My website www.photosales.co.nz does pretty good for traffic, but no good for AdSense - Im lucky to make any more than $0.20c per day, and can not see what im doing wrong. I have changed some of the adverts like Google suggest to the wide 600 x 160 skyscraper ones, all in the Photography Articles section, but still no joy. Does the site just suck or something? At the moment the only sales I am getting are a couple of scripts I have written for the photostore I am running, but that's about it. Any thoughts?
What kind of traffic is the site generating? The trouble with picture rich content is the eyes tend to focus on the content rather than blended ads.
Agreed. BTW apart from Adsense which is CPC based, have you considered fixed rate such as TLA or affiliated based advertising?
Slightly off topic, perhaps worth considering is that the presence of AdSense could be undermining your actual stock photography sales. I suspect you've put AdSense on there because you're not making much in the way of photo sales. Have you checked out your competition? There are a lot of big (some free) stock photography sites out there selling tens of thousands of photos at well under $10 each. In addition, they are large trusted brands with slick professional-looking sites and active communities. Most people in the market for stock photos are likely to be aware of these sites and as such, you'll be weighed against those sites. I suspect that unless you have the very highest quality photos, you're going to have people running away very quickly from $40+ price tags. I would suggest that you research your competition and figure out how you're going to stand out from them and then figure out how you want to best serve your website visitors. Do you want them to buy from you, or do you want to provide a free service and capitalize off of the ad-clicks? If the latter, it may be worth expanding your offering and explaining a bit about each photo. This will help you get a little more relevancy on your ads as well. One other thing, you could try blending your ads a little better and place them closer to "hot" zones on your web page. The ads on the right won't factor into a lot of people's eye movement/viewing patterns as they scan your web page, and the ads up top look very distinctly like banners. They're also sitting on a different coloured background than the rest of the content and further differentiate themselves with borders. Research "google adsense heat map" and "adsense blending" for more info.
I agree with SnowDevil about checking the competition and prices of your photos. With regards to your adsense, try blending the ads in between your photography articles, in between the photos on the main page. Put the chitika shopping mall at the top rather than the bottom of the page might help as well. Just some ideas...
At first I didn't even notice the adds next to your site search button. My eyes went straight to the left category column on you site.
you need better ad placement and also in ur nav. links use that google links thing so it would help..
Ok, I will try this. I have "Blended" the top Google Advert in the search bar - does that part look correct?
I have jsut changed it to Referrals 2.0 so I will see how that goes for a few weeks. thanks everyone for their input on this.
Have you tried Adsense's link units? Adsense TOS now allows 3 link units and in my experience, in some sites, link units perform better than traditional ad units seeing your site I'd experiment link units in 3 different places 1- vertical link unit above "Photo Categories" 2- horizontal link unit below the search box 3- horizontal link unit at the topmost area above the header(just like engadget.com) good luck
What do you think the word "blended" means? It means making it look more like it's part of the content. Putting it in a distinct gray box away from the content is not, by any definition of the word, "blended". Get rid of the gray. Maybe even try moving the adsense into the blue area (in those colours). Another thing you could do would be to make the first photo spot in the thumbnail grid instead have an square adsense ad. Or maybe after the first or second row of thumbnails, have a strip ad.
Why does EVERYONE!!!!!!! Think that ad CENTS is the only way to make money........ This sooooooo frustrates me........sheeesh For example,. Did you realize that clipart.com has an affiliate program?
blah blah blah. Blend, mix, puree, chop, grind. Start by asking yourself why people are going to your site in the first place. Are you targeting potential photo buyers? Do you expect them to browse your site or click? Let's assume that I'm a potential photo buyer. Guys, this really isn't rocket science. I'm interested in military photos. I spot a aircraft shot and click on it, which brings me here. http://www.photosales.co.nz/details.php?gid=45&sgid=&pid=229 Naw, not interested. What now? Click on an Adsense ad. Why? Here's what I see initially (from AdSense). 1. free online photo sharing. 2. photo recovery software 3. ford vehicle photos. 4. Adobe.com ad (like I didn't know of them already) 5. Some stupid Vietnam ringtone. 6. Get a Web site to sell my images. Take a look at that list. I'm a photo buyer (specifically military photos). Do you see anything on that list that should get my attention? I hope you said no. If you want to REALLY stretch it, #2 is potentially in the park if, and only if, I'm a photographer too. But, many photo buyers aren't, so that's out. In a nutshell, you lack targeted ads. Blend all you want. Without better targeting, you'll have to do like others and resort to tricking your visitors into clicking. Play around and see if you can get better targeting. Look for stuff that's showing up on many pages, but isn't targeted, like the Jobs Web site. Put those sites in your ban list (unless you have other sites that might fit that target).