Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have a hobby art based website. In febuary, i decided to give adsense a go.
The site gets about 1200 uniques per day, whcih google usually sees as about 25,000 ad impressions per day. Note: My visitors tend to view a lot of pages per visit.
Now my problem is my CTR. It usually hangs around 0.2% and Ive read in other topics, that 2-4% has been called "low".
Personally, Id love 2%, that would times my profit by 10!
I have two ad blocks per page:
-Medium Rectangle (300 x 250) in the top right, next to the main content which is on the left (I read this should draw peoples eyes across to the ads)
-Half Banner (234x60) near the bottom of the page, in a little bit of space I found I could use on the left
I just wanted any tips or advice you could offer a site of this type, as it feels like im somehow wasting my reasonably sizeable traffic, and I could be maybe making more from adsense.
=)
Ps, the forum is really a goldmine of info, I never would of even tried adsense before I saw this =D
Is it a community site? Lots of regulars? They don't usually click - that could be the problem.
You also need to experiment with Ad sizes, placement and colours. It varies site to site so much that it's impossible to know what will work for you.
The trick is try something else, then wait a week. Rinse and repeat until you find your sweetspot.
As a general rule of thumb guide, the AdSense heatmap is generally about right (but don't let it stop you experimenting - I have a couple of sites which contradict the heatmap, although they're the exception rather than the norm):-
[adsense.blogspot.com...]
If you are a community site, a useful trick is to use your cookie settings to detect logged in members and run two sets of ad channels - one channel for logged in users, and one channel for "guests". That will actually give you a far more accurate picture of your CTR, differentiating the two.
Then you can start some analysis and decide how to go forward - maybe even not showing ads to logged in regulars at all if you see that they're not producing anything for you.
Setting channels for different areas of the site is also a good idea - you'll probably find certain areas outperforming others. Then you'll which areas of the site you really want to push people into via navigation and strategically placed links.
TJ
embedding the ads within the content is not working
I agree - my experience is also that this achieves the best CTR, but colour schemes make a radical difference, as does Ad unit type.
Some sites work best with complimentary but stand-out colours, some work best blended.
It's all about trial and error - there is no right and wrong. Every single site is different in terms of what performs.
The heat map and blending is a good starting point, but just because that didn't work, you can't rule out AdSense until you've tried it in other variations.
TJ
I will try moving the ads around a little, and changing the colours.
At the moment, the ads are quite blended, as I have made the border and background colours of the ad unit the same as the background colour of the site, in an attempt to make the ads look like part of the content, but maybe this isnt the best way to go. I might try using some different, but complementing colours, and see if that makes a difference.
In answer to your questions, yes, it is a community site to the extent that users can leave comments on various articles and images around the site, but only a fraction of the visits I recieve are from members who regularly browse the site. Most visitors are one time guests.
Also, I might look into using the channels feature in more depth, because at the moment I have very little idea of which pages and areas are paying best.
This is similar with mysite, the high number of impressions, makes up for the low CTR. I was just looking for ways to improve =)
My site makes between $5-$10 a day as it stands.
The site gets about 1200 uniques per day, whcih google usually sees as about 25,000 ad impressions per day.
In my opinion that's a huge number of page views per visitor, just over 20.
Are people searching simply for information? I ask that since a few nights ago that is precisely what I did on some art sites trawling through hundreds of pages trying to identify a painting. I had no interest in a purchase nor clicking on an ad.
If one took the average as 4 or 5 pages then immediately your CTR is nearer 1.0%.
With so many pages have your visitors any reason to click on ads? Are they so happy with your content that they have found what they needed without going elsewhere?
Not every subject is suitable for reasonable Adsense earnings, it would be interesting to hear from any other art sites how they do?
My page views were cut drastically when I put adsense on my site. But that is expected since my visitors are clicking on the ads.
Review art supplies. Judging by the ads on the major art forums, there's a fair number of sites that sell art supplies online.
People will read your review, see ads for the same product, and hopefully click on the ads to see what the prices are for those products. If they're fans of your work they may well want to use the same products you do anyway ...
Also, there's at least one art supply site that has affiliate sales but I can't remember the name of the site offhand.
Leva
The point OptiRex and G_Smitty made about the number of page views per visitor:
I guess your right, if each of those 1200 uniques only viewed one page each, and my clicks were still around the same, then my CTR would be good. Its only because they view so many pages, that makes it low.
My site is only a hobby site, and I still want people to continue to use and browse the site, however, it would be nice that when they leave the site, they leave the site via an advert ;)
I never looked at is this way before, but I get around 50 clicks per day, which out of the 1200 uniques I got, isnt too bad.
My site was never made with adsense, or even any profit at all in mind, so maybe Im just asking too much of it.
