexy ads as I am!

d) If your site is showing in the top few of a Google search, and your ad is in the right column, then you are probably wasting your ad spend / not going to get too many clicks. I did try to diversify to relevant areas and that worked better.

For me, I would have liked it to work, but the ultimate goal of my site is to continue to be the number 1 information site in my small niche. I obviously want people to click the ads at some point, but it's the content that I really want people to see. After all, that's why I occupy one of the top slots in the first place!