Is it worth it

I am wondering whether it is worth my while using adwords here. Essentially I will be using to hopefully gain more clicks on my adsense banners and increase my revenue, but am unsure whether it will work or is worth my while.

Do you think it will work.

The site is http://www.silvertails.net

I jsut wonder whether people will end up clicking on the ads after they get there?

Daniel

 

You first have to work on retainning the visitors and not on making them clicking on adsense.
Once you have a good returning user base the adsense clicks will come.

 

I have not done this with any success with my sites but many others have you need to find targeted keywords and pay very little for them your site needs to convert very well for this to work.

 

I have a userbase of over 1000 with most of them returning daily to view the page. They just dont click on ads though

 

Buying traffic from Google with the hopes they'll click on the Google ads on your site... there are a few people who've seemed to make this work but it seems to me there are far easier ways to raise your revenue if you've already got a solid user base/traffic level.

The first thing I'd suggest after looking at your site is to redo the ad code for your leaderboard (728x90) across the top. You've done well putting the images above your ads like you have, but lose the gray border around the ad unit. It serves to separate the ad links from the images and negate the effect the images should be having.

Also, the ads in your "Latest News Headlines" could be tweaked to blend a little better. The coloring is fine but right now the ad text and links is a larger font than your other text and links. Get everything to blend evenly and you'll likely see far more clicks from it.

Hope some of this helps.

 

Hi Danny,

I think it's unlikely that you'll turn a profit by using AdWords to advertise a site that displays AdSense - this form of arbitrage has been discussed in many threads in this and other forums, and the consensus is that it's rarely, if ever, profitable. If you want to use AdWords to generate a profit, you're better off displaying affiliate products, or products of your own, on the site you're advertising.

Regarding return visitors: You'll typically see a lower CTR for sites with a lot of return visitors, based on the fact that they tend to develop "ad blindness", and don't even notice your ads after a few visits. You may want to consider placing images near your ad blocks, and even rotating these images, in order to increase your CTR.

HTH,
Sam

 

With the images and the border, I have to have a border there to stay within the TOS.

I might try some image tactics too as suggested.

thanks guys

 

Based on the most recent information I've seen on the "border" issue, there's no requirement to use one in the ToS...yet. However, Google has directly indicated to some publishers that they should include a border. To be on the safe side, I think it's a good idea to include one, but it doesn't have to be blatant - a light-grey border on a white background works just fine.

Sam

 

hmmm I might just make that change then

 

done, i just didnt want to make it too light. Is that any better.
(I get better feedback on my adsense ads here than I do in the adsense forums

anyone got any suggestions for http://www.myTipper.com?

 

Hrm...I'm not seeing any border. This is what I see in your source code:

google_color_border = "FFFFFF";
google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";

Am I missing something? By the way, nice job of aligning the images with the ads - I think you can expect a higher CTR presently.

Sam

 

there should be a border there I set it to EEEEEE which is one shade off of white. before that it was DDDDDD

 

i see, you were looking at the adlinks code, it is the next one down

 

Oops...yep, my bad. I didn't even notice the adlinks unit, so I guess that's a testament to the power of images.

On my monitor I can't see the border, but technically speaking, you've accommodated any potential "border request". If it were my site, I'd be fine with it. If you feel uneasy about it, you can always ask AdSense Support for a quick review - it's always better to contact them rather than the other way around, and the worst that could happen is that they'll ask you to make a change.

Nice site, by the way - one of the better ones I've seen.

Sam

 

i am ok with it. there is no tos breach at the moment thanks for the tips and the compliments. my members really make the site with all the content they add.

 

Just made another change on http://www.silvertails.net/news.php?extend.1366

to include images in the middle ad block. I just want to get that to wrap now and I will be well happy

 

Looks good, Danny. Yeah, the wrap is always the challenge, isn't it? You may also want to leave a bit more space between the content and the ads (top and bottom border), as well - not because of any compliance issues, but it just looks a bit "tight". Just my opinion, for what it's worth...

Sam