How Can You Promote Clicking?

[Radejr]

My banner is on my forums right now and if I put under it.

Click the banner once a day to help support the site.

Would that be against TOS?

[wanderingmind]

What I do not understand is - what you can do and can't do with Adsense is clearly understandable by just reading this WW forum.

Why don't people just read stuff here for a few days before wondering about promoting clicks? Isn't that the most obvious thing to do?

[ann]

Actually, the most obvious and logical thing to do is just as it says when you sign up: Read the T&C and agree to Googles terms....I fail to see how anyone who can read, I am assuming all webmasters can, that they do not take the time.

Would they buy a home or a car without reading the financial details?

Ann

[AbsintheSyringe]

Would they buy a home or a car without reading the financial details?

Very good point, but admit it how many of us actually read TOS for various things online. Hate to say it but most of the times it is the regular yada yada.

But when it comes to serious things, well adsense and getting a new car reading is the key.

Topics like these actually explain why there are so many people posting "my account got suspended" and such.

[david_uk]

By whatever means, (good site design/asking people to click) unless smartpricing decides that the click is worth something to the advertiser, you won't get a lot of money out of it.

I had the scenario recently whereby my site traffic has increased by a sizeable amount. The clicks and ctr have all increased. Smartpricing then leveled off, and reduced the cpc. I spent a lot of time analysing the data trends, and came to the conclusion that the reduction in epc was directly, and proportionately related to the increase in ctr/clicks.

I did email google about it who replied that smartpricing doesn't penalise webmasters for an increase in clicks. It's rather odd though, that over the next few days I saw a dramatic rise in epc. I think that maybe the algorythm *is* flawed in that it can only cope with medium to long term data trends, and over-reacts in a rather unpredictably violent way to sudden changes. Maybe they gave the server a kick or something. It's not the first time this has happened either.

Anyway, to answer the OP's point, you are better off building long term growth than aiming for short term gains - especially by fraudulent means.

[joeduck]

CLICK HERE for BEER

Incredibill needs your support for his $600 month beer fund!

Sorry, couldn't resist

[Rodney]

Why don't people just read stuff here for a few days before wondering about promoting clicks? Isn't that the most obvious thing to do?

As odd as it may seem, not every webmaster or person that signs up for adsense has heard of webmasterworld :)

However, everyone that signs up for adsense has heard of the TOS, so hopefully they can at least do that much reading.

[wyweb]

CLICK HERE for BEER

LOL joeduck..

Reminds me of a site I came across several years ago. It was a sort of political satire/sociological commentary site with some fairly crude original pen and pencil artwork and 70 or 80 pages of stinging, "no holds barred" narrative prose. Good writing. Top shelf stuff. The kind of site I can spend half a day on - easily. No ads of any sort but a "donate to the cause" page which asked visitors to do just that and included the following disclaimer - (and this of course is paraphrased):

"I'm not starving. My father/brother/mother/nephew does not need life saving surgery. I'm not on the verge of being kicked out on the street and in fact have a fairly comfortable home which hopefully I'll finish paying for at some point in the future, albeit distant future. I don't need to bail any friends or family out of jail and my children are well fed. I don't have creditors beating down my door and the electric company is not going to cut me off next week for non-payment. Even if any of these things were true, I wouldn't be talking about them here on this website. This website is for your amusement.

This site is just a hobby. My goal is to make it a hobby that pays for itself. Any donations will be used to cover hosting costs, domain renewal, ink for my printer and any other costs that are associated with keeping this thing alive. If there's anything left over I'll probably invest it in beer. Just so you know"

I didn't donate but I did email the guy to let him know that I thought his site was first rate and his fund raising approach refreshing. When people tell me that about my website(s) it's very close to being a cash deal for me. I mean that's how good I feel to hear it.

At the risk of straying too far off topic the question was "How Can You Promote Clicking?"

You can't promote "clicking". You can only create environments where clicking is easier to achieve. You can increase the relevancy of your pages with concise (spellchecked) text (as john_k said), and you can experiment with different ad layouts and color schemes. If all else fails you can contact adsense directly and ask them for help with this. Is this something you would be interested in doing, Radejr, or are you just after that fast buck and a half a day?

[ClosedGL]

Its so funny watching how people focus on the wrong end of the shovel. Is it the head that moves the soil or is it the man holding it? Produce decent content that people want to read. Increase the amount of traffic to your site. You'll never suit every visitor. Some will be interested in links to other, related subjects (thank Google for relevancy). These people will click the links. You will profit from these people.

Easy eh?

[joeduck]

You can increase the relevancy of your pages

Excellent advice Wyweb and Closed

However I wonder if many (most?) folks who are coming into this now are looking for the "get rich quick click" schemes.

Yes, you might do well with an online biz but you'll probably need to work your butt off as you'd expect to do offline.