I put two large skyscrapers on the home page and when you click on an article you get an additional one but im wondering if this detours from the content and if it will hurt me more than help. any advice on better ad placement and types would be appreciated.
Sure is a lot of ads there. A big leaderboard, a big skyscraper, and in the article page, another ad block. It really uglies up your site, and make it seem as if all you care about is making the buck. If it works for you, I'd stick with it, but you know, I wouldn't come back to a site that is just covered end to end in ads before I even get to read anything. BTW Wrong forum. There is a forum designed specifically for this. Use it next time to keep the mods from having to work. Plus, you shouldn't have what, 30 posts on the front page? You're killing anyone with anything less than broadband connection.
Your header and the big leaderboard already fill up half of the screen. "Your morning cup of news", its a cool solgan... but can hardly see the news at your home page. For the categories part, sub-categories might help. Nice contents, just need some re-arrangement..
Cool site. For one the banner on top is nice and the big tower as well but usually horizontal blocks between posts work better. In your case there're many posts on one page so that might work only for the most recent ones. Also would blend nicer if you remove the border of the top banner. For the posts themselves make the unit horizontal banner of text ads. It'll look better at least not sure if it'll perform better for you. Hope that helps. Good luck.
thanks guys so much for your help i switched it to 10 posts on the main page and 10 on syndication feeds. i will also change to horiztonal ads on the individual articles (468x60) and remove the border. any other suggestions from other members would help. p.s. thanks for the "cool site" comments. much appreciated
I still think you have too many ads on a given page. You might do better removing the top header leaderboard and replacing it with a leaderboard adlinks unit. Right now your ads are really clashing -- too many "ads by Google" in the same fold, it becomes obvious they're ads.
ill give er a go. hopefully it will return more visitors (higher percentage rate) which in the long run will be more effective in adsense collection.
If your leaderboard adlinks doesn't perform better than your leaderboard banner (I'm assuming you're channeling both for comparison purposes, correct?), then I'll eat my shoe.
well you might have to grease that thing up. I've had a graphic banner up before and it made the site look more graphically intense but i had lower click throughs. with the adlinks alot of people clikc them then never click on a google ad when they're sent to the google results. the text leaderboard performed best but i was afraid it turned people away who thought my site was just another 'adsense site' which it isnt.
btw, i am going to add categories everyday for the next week which will be subcategories and then ill change the side bar up
Um, okay, if you don't want to do it, then don't do it. You asked for suggestions and I'm giving it to you. /shrug