Hello I am relatively new to google adsense, and for any other ad network for that matter and I was wondering if my ad layout was satisfactory. Currently I am getting a low ctr <1%. I do not understand what I am doing wrong, I have done lots of research and have tried testing however I have a relatively low number of daily visitors (600-1000) SO please could you take a look at my site and tell me how to layout the ads for the top CTR. Any critisism will be appreciated, thank you. You can find my site by viewing my profile and visiting my homepage.
If you alter the colours of your adverts so they are the same colour as your text should help them blend in which seems to inprove CTR.
Perhaps its just me but your site took a good 60secs to load. I dont think your traffic is interested in clicking on ads! if they are searching for halo games they are looking for juicy info or wanting to buy the game i assume. I would put more text on your homepage and intergate ads into that u'll get more ads and higher paying ones too.
The average webmaster makes $50 a month from Adsense. And a click through of 1% to 1.5% is also average. So "what you are doing wrong" is expecting to make a lot of money from a program that doesn't make people a lot of money unless they have tons of traffic, pick a very specific industry, and create a compelling reason for their visitors to click the ads. And when they do click the ads the leave your site (Google Adsense has not legitimate way to open in a new window). So is the content on your site worth so little that you are willing to send people away for a few cents a click?
I will try to change the color of my advert to match my text, the reason my website doesn't look very professional is because i made it completely free, and microsoft doesn't provide many choices to alter anything. Again thanks to all who replied, I will try to figure out what is going on with the loading time, I was working on it so it may have been that.
1) Very cheap Template 2) Not using multi colored ads with adsense 3) Not using Round edges The site looks to be from 99 or something of that time. The reason your CTR is low is because no one who is actually interested is clicking on the ads. What's going on is people are accidentally clicking on them because they are blended so well, in which they are leaving the ad site in about 1 second. A lot of Newbies think blending ads is good, but there is a fine line between blending and hiding. Me, personally prefer ads which stand out but look good with the color of the site. EX: dinosaurfact.net
I personally don't insert ads into my text and since I don't do it any more (more than one year), my earnings increased. I also only use black and white for Adsense ads which improves the number of clicks. Generally I put a 338x280 ad between the title and the first paragraph; then another one between the resource box or the end of the article and the news (I have an rss feed at the bottom of my pages; except on my marketing site); then a skyscraper right after the nagivation menu but skyscrapers aren't really money earners as they look to much as advertisements. My earnings are more than $200 per month sometimes just from one site. If I were you I would re-work the whole site, re-design the page or choose another template as, for instance, you site is too big for my screen ;-) Try to make it more personal, people like to think that you really like what you do, and not that your site is here just to earn money from it. Good luck.
You may want to try different ads placement and observe each ad placement performance for around 2 weeks time. After that, you may notice with ads placement give you good results. In addition, ads color is also important, do adjust colors that match with your theme colors.