Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Not bragging here (in case someone is 'jealous' or offended...) Just want to do a survey on how well this works for everyone.
Thanks.
yep we all want to know davewray's niche and secret..
Nothing personal at all Dave but a silly comment on sites in general - if the content is really bad maybe people are clicking on the external links (ANY external link; just getmeouttahere!) just to get away as fast as possible.
I always assumed RCjordan's higly successful ugly sites worked that way.. ;)
Dave.
Welcome to WebmasterWorld, your link will get you some traffic over the next hour, but I think a mod will "anonomyse" the link within the hour.
You are getting a decent income, but it looks as if your CPC is quite low (I would have a guess at maybe 10 cents?)
read your article though ;)
Something else that may be exerting downward pressure: I'm wondering about the ROI for advertisers on their clicks from Adsense exposures compared to clicks from regular Adwords in the search results. Common sense says that visitors who click through will be in a different frame of mind if they come across one's ad after a deliberate search, compared to clicking it when they happen to see it on a content site when they're doing something else. That can't help but make a difference to the conversion rate. I've heard of a number of advertisers who have chosen to appear in the search results only.
Ideally, advertisers would be able to set different maximum bids for Adsense (content) exposure and Adwords (search) exposure. Then ROI and natural market forces would let things find their own level.
As an advertiser, I disabled the content ads.
Before I see some results from others, I didn't want to waste company's money. We just started analyzing ROI for keywords. Maybe next step will be analyzing the conversion rate from content ad. At this point, there is no way to know the difference between search traffic and content ads traffic.
Common sense says that visitors who click through will be in a different frame of mind if they come across one's ad after a deliberate search, compared to clicking it when they happen to see it on a content site when they're doing something else.
Your assumption may be valid for news sites, community sites, and other general-interest sites that attract the same readers day in and day out. If John Doe is visiting a major portal site, browses the travel pages, sees an article on cruising, and clicks on a travel agent's AdSense ad for Tiffany-Cartier Cruises, he's unlikely to be in the market for a luxury cruise at that given moment.
BUT: Let's say that Mr. Doe has been considering a luxury cruise with Tiffany-Cartier and looks up "Tiffany-Cartier Cruises" in Google. He finds my article at Cruisingandboozing.com that describes a Tiffany-Cartier Mediterranean cruise. If he now clicks on a travel agent's AdSense ad for Tiffany-Cartier Cruises on my site, he's more likely to buy than he would be if he'd seen that same AdWord in Google. Why? Because he was looking for "decision support" from a third-party source before he making his purchase decision. What's more, he now knows more about Tiffany-Cartier Cruises than he did before he visited my site--including the fact that Tiffany-Cartier Cruises cost an average of $800 per day. In short, he's as prequalified a lead as an AdWords or AdSense advertiser could hope for.
Now, in some categories, it may make sense for an AdWords advertiser to skip the "content ads" option, simply because the ad is likely to attract too many "happy clickers." But for other topics, such as the example above, a content site is likely to deliver better-qualified leads than a search page will. The only way to find out is to experiment.
BTW, I think it's likely that--at some point--Google will let advertisers select or exclude sites from their AdSense buys. Maybe it will even let advertisers bid for certain sites or pages individually, just as they currently bid for individual keywords and keyphrases.
To use my imaginary example again, an AdSense clickthrough from a Cruisingandboozing.com report on a Tiffany-Cartier cruise would be worth far more to the advertiser than a clickthrough from, say, a NEW YORK TIMES article on Caribbean cruising. For that matter, an AdSense clickthrough from any page of Cruisingandboozing.com might be worth more than a clickthrough from a cruise article in THE NEW YORK TIMES, simply because Cruisingandboozing.com attracts readers who have a strong interest in cruising.
AdSense is a program with tremendous potential for both advertisers and publishers, but its real success will come when it lets advertisers have more control over where their ads appear.
Have to agree with you europeforvisitors on this statement
Like you I have built up a network of high quality information sites with good search engine positioning - it's a rarer combination that you might think.
If an advertiser can see the quality sites that are available, then then will bid to be on those sites (given that in time I too believe that the advertisers will be able to choose more where their ads appear in the furure)
It is likely that in time advertisers will discriminate against low quality sites that offer little to them (or indeed browsers after information)
Adsense is a program with enormous potential, and a Darwinian evolution in front of it. If Google corners this market and its potential, it will further shore up their dominance in the market in the long term
I can get 1-10% click thru rate on regular adwords and .1% for the exact same ad on content ads.
Interesting. That's a fraction of the average clickthrough rate that I'm seeing on my site, which would tend to suggest that there's something to be said for targeting by site as well as by page.
Google has to do it for you.
It appears that when I run an ad for Distributors which shows on Google, it gets a high click-thru rate but on the content sites where people may be looking for the distributors, it does not get much click-thru.
When I run an ad for consumers, it works better on both google and content sites but is still only about 10% of the response on the content sites.
- Revenue per click varies HUGELY from day to day (sometimes x, sometimes 2x!)
- Click thru ratio is sometimes y%, sometimes *8y*%!
Granted, I'm having 1500-3000 impressions daily, so with a smaller number like that, there are bound to be fluctations. But such dramatic fluctuations really throw me for a loops.
I tried finding patterns on weekday vs. weekend, but even that doesn't hold up. Sometimes weekends are awful. This Saturday, so far, my revenues are particularly impressive!
Anyone else having such wild "AdSense Mood Swings"? :D
Sometimes I follow a day's development and am in really low spirits as 30 clicks have produced only half the profit as on the previous day, and then 2 or clicks hit expensive ads and make more money then the other 30 combined. And I have no clue which of the ads those are grrr!
SN
[adsenses.com...]
I've found most of the tips and tricks in this forum and on that website.
I guess that a representative CPC would be more like $0.15 or less. My clickthru rate is 0.8%.
The high CPC's will certainly decline in the coming months. Even $0.15 CPC may not be sustainable, let alone the handful of $2.00+ CPC's. Nonetheless, I like Adsense; it will give Amazon some healthy competition for Affiliate site presence and market share.
You would get a much higher click through rate if you moved the AdSense ads to the top of the page IMO
If I were you, I would give it a whirl at the top for a few days and see if that helps
The high CPC's will certainly decline in the coming months. Even $0.15 CPC may not be sustainable, let alone the handful of $2.00+ CPC's.
IMHO, the sustainability of a given rate will depend on:
1) The value of the lead to the advertiser. (A travel agency selling $10,000 luxury cruises can spend more per lead than somebody who's selling a $19.95 household item. Similarly, a mail-order vendor that wants a new customer for its mailing list may be willing to accept a low ROI on its first sale.)
2) The available media alternatives. (Even at a $2.00 CPC rate, an AdWord may be cheaper than targeted direct mail or a magazine ad with a toll-free number.)
3) What the competition is doing.
By the way, I wouldn't put too much stock in effective CPMs or average CPC rates until you've got a large enough sample to provide meaningful averages. Publishers with low traffic (e.g., daily impressions in the four figures or less) seem to be witnessing much bigger swings than publishers with greater traffic. That stands to reason, since--for example--a site with 1,500 impressions per day and a CTR of 1% will have only 15 clickthroughs, which is too small a sample to yield statistically significant results.
Boils down, in the end to what used to be called Thatcherite Economics in the UK - supply and demand coming together at a price that is enough of an incentive to both parties. The law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest.
Why am I spending a lot of time on adapting sites to AdSense? Because it pays well currently to have Google Ads on the sites.
If I was only getting half the amount it would not pay enough, and I would switch to another way of making my sites pay.
AdSense will evolve in a Darwinian way? How, who knows, but no doubt those guys at Google are keeping a close watch on it and us!
"If I was only getting half the amount it would not pay enough, and I would switch to another way of making my sites pay."
Be careful. Google does not say what share of advertiser revenue it gives to Adsense participants. Almost certainly they are giving us a large fraction of it (100%?) today. With equal certainty, they will keep more for themselves in the future.
Today, they are in startup mode, and want to attract thousands of websites. Which they are doing very successfully. Once the program is established, they will begin harvesting the fruits of their labor. A cynic might call it "bait and switch."
Almost certainly they are giving us a large fraction of it (100%?) today. With equal certainty, they will keep more for themselves in the future.
That's certainly possible, but--if you're correct--they're probably assuming that rising CPC rates will compensate for any adjustment in the revenue split. I can't imagine them simply cutting publishers' revenues across the board, because publishers can quit the program instantly at any time.
One thing to keep in mind: The number of quality "content sites" for any given topic is finite, and AdSense won't be without competitors forever. (With Overture owning several search engines, it seems likely that its "Content Match" program will be followed by a larger ad network that offers page-targeted text ads on many niche sites.) It's in Google's best interests to treat publishers fairly, because the publishers it needs most--those who can deliver significant traffic in high-profit niches--will be prime targets for "cherry-picking" by future rivals.
Since Adsense doesn't even publish the payout rate, they can trim it whenever they want. A little this quarter, a little more next quarter.
Lots of sites, like mine, are hand-coded, and the decision to remove affiliate links from 200 or more pages is not taken lightly. Folks will do that if the revenue goes to zero suddenly. But when confronted with an unexplained, but not deadly, deterioration of CPC, many will stay.
BTW, I'm very high on the Adsense program. Even if my CPC's drop to $0.05, it's still relatively effort-free revenue.
Also, the Adsense program offers Amazon some competition for presence on affiliate websites. Its gotta be good for us.
As someone who has work for the big corporations in my time, I would be surprised if they tried to market something (particularly in such a volatile market as the web) without using the true "commission" / "brokerage fee" / call it what you like percentage that they are intending to work on in the long run.
The purpose of a test market is to see if the plan/product is viable, you do not get those figures by "fiddling" the figures.
I would say it is much quicker to take coding out, than put it in.
If the whole market goes this route, then you would just drop in the same sort of sized ads from another advertiser if Google do not deliver the dollars (or become too parsimonious)
In the meantime, like you, I am happy with the potential revenue - always anxious to improve, I agree with an earlier poster that this Adsense program does get you looking at corners of your web sites that had been gathering dust for many moons. I will be interested to see how traffic improves to some of these sites over the next few months
You would get a much higher click through rate if you moved the AdSense ads to the top of the page IMO
If I were you, I would give it a whirl at the top for a few days and see if that helps
In my experience, actually, don't put it on the top of the page... but NEARLY at the top. On this page, for example, I'd put it above the 'Google Adsense' header, but below the blue and grey navigation lines.
By putting the ad WITHIN your content - below the navigation, above the text - you'll get better clicks still. And it looks like a part of your content.
I've been an Amazon Associate for over three years. That program has been marked by constant reduction, by one means or another, of the commission rates.
Amazon and AdSense have virtually nothing in common.
Amazon is an e-commerce destination site and an established brand name. People are going to shop at Amazon whether or not they see a book link at sues-crossstitch-and-wrestling.com. If you were to take away all of Amazon's associates, Amazon.com would still exist.
AdSense, in contrast, is an advertising network. It generates revenues by distributing targeted ads through independent Web sites. Its entire business model is based on parterships with Web publishers in a multitude of niches. If you were to take away all of AdSense's advertising partners, AdSense wouldn't exist.
Now, it's possible that AdSense can afford to lose Web publishers who don't generate significant clickthroughs and revenues. Google might even decide to set revenue minimums or have a multi-tiered program with different commission levels (just as it currently has both the AdSense program and a more flexible--and, presumably, more lucrative--"content partner" program for large corporate sites). But Google has to be very careful about dictating terms or alienating publishers, or it will risk losing the high-traffic/high-CPC publishers that it needs most (and who, not coincidentally, are most likely to have alternative sources of revenue).
As for Amazon being forced to pay out higher commissions in the future because of the effect of Adsense on the affiliate world...well, that is a good thing because I still have Amazon links on my site..and they are doing..well, basically not much at all!
Adsense has so far put every single one of my affiliate programs to shame, and that's putting it lightly! It indeed does allow the "small" player to succeed. Let's put it this way, based on CTR and CPM right now, all I'd need to do is go from a couple hundred impressions per day to 1500 impressions per day and I would be able to replace my current salary and my "regular" job. Of course, the big assumption is that G will continue to pay at the same rate it is right now....whatever that may be! ;) As well, we're assuming that the novelty of Adsense on our sites will not wear off, thus contributing to lower CTR's...
Dave.
