does adsense hurt more than it helps sometimes?

[juice]

I have been wondering lately if in some cases adsense hurts more than it helps.. I find on one of my sites that the adsense box is displaying adds that are very close to the offers in which I am trying to sell or link people to on my site.. I'm wondering if i'm losing conversions by having people go through the ads from adsense instead of my links. I notice a lot of click throughs and they're always highly related or similar.. though i make a couple bucks a day consistantly from those clicks is it hurting me more than its helping.. would i be better off without them? or is there a way to limit those ads from appearing?

[conroy]

juice you bring up an excellent point.

The important thing to do is to test, test, and test. Try removing the ads and seeing how it affects your conversions. It is very likely that your conversions to your affiliate programs will go up when you remove the ads. All you have to do is look at total revenue. Do you make more total money with the Google ads up or not? If it is close, go with keeping the Gooogle ads up - the chances of not getting paid from Google are extraordinarily small (assuming you don't get kicked from the program) compared to other companies who might go under and leave you with 6 weeks of upaid commissions.

[juice]

i removed adsense from some of the pages that usualy have the offer links on them and we'll see what that does.. next i'll try no adsense at all for a week and see whats different..

my traffic is sort of small right now and i'd like to figure this all out before i start wasting heavier traffic flows and seeing my conversions fall..

thanks again for the info

anyone else have experiences with this?

[MrSpeed]

I seem to be hearing that in most cases it is beneficial to have the adsense ads.

As conroy said do some testing to see how it works out for you.

[conroy]

juice one thing to remember is to never stop testing. If you are getting only small traffic now your tests probably won't have much relevance when your traffic grows. Your visitors will be coming from different places and will want different things.

Don't test things once now and then never change them again. That is an easy way to lose LOTS of money. Especially considering how easy it is to constantly test.

[GuitarZan]

Hey,

Conroy, I may have asked you this before but what are some of the most common things you test on an affsite. Assuming you presell the customers via reviews or such, what would be the best things to test?

I am creating small sites with just basic, surface level content, and then recommending products. I figured the best thing that I could test was the:

- Intro Headlines into my content. These aren't exactly sales headlines, as I am trying to come off as NOT hard selling the customer.

- I think the biggest impact is the review section where you actually give a little info on the product.

Thoughts?

C.K.

[Michael Anthony]

The rule here is to run Adsense on sites with high traffic that don't have anything to sell. Chat, reviews, that sort of non monetised stuff (which I never really understood the logic of, if you're publishing sites for profit, not just because you love paying hosting and bandwidth fees)

If you're after loan leads and you run a whole load of competitor ads in the same place too, you're competing with yourself which doesn't strike me as the most intelligent approach :)

Call me stupid, but I make a reasonable living from my ignorance!

[tombola]

I agree with Michael Anthony: Adsense is primarily meant for content sites, not for e-commerce sites.
If you're trying to sell something on a page, it's not smart to put Adsense on that page, because you're driving away potential buyers.

[graywolf]

Unless of course you were selling a book about mesothelioma, where you'd make a few bucks, compared to adsesnse where you'd make a little bit more per click.

[juice]

i guess my original question was.. am i missing on big conversions (10-20$ per signup) by having someone click my links.. vs seeing my adsense ads on the left side of the page and clicking on those for the same deals.. and then getting .15$.. its nice getting a solid 2-4$ per day from adsense even with low traffic.. but a couple of those lost sales might have meant more money from the affiliates..

[eljefe3]

I run adsense on pages where the product doesn't actually convert very well, but has decent link pop and helps out other sites. The affiliates that either don't know these products don't convert, or who have a better conversion than me are the ones using adsense on my sites. Sometimes I make 10 times more using adsense than just straight affiliate links to a product.