Extremely low CTR

[lainga9]

Hi Guys,

I am currently only receiving a very small CTR (I'm not sure if I'm allowed to give exact figures but it is tiny).

I have link units along the top of my site near the navigation bar, a medium rectangle with image ads on the right hand side of my homepage and floated right in my posts. I also have a large rectangle at the bottom of my posts.

Here is a link to my site - can anyone think why my CTR is so low?

[link to soccer player news site removed]

Thanks a lot,

Alex.

[edited by: martinibuster at 10:50 pm (utc) on Feb 4, 2012]
[edit reason] Removed link [/edit]

[martinibuster]

How many products do you think are associated with the name of a single soccer player?

[lainga9]

Yeah I appreciate that martinibuster but i thought there might be related products such as adidas, nike, anything to do with football (soccer) basically.

I had a website on Ronaldinho years ago and I was getting a much higher CTR from what was a much poorer website.

Any other thoughts?

[martinibuster]

Any other thoughts?

Your site is about a specific soccer player, not about soccer equipment. An extremely low CTR for that site is to be expected.

A site about soccer equipment will receive a higher CTR.

If the traffic grows to a reasonable size then you may want to consider a different monetization path, like selling advertising direct from the site using an ad selling script or a service like OpenX.

...and I was getting a much higher CTR from what was a much poorer website.

A lot has changed with AdSense earnings and CTRs from several years ago.

[adamxcl]

My CTR is 1/5 of what it was from 2004-2010. Pretty much every stat is a fraction of what it was on the same traffic. For me, it is a way of saying that we need to find more ways that are non-Google ways of making money on content.

[piatkow]

Two issues:

1. Visitor intent - are they interested in buying things and in particular the things that are advertised - hence clicking on ads
2. Available inventory.

My music related sites gets clicks when a major concert or festival is advertised and **** all in between. If it wasn't related to a physical business it wouldn't be worth the time to maintain.

[lainga9]

Ok thanks a lot for the info - I didn't realise Adsense statistics had changed. My CTR is about 1/15th of what it used to be though so I'm guessing I will have to look for other methods of monetising my site!

Thanks again.