Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Any thoughts?
I keep reading that people only make money from adsense if there site shows no information the viewer wants.
Where did you read this?
# visitors
CTR
CPC
Basically you determine the number of visitors and can influence the CTR
CPC depends on what advertisers have bid on the keywords that put them on your page (you can influence this), plus smart pricing that is "meant" to reflect the "quality" of the punters that the advertiser gets from your site (where quality is equated to their propensity to make money for the advertiser)
Whether your web site supplies top rate, new information or merely regurgitates stuff out that does not effect your earning capability on AdSense.
I keep reading that people only make money from adsense if there site shows no information the viewer wants
But shure not in this forum.
The best thing to do is go for a quality site that has something people want. A web site is like any business it needs to fill a need/want.
I keep reading that people only make money from adsense if there site shows no information the viewer wants. Ie if they come to your site and its badly designed or lacking in content they are going to click on an ad and leave your site because your link looks more apealing.
No, that sort of site is called an MFA around here.
What there was a debate about recently was whether you made less money if your visitor found everything they wanted on your site.
In other words, if the information you supplied was too comprehensive, they might be less inclined to click on an ad, versus the theory that good content which left them looking for a little bit more info than you supplied was more likely to make them click.
A big difference ;)
I keep reading that people only make money from adsense if there site shows no information the viewer wants. Ie if they come to your site and its badly designed or lacking in content they are going to click on an ad and leave your site because your link looks more apealing.Any thoughts?
The way I read the question is one person building one site with no value to the user. In that case I can't see some one making any real money, maybe they will get a few clicks but nothing of real interest. If a site has nothing to offer other than using a lot of black hat stuff I can't see the site getting any real traffic over time. At one point or another it will lose its ranking.
Now that's much different than some one building lots of MFA black hit sites. Cranking out junk I'm sure makes money if you stay ahead of the SEs. But it's not at all 'evergreen' and so as one site gets banned/removed you better make another one to replace it.
Creating evergreen quality content that offers value to the user will make money for years and years. I know because that's what I've been doing. I have pages I haven't changed for years that are still going strong.
[edited by: jchampliaud at 9:10 am (utc) on April 7, 2006]
Good opinions... anymore?
We have mediocre content that earns 20 times as much as the stuff that takes ages to produce and has the same PI's. It seems to be that you have to produce some high quality content to attract visitors and some not so good stuff to actually earn a living. :(
If you've created the perfect webpage with the perfect product for the end user why would they click on an Adsense ad?
Their need is totally satiated.
The answer has to be somewhere in the middle between garbage and perfection. If your site were perfect, from your visitors perspective, you would make no money from advertising! (I guess a site can't be perfect if it has advertising, well maybe, good content with the perfect ad!)
Quality vs income graph (guess)
Page quality +
Page income *
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I would guess the income for poor quality pages never truly goes to zero, that's what makes scrapers successful. (Hope the graph comes out OK in the actual post!) It's interesting to think about what the true shape would be and how much your content can influence your income.
The real money made from AdSense comes from high quality sites, since it's those sites that, generally speaking, get the high volume traffic and ultimately the more traffic you get, the more you'll make.
So while a poor quality website is perhaps going to experience a higher click-through rate, it's unlikely to experience the volume of traffic required (because few people will ever link to it) to really make serious money.
TJ
Interesting. A visitor arrives through a high quality page, then exits from a lower quality page through an Adsense ad. Could be a strategy, exit doorway pages. Always have a link to a page with more information but the quality is lower than the entry page. (Your visitor has to leave sometime!)
I may be doing that unintentionally now on some of my pages. I'll have to look into it and see if there's something to it.
A visitor arrives through a high quality page, then exits from a lower quality page through an Adsense ad.
It is indeed an interesting strategy. It doesn't have to be a low-quality page though - certain pages attract a very high CTR. I average 15% on my "widget review" pages - they're very good quality, but they're naturally targetted at people looking to buy.
TJ
But it does seem you earn more if your site doesn't answer EVERY question.
it does seem you earn more if your site doesn't answer EVERY question.
Whilst admiring the presentation of Bumpski's graph, I disagree that as quality improves your income declines, or that you have to leave questions unanswered to make money.
If all that a surfer is trying to do is get an answer to a question, whether they find it at your site or elsewhere is going to make little difference to the income. Advertisers don't spend large amounts of money simply to give away information for free. There is usually some kind of fee-earning product or service that drives it.
For example, suppose you had a hobby site about toy aeroplanes, what drives the advertising budgets is the sales of models, paint, glue, plans, etc.. If you could answer every single question then the surfer might end up, for example, reaching a page describing a particular type of glue that they need for their current project, how to use it, etc.. But then they still have to buy the glue, and that is where the adverts come in. And, according to smartpricing, you'll likely get a very good rate for the click because the page is highly relevant and there will probably be a high conversion rate.
So, imho you can make good money from a quality site that answers every question, providing you understanding what the products/services are that drive the business. You then build pages that help your visitors find the right answers and, in many cases but not all, the right products. This also encourages them to come back to your site the next time they need some help.
I don't imagine that reading an in-depth article will diminish the interest any reader might have in the ads.
I have a handful of old sites (5-8 years) that I popped ads on just to experiement. My most successful by far in terms of CTR and eCPM is a software based one that was high quality content 7 years ago. It has good ranking from old natural links that are still there but the content is dated since the software is now 4 1/2 versions newer.
My theory is people find the page, realize the data is old and click on the ads which are well targeted and include this particular software's name in them.
I think this would be near impossible to duplicate from scratch today but I feel strongly the "bad" content with very well targeted ads gives me the good returns.
The sites that are really good with really good content make more money than the crappy sites because they do not get smart priced.
I know of many crappy sites that appear to have never been touched by smart pricing - they earn high ECP's day in and day out. I also know of several excellent sites with top-tier original content that can't seem to climb out of the smart pricing cellar.
A high quality site is likely to be a better earner overall, for several reasons. But smart pricing isn't one of them.
Just to add a personal perspective to the debate, the page that does best on my site by a long way (nearly all the earnings) is the main index page that simply tells visitors about the site and what they can find on it. The pages with the high quality information that took a long time to write are well visited, but ads tend to have a much lower ctr on them than the index page.
I run Adsense on a couple of my sites; they've been making me okay money, but I've been phasing them out because I'm sick of seeing them, both on my sites and on others. Almost every last website on the web—from the crappiest to the best—runs Adsense. I really wish Google were more discerning in who they accept into the program.
If you could answer every single question then the surfer might end up, for example, reaching a page describing a particular type of glue that they need for their current project, how to use it, etc.. But then they still have to buy the glue, and that is where the adverts come in. And, according to smartpricing, you'll likely get a very good rate for the click because the page is highly relevant and there will probably be a high conversion rate.
Bingo. I see this phenomenon on some of my review pages, which have extremely high EPCs, CTRs, and eCPMs for the simple reason that I'm delivering high-quality leads to advertisers. If a reader has read about a tapdancers' festival in Widgetville on my site and clicks a travel agent's ad for escorted tapdancing tours to Widgetvlle and Widgonia, the odds are extremely good that the click wll represent a hot or at least a warm lead--not just a click from someone who hasn't found the information he wanted and has clicked on an ad out of frustration. Result: Better conversion, a lower "smart pricing" discount for the advertiser, and more money for me.
Smart pricing was invented to protect advertisers from paying full retail for junk traffic. If you're intentionally creating junk pages to encourage clicks, be prepared to join the "My EPC is falling!" crowd in this forum's gallery of unhappy souls.
If the punter wants information, then I am sorry to say there is little escape from the fact that so long as you can drive traffic to the site, then I figure crap content is best :(
This is why I don't write content, as my knowledge leans towards informational sites and I can't work with the concecpt that doing something well means you do badly.
Seems having a sideline selling 'glue' is the way to go. Intice (sp?) with content... then show them the ads!
