In the past week, my CPC has gone down 3 cents. Pennies add up. I've lost a couple of bucks a day because of the CPC drop. So, I started looking at my numbers to see how I can combat that. Stats I have 1 link unit and 3 regular ad blocks. I noticed that the link unit CPC has gone down quite a bit. The top ad block is still strong. The 2nd and 3rd ad blocks have gone down a bit. Solution My link units were getting quite a bit of clicks, but I'm not happy with that because the CPC is much lower, so I moved my link unit to the bottom of the page. I changed up the format of the links in my ads to stand out more than they blend in. They say that blue links work pretty well because most people associate that color with links. I'm also cutting down on my ad blocks. Instead of 3, I'm going to drop it to two. I'll use the open spot now for merchandise sales for CJ. Results I'll post these in the upcoming days. Hopefully, this can be valuable resource for newbies.
I know it's still too early to know for sure, but when I checked my stats this morning (16 hours after the change), I noticed that people are now clicking the ads at the bottom of the pages than they are the top. I attribute that, though, to my daily readers taking the time to actually reading the entire article. My CPC is back to normal, though.
Alright. 24 hours later, and it seems to have worked out pretty well. Granted, it's only been a day, but it is nice to see some progress. My CTR has remained around the same area. When I started the project, I was hoping to get my CPC back up to my average (it dropped pretty badly the last week). My CPC is now actually higher than the average because of those changes I made. I wasn't a believer before about testing out different locations for the ads, but now I am.