Forum Moderators: martinibuster
You really have to gauge the monetary loss in sales that you, personally, might sustain as a result of x percent of people leaving your site via adsense clicks, factor in the cost per click/lost possible customer, and actually calculate it out, at least approximately.
Nobody can do this for you. Now, I haven't done exact math for our sites, but I'd "guesstimate" from historical sales data that we might lose about 30% in sales resulting from people heading off to other sites via google rather than taking more time to consider our "stuff". I'm not going to give real numbers here, but since our adsense income would be about 4x the lost money, it's a no brainer.
I make a few assumptions here with my numbers, since I really don't have the inclination to spend dozens of hours collecting data, experimenting, and so on. But that's my general thinking.
Freq---
How many business-to-business companies have Adsense ads on their sites? How many manufacturers' websites have Adsense on them?
If it's a sales-based website then wouldn't you actually sell more of that product if you're only sellling that product on the site? The potential customer comes to your website--if you give them somewhere else to go besides to your order page (i.e., Adsense) then you won't give them a chance to actually order the product that you want them to buy.
Personally, I would create two sites. One that sells the product and another one that's solely informational about that type of product--that's where I would put the Adsense.
Xonio said:
"Some people will head off to other sites thru Adsense, but what would be the conversion rate of these 30% if they stayed on"
I'm already calculating based on actual sales figures, so conversion rates with these numbers aren't relevant. I estimate that for OUR sites, we probably lose about 30% of gross dollar sales as a result of having adsense. It's an estimate based on historical data, what we sold before adsense and what we sell now. It's not scientific so there's lots of room for error.
As for site image, yes, that's an issue, but if adsense is integrated into the site well, I don't believe they negatively affect site image.
What is interesting is that our CPM for adsense ads on PRODUCT pages is MUCH higher than on other pages, which may be a function of google paying more for those ads because they convert better, or...who knows. CPM for ads on product pages are running at least 200% higher.
Bottom line is that each site is different, each sector and topic and product different, so the only way to answer these questions is to collect the best data you can, and make guestimates as best as you can.
Google Adsense is not meant for sales based websites. Period.
A lot of people have informational sites where they recommend a product (be it affiliate products or their own). in these cases the two can go hand in hand.
Did you ever consider splitting the site?
You could keep the current site that you have which goes after sales. You could create a second site that focuses more on AdSense. Use the same search engine tactics that have brought you to your current success for the new site. Theoretically, you would appear twice on a search and would win no matter which site they chose.
I don't think the original poster is talking about a site like this, therefore your input does not apply.
