Back at normal earnings: I learned my lessons: less is more.

I must say I´ve been a bit of an adsense freak the past few weeks, it gained me lots of knowledge on adsense and what to believe and what not. I made an okay profit from my main website which wasn´t made for adsense at all, thanks to a number of tips October was a great month but while I continued tweaking November is becoming a bad one...however, I was able to quickly return to normal.

When I went adsense mad I noticed a drop in by CPC earnings and CTR rates, while my total clicks remained about the same, I regained focus and I am back at my former earnings, it things go well I will have a great December month after my ´mad november´. Anyway, I would like to share a few of my tips since I learned so much here, maybe these are already known facts...

- Only use adsense on your top sites, your smaller, newer sites don´t get the best ads, at least that´s my experience. It seemed like adding smaller sites to one account damaged the account´s profit as a whole.

- Only use adsense on well-visited, well performing pages. I removed banners from pages with low CTR´s and while the account´s CTRs improved so did my CPC.

- Do you really want a link banner on top of your index page? I added the link banner on top of my site, it was a GREAT profit maker but do you really want people to click away once they entered your website? I decided to take it off and increase my overall page views, this way they will encounter better targeted ads anyway.

- Keep the number of ads low, I found it´s often better to have one ad than two or three... less is more.

 

I enjoyed your story but I'd question some of your points.

I think you should focus on total dollars profit rather than focusing on CTR or CPC. If I have a site that makes me $100 with high CTR and high CPC and another that has low CTR and CPC but makes me $100 or even $20 I would continue with both sites and try to do things to improve the CTR and CPC on both.

I'd be interested in any data that would support the smaller/newer sites damaging the total CTR/CPC.

I do agree with less ads, I like one set of adlinks and one large rectangle ad per page on pages that are not landing pages.

 

totally agree with tbarr60

 

FlashVictim very good tips, i was thinking about the same problems and don't know the aswers.

About that pages ,i have one big, one blog new and one page that has about unique 50 visits for a day.
Very important question for me is , does the 50 visits sites demage my home earn from ads, because in reports well it is very strange:

the big page is : http://x/wordpress/

and 50 unique is http://x/ ( the same server for 2 pages )

so i get very strange reports, very the same for both sites, and one is big 1000 unique and one is 50 unique ???

 

I do not believe that a own little Site will damage another own big site. ??

The more visitors click your ads the more you have. But one site has nothing to to with the other site, ore?

And yes, less ads is more profit.

 

well i still experiment with ads.... still 1 million miles to go to reach a good level

 

I know you want hard facts but the changes are not THAT obvious. My earnings per click were dropping to $0.05 while they are back to $0.10 and higher. I know these rates are low to some but I guess it´s the market I am in, I added new sections that seem to have better CPC´s (thankfully!).

Maybe this increase is because there is a lower number of ad bars per page which means Google only places the highest, so when somebody clicks it´s on a more profitable one. this way you also omit the site targeted ads which tend to gain you a very low profit anyway. These are just my findings, I think less is more is also a good way to keep your visitors happy.

I think from Google´s perspective it makes sense that sites with higher CTR´s and a reasonable amount of ads per page get better ads. Why would they want their best paying advertisers on sites that are full of banners and don´t deliver the client a good ROI. I think you site´s reputation may be of influence in this, your google ranking etc etc... it´s just a thought. There maybe an alternative to smart pricing which is ´good pricing´ for sites that use advertising in an esthetic manner with good content.

 

Thanks. If x stands for the same domain in both conditions I don´t think you will be damages since it´s the same domain name.

I see it more like this:

http://www.x.com - good site, many pageviews etc

http://www.y.com - slow site, still in development and not attracting traffic

y may be damaging x´s profit since they are part of once adsense account.

 

ooo well maybe i try to off the less popular site and see what happend

 

Ooh long time, I have now searched for this Thread to find it again.

So I want to tell to you all:
on 30.November, coxis tipp for himself was to try to do the less popular site off. So I thougt also, maybe it is a good Idea, I can try it. On 30. November I turned also my less good site off, not the site, but I removed completely all my AdSense Ads. All of them on this one site!

Btw:
I think this site was "Smartpricing"!?
or what else?
<u>Because:</u>
It is a Site for Secretarial Office Business Service (dont know in english correkt words) Offering Bookkeeping, Postaladress, Telefonservice and all things for Office-Service...
Long time (since Februar 2005) until September there were good and correct Ads from Adsense (about Offices, Rent Office, Estate Agents...., rent Business rooms etc....) all to a very very good Clickprice! (1,50 till 2,50 for one click!)
What happened in November?! In whole November was so less revenue for Adsense on this site, because Google made only Ads there for Mambo/Jomla Ads for CMS and other little things (clickprice = about = 0,03 to 0,10 Cent!!!) :-(
And this <...google beginn here......> ... does not help!!
So it was Smartpricing I think!!!!
or what else?

So since I turned all Ads on this site away all my others sites have now good revenue!! (from 1. December till today) Ok - only 5 days, but I think it will go on, really! Now I have the same earnings what I had on September and bevor November. November was very bad, because of this smartpricing Office-Site.

So, final result - conclusion:
It is true, what FlashVictim said:

<i>"- Only use adsense on your top sites, your smaller, newer sites don´t get the best ads, at least that´s my experience. It seemed like adding smaller sites to one account damaged the account´s profit as a whole.

- Only use adsense on well-visited, well performing pages. I removed banners from pages with low CTR´s and while the account´s CTRs improved so did my CPC."</i>


I dont know WHY this is so! But it is true.
I did really not believe it, (as you can see in this thread) but it is really true.
I also was very astonished.
(Sorry my english is bad.)

 

Thank you flash victim, wally for sharing ur experience...
this will help me much...i am going to implement ur ideas...
thanks for sharing

 

well now i am working on channels
i put all my ads on separate channels and now i see witch ads people click
i will test it for couple days and then delete the ads that aren't clicked

 

I have already since beginning my ads on channels.
(but never come to this idea)
I will think it over, maybe I will also try it, later.
Thank you for the Idea.

and come back and tell in some weeks if it was good or not.
I will tell also here.

 

I have read now in a german Forum (Webmasterpark) that, just only when you "implement" the channels there was for 3 or 4 people there a very big decrease in earning (half). Only by implementing channels!

I absolutly dont know why and can not understand it, but as I can see in this forum, it is true.

But you can try some days and tell us.

 

Hello to every body, New in the forum ;-)

Really interesting what you are talking about, and I agree totally with less is more

But now I have one doubt: really your total earnings in your account, were incresed in the same way that do your CPC after you do all the changes with the adds?

Thanks and sorry, my english is so badddd ;(

 

About my story when i do changes i go down but when you make changes you know what is going on and you can also work to go up

 

I will try also everything, why not.

@Ski: my english is mooore badddd

---------------
(german words of wisdom: "ohne Fleiß kein Preiß")

 

We need the smartpricing to balance expenses of advertisers, keeping then happy, but IMHO some smartpricing variables are cruel and stupid. The "signals of quality" seems very paranoid.

 

Uhm you say that small sites do bad? My new site is doing better than my 6 month old site :| New site is just a month old and doesnt even have Page rank or anything ;p

 

Well that is a good news
But i have a new site with small unique visitors so the clicks are zero (small)