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Reasons for failure with Google Adsense in this modeling portal
I never expected to become rich thanks to the Google Adsense program (not even covering all my hosting expenses) but making just 6 during the last two months was not part of my initial planning either.
The main problem (apart from the low number of visitors) is the ludicrous click through rate of site: 0,20%.
I can think of (at least) three different reasons for that (in no particular order):
- My visitors are tech-savvy and don’t GET fooled by the ads plus they perfectly know the difference BETWEEN content AND ads (I guess that ON other sites, visitors may GET confused AND click ON the ads thinking that they ARE part OF the content OF the site)
- There ARE a very limited NUMBER OF ads targeting the keywords OF the portal. Very often I find the same ads again AND again (e.g. Gentleware AND Visual Paradimg seem TO specially LIKE my portal
). Do modeling-related companies thinkg that Adsense IS NOT worth?
- (ON purpose) Bad positioning OF the ads. Since I just make cents WITH them I am NOT keen ON placing ads within the site content nor showing the ad blocs AT the top OF the LEFT AND RIGHT columns.
I guess I’d better drop Adsense and negotiate some kind of ad sponsorship with software vendors (but for that I’d need TO multiply the NUMBER OF visitors so I’m afraid I’ll have TO stick TO adsense FOR a while).
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I didn’t even see your ads until I scrolled down! NO wonder you ARE getting such low click-through rates. It appears you ARE facing a bootstrapping problem here: if you gave the ads a better placement you might GET a better click-through rate, but you ARE reluctant TO do that until you have a better click-through rate.
How about doing a comparison: have half OF your page visits see the ads ON top OF your RIGHT-hand COLUMN, the other half sees them AS they ARE. THEN after a while CHECK TO see if you GET a better click-through rate.
Philipp
So far I’ve add a new ads block in the left side (and this at least are partly visibile without scrolling). Thanks for your test suggestion. I’ll need TO CHECK if that IS easy TO do WITH drupal.
I am employing AdSense in my blog and web page for a long time and I got a good perception about the user profile. In your analysis one point worth a deeper consideration. A person that go to a very technical subject is not really interested in commercial advertising, the general pages got a lot more revenues. If you want great revenues you need to change to some more appealing theme as football (I am Brazilian) or social gossips or healthy life without smoking, drinking alcohol or eat meat or something like these subjects. Or even on religion…
http://palazzo.pro.br
[...] ) and I´m not going to even bother trying to protest (would be useless anyway). In fact, I already realized that I would not become rich thanks to Adsense and was considering removing the Ad blocks completely but, still, now I have no option, Google took [...]