4000 visitors a day, less than 1% CTR - need a tweak

Hey all, I have around 4,000-5,000 visitors a day (85% from search engines) but only earning around $8-13 a day (around 20-ish clicks)

Is there something that you can recommend me on to change please? I've tried 300x250 or 336x280 underneath the title with no big effect, so I switch to 468x60 instead for an "easier on the eye" ad.
So in total I have:

• 468x60 ad under the title
• 300x250 image only on top of the sidebar
• 300x250 at the bottom of the post

url is http://www.cravingtech.com

 

yep. get rid of that junky 468by60 low advertiser demanded banner size and replace it with a 728by90. Put the 728 right under your logo and search there. Make sure its centered. Enjoy the 30% revenue increase and never forget the girl who got you an extra boost in one minute. Oh right.......make sure that 728 shows on ALL pages including the index, not just the inner pages. You'll probably get more than a 30% increase.

 

If that is the case, dump adsense, and sell ad space yourself....
this way you do not rely on pennies on the dollar from clicks
and you just have to sell ad space....

then again everything could be all wrong, maybe to need to hire
a ad/revenue consultant, maybe they would have better ideas
so that you can improve your income....

most people do not like ads, and have trained themselves to
overlook them altogether, and it even took me a min to
find 1 ad, honestly, nothing quickly grabbed my attention...

 

@Laceygirl: 728 x 90 takes a lot of extra space + will push the content further down (which is not really what I like to do because banner advertisers always want to be above the fold). Can give it a try at the most bottom of the site though (below footer), not sure of the CTR? Any experience?

@dscurlock: Problem is with economy nowadays, most advertisers want to pay for just $15-ish per month; With AdSense, I can at least get a few hundreds in total and AdSense doesn't really take lots of resources/load compared to running lots of banners to compensate

 

then why ask? One of the major reasons on how a click value is determined is based on the demand of the banner sizes that advertisers are using. Advertisers use the 728. I forget the number exactly but its very much higher than the 468. Actually to be honest the 468 is so junky that a lot of people are just removing it.
Another issue that you have ZERO ads on your index. Well after the 80% of visitors don't bother to go past the first page you lose a ton of impressions and clicks that way.

dscurlock, I earn about $98,000 pennies a month. I like pennies.

 

My traffic is pretty similar to yours. Proportion of search engine traffic, too. I'm over $2K/month and most of that comes from a skyscraper on my index page.

 

Here are a few ad tweaks:

1. Remove completely 460x60 ad at the top.
2. Instead of that banner ad, place 336x280 or even better 300x250 at the beggining of your post just under the title pushed on the left side.
3. Put the same sized ad in the middle of the post pushed on the left, and at the end of the post pushed to the left.
4. Remove ad in right sidebar, since it has very low CTR, I presume.
5. Make all of your ads to be wrapped with text with 10 px margins.

At last, but the most important thing, your site niche is not 'click happy', since you mostly got visitors interested in IT stuff, and those visitors are more 'ad aware' than for example, an average houswife.

P. S. Make all ads text/image-rich media, not only text and not only the image

 

Thanks for the suggestion guys, gonna experiment a bit. Yeah it is a hard niche for AdSense (technology) though thankfully I can counter it with Amazon affiliate ads

Do you think having the links "red" have an effect overall? (compared to Blue which people are used to clicking?)

 

Test, test, test and after that more test. This is only way to sucess with adsense. Since every page is unique and there is no universal recipe for adsense.

 

I think that the main problem is that nothing really sticks out on your page. It was hard to find your ads in the first place.

 

wow man, really good website.pagerank 4, good job!!!!

 

Thanks buddy, it's been PR4 for a few years..wish I can have more ><

I guess I need to make the ads more stand out in the content to attract the eyes; people been telling to blend the background etc but that may not work well on my design

 

Also, I just visited your site again and your image only ad at the top of the right side column was not even displaying a relevant ad. I was on an article about Online Threats and the ad was about learning to rebuild an engine. Make sure that all of your content is relevant, and you should get more clicks.

 

Thanks for having another look, vimier. Hm.. I actually have:
- Wrap the post content with <!-- google_ad_section_start --> and <!-- google_ad_section_end -->
- Turn off "Interest-based Ads Preference" on AdSense settings
- Turn off "Third Party Ads Preference" on AdSense settings

I guess there's nothing much else I can do there?

 

In google webmaster tools target your site in google.co.uk and you will get more per click. I did it for my site which has only 500-600 unique visitors a day and I can still make $10-$15 a day. Google pay more for UK traffic.

Also don't completely rely on adsense ads but join some affiliate program like amazon and put amazon text links to relevant pages and it will also make money from affilate program.

 

replacing the 300x 350 with a 336 x280 and move it up to where the video ad currently is, as it's virtually below the fold which is a big no-no. And try running it as a text only block, which should see the CTR jump up. Try it for a few days and see what results you get

 

I'll buy your site if you want to sell it.

 

@hope2life: Oh? Haven't heard of that one before, interesting. Yeah I have Amazon ads which work well on my review posts. It actually gives me a bigger income than AdSense at this stage

@adsenseplr Thanks for the suggestion. the 300x250 image only ad receives the most click so far but I'm happy to play around with it a little bit

@Ruddo: Not at this stage it's my "baby"!

 

Are you offering text links or sponsored posts?

 

If I am the owner of your blog. I will replace the ads in sidebar with Buysellads.