I have a large number of sites that were a little spammy in way of directing users to particular pages with ads (adsense) on them; I have received a few messages that I should clean things up from long term users. The sites are high quality sites offering great information (and started off ad free), so I decided to listen to the users and clean up my act. Problem is, I have lost %50 of my income! Doesn't make me Too Happy These sites are natural pr 6 and 7’s, have been out there for years, awesome number of natural backlinks and tons of traffic, so I’m losing a lot. My heart says to get rid of the spam and see what the future brings. I never liked ads in the first place, but Google warped that view a little. My financial goals say milk it while you can (grab the cash while it’s still out there). I may lose repeat visitors and a few backlinks, but in the end, I’ll have achieved my financial goals. What would you do and why?
Leave the sites alone and wait for them to fall off the face of the earth! Then focus on building new and better pages with great content.
I hate ads too. Not just be cause of the way they look on a site, but because of the way Google keeps most of your money for the ads and because as advertising space providers, we only get paid if someone clicks. Imagine if a newspaper operated the same way... If those were my sites, I'd either get into selling some products of some kind, or offering a limited number of link sales. If you have a strong site and it is relevant to some business, you may be able to make way more by just selling a link or two. But not on this forum. People here are too savvy to be able to get any kind of serious returns. Good luck with your site. If it is naturally that strong, I think many opportunities would present themselves. I'd be more specific but it's hard to say without actually knowing what the sites are.
You could always try to make even more money by selling a "members only" kind of thing without the ads. Makes everyone happy - if they really don't want the ads that badly, then they can compensate you for the revenue you lose from them.
If you have goals, do what you have to do to achieve them. Repeat visitors don't convert anyway (unless you're selling something.)
1 way links are a way to possibly tap into some good residual income. PR 6 and 7 sites can sell 1 way outbound links for up to $300 to $500 monthly depending on the type of content on the site. (More valuable if the content is reflective of the out bound keyword link) I've seen and talked with MANY program owners that easily pay that much for their SEO endevours.
Personally I would stick with the ads, especially if they are financially profitable. There are always more visitors on the internet...I do like the idea about an ad free experience for members. Branddon
Sell the site-- to me. That'll show those repeat visitors that complain about you tryin' to make a buck... I've had visitors complain about the ads on my sites, too-- but I don't run my sites for charity-- I run them for profit. If I don't make money, the site comes down. Make your repeat bitchers understand that... -- Derek
Put up a paypal donation button for a few days and say "we've reduced the number of ads due to complaints, so show us that you appreciate our site by donating to support our efforts!" When you don't get any donations, you can put the ads up and probably won't get as many complaints.
Experiment. Just because you took the ads off doesnt mean your income should go down. Try at different parts of the page for ad placement, and you might well end up with more income than before.
Of course the question is...how much are you bringing in and how much do you need? Long term, will you get more visitors and more publicity with less ads? Another item is...how well placed are your remaining ads? It's not just how intrusive they are but how well placed they are. Finally, yes, selling small text links via the various PR-type agencies does work well, though when PR Ad Network fell, I suspect lots of people didn't get paid...though I somehow doubt the proprietors didn't have the money to pay them!
So far most responses are for keeping the ads (or way in which I direct the visitor to the page with ads). Perhaps there is an infinite number of visitors and I shouldn't worry about the repeat visitors? Something about the 'myth of amoral business' comes to mind
For my sites, there seems to be an infinite supply of new visitors, indeed. Even the "repeat visitors" don't repeat for more than a few months, at most. A few have lasted a year now that there's the forum, but they just use the forum and not the main site mostly... Again, repeat visitors to content sites don't convert into $$$... -- Derek
I wonder if there's really something in debate here.. I'm just starting up with this and - although I'm bringing good content - I won't keep it up unless I get something back. There's always something new worth a look, why pay for something that's not profitable? Hold on to your cash as long as you can. My 2 cents opinion.
I could not disagree more. Newspaper advertising is cheap per impression -- I know, I used to advertise there. CPC advertising generates real interest, but Google's paying advertisers want real interest, not fake forced interest. MFA sites create unneeded expense for advertisers. Google SHOULD keep a bigger portion of my income, I think. I heard they keep 15% I say they should keep 50%. Do you have any idea what most advertising sales people make in the radio, newspaper and TV business? They'd laugh at 15% commissions and go to another market. Google does more work for me, for pennies on the dollar, than an advertising manager would for $100,000 a year. As for the original poster, forget the users who complain. Advertising keeps you in business. If you really want to get rid of ads, give them a piece of the article and charge them for a login to see the rest. If they don't like AdSense, ask them what advertising they would like, and call up advertisers and see if they'll sponsor a banner. If you get 500 uniques a day, you can make $500 a month selling a single rotating banner to 5 different advertisers. 500 uniques of quality = 1500+ page impressions = 50,000+ page impressions a month. $10 eCPM is cheap for good quality readers.
Don't make me laugh. Where did you hear 15%? I don't think I'm alone in my thoughts that Google keeps at least 60% of at least some clicks-- primarily the low CPC clicks. This may go down with more expensive clicks, but I can't speak to that... -- Derek
Sounds like you were making the sites less spammy rather than reducing the number of ads? Anyway, I'd try to keep the same or similar ad placement/number of ads as before but make the ads blend in more and, hopefully, your income will stay around what it used to be (or somewhat less but not 50% less!)