Forum Moderators: buckworks
Here is my thought process, my site is in a relatively niche market and profit margins are very thin for me. I am a new store in the industry, but I may only make 2-3% on any item that I sell due to lack of buy-in power. Some items I actually lose money on. I drop ship everything.
Currently, I get about 100 visitors a day to the store and may only get 3-4 orders per week. Most of the buyers are very price sensitive and I cannot compete on prices very well. I cannot offer free shipping or I will be in the red.
What are your thoughts on adding AdSense as a way to increase the revenue stream of the business? If I can make enough on AdSense, I may be able to offer better deals or free shipping.
I get about 100 visitors a day
How does the potential extra dollar a day in revenue affect the way visitors perceive the quality of your site?
How many sales will you potentially lose due to people clicking on an ad?
Single digit margins require either a high ticket or large volume. If you make an effort to increase your traffic (and its quality) rather than cannibalizing your existing income source you'll probably do better.
Do you wish to build up more orders and customers and therefore get better bulk pricing? Then I'd say no to Adsense
Or do you just wish to make as much $ as you can right now with the site? Then you could consider Adsense.
Try running ads for a few days, see how it turns out. The results may yield the answer for you.
Why? Simple - because there are two types of visitors to an e-commerce site: those who came there looking to buy something, and those who just came there looking and might not even know how they got there in the first place.
Why turn down one type of visitor in favor of another? Someone who came to your site ready to spend money isn't going to be distracted by an ad, they know what they want and they're going to buy it. If they don't see what they want, or don't like the price, they're moving on - why NOT give them somewhere else to look and make a buck on the 1-2% that are likely to click an ad on their way out.
When you think about it, it's no different than having a physical store in the mall - you have your store, and surrounding it are everyone else's advertisements. People still spend their money if you have what they want. If the concept of ads and commerce didn't mix, no one would have a store in the mall.
I don't run ads on every ecommerce site I manage, but on the ones that do there was no decline in sales resulting from adding the ads, and a few hundred bucks a month per site in ad revenue is just free money from traffic that was "just passing through" anyway.
For example if you sold outdoor clothing an affiliate selling hand-held GPS might bring in some income.
Why? Simple - because there are two types of visitors to an e-commerce site: those who came there looking to buy something, and those who just came there looking and might not even know how they got there in the first place.
From a purely personal perspective, if I arrive at a store with AdSense on it, it tends to put me off the site altogether. It giver me the impression they are not there to sell me something, but are there to get me to click on the ads. I never click on the ads, and more often will simply leave the site and not return.
I'm thinking the banner ads will be less intrusive since most of the major manufacturers advertise.
It may even help to support the site and make it appear as more of an authority to the customer.
If you are using adWords to drive traffic, be careful. You could get hit by a manual review. Just went thru. this a while back.
Thanks for the update ponyboy96.
