As many of you know, www.blazemp.com is my most popular site. It gets about 17,000 uniques per day and about 40,000 page views per day. The site's purpose is to get download for the Blaze Media Pro software, and then hopefully sales after the users have demoed the software. I have thought about putting AdSense on the site before, but always resisted because I was afraid users would be taken away from downloading the software or given a bad impression of the site with it having ads (for this site, professional is an image which is important, and that is another big reason why I never did it before). Since the vast majority of my income still comes from the sales for this product, it is a hard decision to make. Yet, I do realize that amount of traffic could bring in a rather nice amount of extra income from AdSense also, and the category for the site pays pretty well with AdSense. So, my question is --- what do you all think? What would you do if you were in my shoes?
If your visitors are usually first time visitors (not returning), it doesn't hurt to put some AdSense up for a couple of hours, take it down, let the dust settle and analyze what affect it had. I don't think it hurts it for that type of site provided you use blending rather then making them stick out. I agree that if it looks like an ad site, you can put people off but experimentation and analysis will be the key to whether it is worth it or not.
I can understand putting up adsense blocks at your high traffic website. But think of this; when people click on a ad at your website they will go to your competitor and will download software from that site and will return to the other website instead of going to your website and eventually buy software from you. Imo I would leave the adsense blocks out of the website, it only draws the attention away from your core products.
Obviously we don't know how many sales you make from the site, or how much adsense revenue would be generated, but from what we know I agree with WhatIFind. The software sales are your "bread and butter". Don't distract from that.
That was my thinking too. Plus, it doesn't help that I would have to add the code to all 150 pages manually (there is no include or template file). So, no easy way to just test the waters also.
That is a rough one...I didn't realize that If that wasn'ty the case, I would have argued that there was still a possibility of AdSense being a good choice depending on how many window shoppers you get that never actually download. The ones that are dead set on getting the product are going to download it as long as the path to downloading is intuitive. AdSense if done right can turn those with no intention to part with money into revenue gainers. I wouldn't have put large unsightly boxes but I would have blended it in a way where it was evident where you go to get the product and evident where the advertising was.
i think the users/visitors of your site would understand that we need ads to support our site. and adsense doesn't turn away visitors like popups/popunders, as long as its not too Obtrusive imo.
You might as well give it a try. Try adding the code to your most visited pages first. 150 pages is quite a mission.
I would do an ad integration very simple yet effective that would make a lot of money, then for the sales of the actual product, I don't think they will be any less. That what I would do, at least I would try it for one month and then compare the money earned with or without adsense. Don't be naive, users come to your site but you cannot make them believe that only your software exist, they use google or software reviews and know about the competition, so if they see it on your site or not it doesn't make a difference if they came to try your software or from a google search. Don't put the adsense at the footer, it's not a good place and what does it shows? you're afraid of what? put them at the top, show people you don't CARE about competition because good users will know the difference!
The ones that produce the least downloads seem to correspond pretty closely to the ones with the least traffic. So, I don't think that is going to be helpful on this since the ones with little traffic will be the least use with AdSense too.
You can always try to put some horizontal adlinks or so, at the bottom of the homepage and see the results after a few days. People who scroll to the bottom of the page without clicking any other link in the middle, probably won't download your software...Maybe you can monetize that traffic
I suppose I could give that a try and see what happens. Worth a short test to see how it does, I suppose, with just a page or two.
I think you should put adsense if the revenue you make is greater than allowing visitors to download your software.
Try it - add adsense for (say) a week and see which model brings in the most revenue. I added adsense code to one of my sites and I got a whopping $100+ a day from adsense but my "sales" went down by more than that. I just took it off en-masse. On reflection I should try what dct suggets and play around with trying it on low converting pages. Like much of life the best way forward is trial and error BUT keep ACCURATE records. So many people neglect these but they really ARE essential if you are serious about any business model.