Site Critiquie Required :: Adsense income seems has reached max and going down now

[livingingermany]

Hi all,
I would love to have a site critique of my site livingingermany.de . The site seemed lately to be growing and growing, it reached a max income which pleased me very much, but now seems to be getting lower and lower each day. I am not talking about weekend trends or trends associated with better weather or lower traffic, as the traffic levels are on the increase too. For some reason, the amount of clicks on the ads have gone down.

Can anyone spot something glaringly obvious about layout or ad format etc etc?

I don't use a full quota of ads on my front page as I want people not to take one look and think, ads ads ads, I have embedded them more in the content and search results of the joomla-backend site. livingingermany.de

Thanks for any help/critique
Dave

[webdevil]

Nice website. Try to put link unit ad(which is currently at the top of homepage) in the left side below menu.

:)

[j3r0m3]

first impression,
takes a while to load...

generally clean and neat layout

i'm also starting out in Adsense, but i dare say that your link ads are too close to the top. Perhaps some whitespace before your whole page starts might be an idea. Or you could have ad links on top of your left sidebar after the search.

At your main page, i had to search for links to click thru in the main portion. The 'Read more' link is blended in too well with the content already. Clicking into the articles do give good experience to the viewer

FYI, the firefox referal is kaput.
see pic.

just my 2 cents worth

[livingingermany]

Great replies Guys, exactly what I was hoping for, a trained eye who has never seen the page before. So, i have taken on board your comments, moved the link ads down to below the menu, shame I can't blend them in too well. I have also repaired the firefox ads at the top. I have to work on the read more links later.

Thanks again,
Dave

[webdevil]

Great replies Guys, exactly what I was hoping for, a trained eye who has never seen the page before. So, i have taken on board your comments, moved the link ads down to below the menu, shame I can't blend them in too well. I have also repaired the firefox ads at the top. I have to work on the read more links later.

Thanks again,
Dave

Now its ok just replace your bg colour and border colour with "F1F1F1"

Thats all.

[livingingermany]

Ooops, missed that one, thanks again.

[webdevil]

Now its perfect. :)

Waiting for my new suggestions......

[livingingermany]

Since my adsense earnings still seem to be going down on a daily basis, I am tempted to change the color scheme of the ads. Currently I use the 000000/000000/ffffff/ffffff/0000ff colour scheme, (txt/url/bg/border/link) - which I have heard from many is the most profitable on other sites. I am tempted to try adding a dark blue border, such as 000080, and see what it does to one of the channels.
Does anyone have experience of this? Blend in or stand out on such a site?