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Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Traffic is doing much better than I expected. I've somehow dodged the G sandbox and I even pulled a miracle and got a free Y! directory listing (whether thats worth anything or not these days, I dunno). The site recieves about 300 new uniques/day and each user views about 20 pages of content on average. Nothing awesome compared to most of you, I know, but great for me and one would think I could at least pay for my hosting with that kind of traffic.
Now the problems... with those numbers, I get 5,000-10,000 impressions a day. I've never gotten more than a few clicks in a day and I usually have a whopping daily CTR of 0.1%. Sometimes, the clicks are so low, the CTR reads as 0.0%.
Where am I going wrong?
The primary focus of the site is a product that is not yet for sale, so the ads, while still semi-relevant, are not totally spot on yet. When the product becomes available for retail, I'm sure the ads will become more relevant.
I use across-the-top navigation on the site with 1 ad/page right now... something like this:
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¦ Navigation ¦
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¦ Ad ¦ Search ¦
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¦ Content ¦
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The ad block is perhaps TOO perfectly matched to my page style... The links, text, and background are the exact same as the rest of my site. Should I change this to make it stand out more?
Should I add another ad block to the footer? I'd like to stay out of the left and right margins if possible, as I think it makes the site look a lot better if they're empty, but would sticking an ad or two out there help?
I'm nervous that more ads will turn people's noses up, keeping them from returning... which to me, is the most important thing. The site is a hobby first and foremost. If it payed for itself, well, that would just be a nice bonus.
Many of them also probably recognize Adsense ads and could probably locate those advertisers' sites on their own if they needed to.
Since they are browsing your site, it probably means that they arrived at your site to strictly view your content, and not click your ads.
Just my opinion.
What caught my attention is your:
"secondarilly about the industry that product exists"
Maybe if you concentrate your writings on similar competing widgets and spread it across all pages you could dig out more advertisers from the google pouch.
Also experiment more with ad locations and sizes, and with / without blending.
Psst. secondarily, one L
Good Luck
3 responses within minutes, all of them with genuine great advice. This is why WebmasterWorld is the best. I even learned some new vocabulary to boot. WebmasterWorld even helps me cut down on spelling misteaks.
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¦ Navigation ¦
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¦ Ad ¦ Content ¦
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¦ Continued Content ¦
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And find some good place for search. ( I don't have much experience with that.)
OR
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¦ Navigation ¦
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¦ Content ¦ Ad ¦
¦ Continued Content ¦
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This is also what I have used and it has proven to work very well.
Possibly writing more content about the general aspects of the business behind the product.
For example, product or service x is created to satisfy what need?