AdSesnse Link Units revisited again

[incrediBILL]

Sometimes I'm a late adopter of new things and wait to see what experiences everyone else has before I waste my time and the Link Units was getting such mized results I just bagged the idea. However, after my Commission Junction revenue took a slide this month I decided to replace one CJ Smart Zone ad locations with AdSense Link Units last night.

I get up this morning and much to my surprise my Sunday earnings are UP and Link Units contributed 30% of the income!

I sure hope this isn't a fluke.

[berto]

Do you guys/gals see simliar targeting or is it different?

It varies from the sublime to the ridiculous. Mostly it's much better targeting than with traditional Adsense ad units.

On one of my sites, I now use Ad Links exclusively, as traditional Adsense just doesn't work (i.e., abysmally low CTR).

[castar]

Adlinks is about 25% of my income this month. I should clear 4K.

That's about what I make, too on adlinks. Is it ok to ask what other programs are working for you? I find that intellitxt ads provide me close to the same income. I'm a widow raising 5 kids and can't believe how well my sites do. I guess I keep waiting for the bottom to fall out. It's unbelievable!

[spaceylacie]

The bottom line won't fall out if you just keep close tabs on things. Channel every change, no matter how small, you make. Never change your entire site at one time, study data, make small changes, study data. Make sure you have at least 3-4 stats programs running for each site, this will give a more accurate report.

Good luck with those 5 young'ens!

[spaceylacie]

Oh, sorry, I'm double posting again. I only run Adsense nowadays(besides private advertisers), except on new sites. I recently dropped CJ for the most part(Ebay started out doing well then died). I run Ebay on new sites for the $20 per new registration. After a while, all my reg. visitors already have Ebay accounts so the $ drops to almost nothing, just 10 cents a bid. Forget about getting paid for a click.

Private advertisers.... they are awesome.

[castar]

I tried running CJ, too, but made almost nothing. Sounds like you're doing great! Wish I were more of a sales person, like you :) Actually, I do have one that pays me a couple hundred/mo.. One of these days, I'm going to hire someone to do sales. When you can't do it yourself, make enough to pay someone else. Thanks for sharing.

[spaceylacie]

When you can't do it yourself... get some people working for you, for free, that's my motto. On my sites, I offer a maintenance program. Small advertisers who normally couldn't afford my prices can maintain a section of the site in exchange for exposure.

Sorry, we're getting off topic here.

[castar]

oops, you're right, sorry :) How did your numbers end up today incrediBILL?

[incrediBILL]

Got 2 hours to go, 50% over norm.

My wife not only didn't beat me over the head, she looked up my "TODAY" amount and emailed it to my cell phone when I was vacationing at the pub for 2 hours, what a trooper.

2 hours left and I have high hopes :)

[Sobriquet]

i read this post yesterday... decide to give adlinks a try..

i put it one one site, got a boost of 20% in a day.

i put it on another site, and lost ctr as so one clicked on them at all. This site a 300 times more traffic than my first one.

I guess adlinks maynot work well on all sites.

[Swebbie]

I'm testing Bill's ad links idea on my top site as of today. We shall see! If it flops, I'm gonna overnight a large blunt object to Bill's wife. :-)

[incrediBILL]

I'm gonna overnight a large blunt object to Bill's wife.

She already has a large blunt object, it's name is Bill.

BTW, by 10am tomorrow I should be kibitzing on this from my newly installed patio furniture with the new laptop, a beer in tow and a burger on the new BBQ, I can handly wait!

Thanks Google! <wink!>

[yoyo8]

OK, curiosity got the better part of me and I added it directly above the skyscraper (most pages) on my mid-size site. For the other pages it would be on its own with a separate ad block on the content page.

I would think it would mostly siphon off clicks from the skyscraper and make it a wash but I'll know more when the stats start rolling in.

[spaceylacie]

I put mine in the side margin, above my site navigational links, away from other adsense on page. I use the leaderboard and a 468X60 blended with content.

I didn't notice my regular adsense go down at all when I added the adlinks to this location.

Last night I got a scare when my money did a backslide, but it's back in my account today. Another record day.

[abbeyvet]

I use adlinks in a small div, floated to the right, in the middle of articles, with the same bg colour as the page. They sit nicely - not too intrusive for the reader and relevant.

They have consistently done VERY well since I started to do that. cpm less than ordinary ads, but ctr much higher.

[castar]

Congrats Bill and others who are having success with adlinks!

[incrediBILL]

Now I see why people get paranoid - today AdLinks alone is running 100% above all other channels.

The CTR and eCPM are thru the roof for my site and at my current rate today, if this keeps up, I'll eclipse yesterdays total by 1-2pm PST, maybe even by noon, who knows.

Did I say WOW! yet today?

[Buford]

I don't make much on Adsense, pennies per day usually, but by far the block with the biggest CTR is Ad Links. I usually average arounf 5 cents a click overall, but today I had a 33 cent click and a 16 cent one off of the links block. CTR is staying about the same, less than 1%. (The site in question is sort of a fan-site that is primarily photo galleries, so it's understandable if not a little frustrating.)

Granted, I also did a slight revamping of the site recently and added a ton of new pages; I also removed an ad block leaving only Ad Links and a small ad block at the bottom of the pages. This may have something to do with the jump in values.

[castar]

Speaking of adlinks. I just saw a strange thing. Imagine a three column site with content in the middle and two navs; links on one side and skyscraper ad on the other. On the left side I have a 160x600 sky of google text links. Then in the middle column I have text with adlinks under the first paragraph. I couldn't figure out why the adlinks wouldn't show every time, then a few minutes ago I saw the adlinks appear directly under the 160x600 adsense ad unit. I didn't put them there, google did. Since we can't put more than one adlinks ad per page, I'm assuming that's why it didn't show up under the first paragraph of content. Trouble with this is I think the adlinks work better within the content of the page. I'll need to wait for the data to come in though as I watch the numbers. Anyone else see the adlinks pop up under a 160x600 ad unit?

[Swebbie]

OK, no blunt object will be sent to Mrs. IncrediBILL, so you're safe (for now).

I put ad links on almost every page of my highest revenue site, and the results after one full day are pretty amazing! Biggest day of the month on many fronts except EPC, which is about the same. CTR is up 5% points (that's 5% in raw figures!); eCPM is up almost $7.00 (which is HUGE!); and I'm definitely going to have the best revenue day of the month (close to the best EVER on this site).

BILL, tell the wife I'm coming over and if one man kissing another man offends her, TOUGH! I'm smoochin' ya, big guy. Brush your teeth! :-)

[spaceylacie]

I want to kiss Bill too, then knock him in the head with a blunt object, then steal his money!

[Swebbie]

That's BRILLIANT Spacey! By publicly confessing your intentions to do bodily harm to BILL and to steal from him, when it happens no one will suspect you because they'd never think you daft enough to write down your plans so brazenly. Oh, you're a crafty one, you are.

[spaceylacie]

;-)

[annej]

When adlinks first came out I experimented with it on pages that usually don't target well and saw no big difference. I didn't even think of trying it on pages that already have plenty of related ads but late last nite (after reading this thread) I added ad links on the top of my left column in a popular section of one of my sites. I think it will be a good test. So far today it looks good but that isn't much to go on. One problem is that my CTR and earnigs made a bit of a jump over the last few days anyway. I'm tracking the adlinks in a channel but won't be able to tell if they take away from other earnings.

I'm curious, for the people seeing good gains with adlinks, are your regular adsense ads usually well targetted? I'm wondering it there is a greater gain for people who don't usually get well targetted ads or are good gains being made with adlinks even on pages that have an abundance of well targetted regular ads.

[spaceylacie]

My first month of testing, I made $10.00 from one average page. So I added it to 100 more pages... = 1k.

I'll add some more next month, trying to just test one site at a time.

[hunderdown]

annej, it's apparent to me from some of the messages in this thread that Adlinks acts differently on different sites. Some people found them to be MORE targeted than the regular ads. I find them to be less so, but in a useful way--one of the five keyword links will be one that matches content on my site, and the other four are related but different. This is great for my home page, the only place I've placed them so far, and I'm thinking it may work well on some heavily visited pages that seem to get traffic that's not as targeted as elsewhere in my site.

The only way to know is to try. What with wanting to reorganize my site and experiment with these, I've got months of trying out different possibilities.

[Swebbie]

one of the five keyword links will be one that matches content on my site, and the other four are related but different.

I think that's an easily overlooked plus with ad links. No doubt we all get visitors to certain pages who found us from a related, but maybe not exact, search. Maybe they were looking for batting helmets and I sell baseball caps. Well, my regular AdSense ads might all show ads for caps, but one of the Ad Links links might just read "Batting Helmets." Voila, I just turned a "close, but no cigar" visitor into a "CHA-CHING YEAH $$$" visitor.

[ken_b]

Well, after several days of Incredibills browbeating us here about how well these things (adlinks) perform, I finally dropped some on 40 of my photo gallery pages.

Just a small test. I'll post the results here.

If it's a flop, I'm gonna blame Bill! :)

[castar]

Ok, now this is reminding me of the old late 70's Saturday Night Live. Anyone remember Mr. Bill?

[incrediBILL]

WARNING ALERT: DAY 4 OF ADLINKS EUPHORIA CRISIS

With several days of data to examine with my tongue hanging out it's clear AdLinks has consistently DOUBLED my daily earnings, a 100% increase.

How is this possible?

Do those 5 little links have catnip on them?

How can the CTR on this be 100% above the rest?

It makes no sense but makes plenty of cents :)

I'm curious, for the people seeing good gains with adlinks, are your regular adsense ads usually well targetted?

Yes, and AdLinks doesn't seem to have had any significant impact on my usual channels, maybe 10% if that much.

My page CTR and eCPM are soaring for my site, this is just unheard of.

BILL, tell the wife I'm coming over and if one man kissing another man offends her, TOUGH!

She wanted to know if you would be staying for breakfast? ROFL

after several days of Incredibills browbeating us here about how well these things (adlinks) perform

It wasn't browbeating, somewhere between stunned disbelief like reporting a UFO sighting on Larry's site and gleeful boasting that something actually doubled my daily earnings. Hope it works well for you too!

Anyway, this is fun and all but I have to resume monitoring the income :)

[Swebbie]

Way to go BILL!

I'm on Day 2 of my own test and so far there's been a nice effect on CTR. Yesterday I also saw a big jump in EPC, but today it's back down to normal (whatever that is in this crazy month of May). Overall, I'll take a hefty increase in CTR all day long. I have no other cause I can attribute the rise in other than adding Ad Links to most of that site's pages (upper left corner, like a navigation block). Give it a try!