Monetization advice???

Was hoping some of the Pro's here could help..

I've developed many sites in the past, some with upwards of 20,000 uniques a day . So I am somewhat stumped how, when all is said and done, I just could never monetize my sites very well.

Now, I have a new site (2 months old) that I am dedicating myself to wholely; getting decent traffic (200-2000/day (see the sedo tracker on the bottom left colum of the site for more detailed analysis) and would like to properly monetize it.

As you can see, I am using Adsense and Fastclick (ok, im old school, value click for you newer webmasters) and currently make chump change... $2-5/day combined with about a .5-.9 CTR. very poor.

So if you wouldn't mind posting here telling me what I am doing wrong and any other advice, I'd be much much appreciative!

website is: motoringreport [dot] com

Thanks for your time and advice in advance!

 

Switch the position of your "Relevant Resources" and "RSS"

 

OK cool thanks Tyler.
I actually just (last night) switched those two last night lol, hoping that lowering adsense a bit to fit into the majority of the content on the pages would help... but it seems to have done nothing.

But I will switch it back because, well... I am absolutely refookingtarded when it comes to monetization and your prolly alot smarter than I when it comes to this stuff

thanks!

 

Also, if you're going to keep the 468x60, why not give it some kind of background that will catch your visitors' eye?

 

Give the adsense ad a background or the menu location? (sorry if it's a stupid question)

 

edited: missed the URL in the original post

 

Not stupid at all

Although AdSense is not fond of thumbnails lined up with ad-units, they don't have a problem (yet) with creating a background for your ads. So, come up with something for the ad at the top of your content that will draw in your visitors' attention (and hopefully their mouse also)

 

hmm, ok not a bad idea...
How would this sound (to help avoid the rather of the Gman and the new picture rules):
I place say, four thumbs of the currently most popular articles inline, left to right Below that it says "Currently Popular" or readers trends or something...and below that the adsense.
think that would work??? it seperates the pics from adsense..so im hoping...

 

Well, you need to test what ad-color schemes perform best on your site. The current ads are not blended very well (in the menu). I mean it could work - but having the background dark blue with white letters might also work: I'd split it fifty fifty between pages and track with channels.

I'd totally get rid of the firefox ads. They are not relevant to your audience.
The insurance could work - but can you change the text to something that has the word 'auto' or 'car' more prominently? I was wondering whether it was actually about car-insurance when looking at the ad.

The motivational ads seem totally irrelevant as well. I'd get rid of those also.

In many cases less is more.

 

ok the color thing might be a huge issue for me (as lame as it sounds) cause im a bit color blind...so I normally end up putting like..brown with pink or something equally as repulsive lol (no joke!) But I will try that

The firefox has actually paid, believe it or not. not sure why but it pulls about $5-$7 a week...so I am loath to remove those.. do you think it's a good idea really?
Isurance: will do pronto!
Motivational ads? not sure what that was... perhaps in the fastclick rotation?? You saying I should remove the fastclick entirely? (it wouldnt be an issue cause they suck balls.)

 

OK, I added the pics and the comments "Recently Popular: Dodge Magnum SRT8, Chevrolet Volt, Chevy Camaro Convertible" there between the pics and the adsense (should be legal with Gman I think). does that look ok?

 

Well, if firefox pays - by all means keep them up. Move them up on the page as well. I mean - the motor-industry is totally not my thing and the basic thing with monetization is to learn from your results and then do more of what works.

As for the colors: stick to the ones on your website. You don't need to be able to see the colors. You need to know the color-codes for them... Install the 'colerzilla' firefox extension. White is #ffffff - I'd suggest that for the letters. The blue you can find out for yourself. And have someone in your family / circle of friends check whether it clashes. The current one on top does sort of fit in as well, so keep that on half your adsense-ad-blocks and put the blue-background/white letters on the other half. Use one or the other on the ad-unit lower down the page as well.

Make those two colorpalets so you don't have to figure the colors out each time.
Make channels per color-pallet so you can test for yourself.

 

Well, it does push down the actual content to an extent that your visitors may have trouble finding it. This will decrease the chance of people linking to your site. It will also prevent people from becoming (or staying) repeat visitors.

I'd change that to either a link-unit (which takes up little space but on that spot should still convert well) or remove the pictures.

Visitors first, monetization second - for me anyhow.

 

One thing you can do with minimum visitor-irritation is to have a link- or (small) ad-unit just above the navigation at the bottom of the page. This means that people actually reading the whole page will have somewhere to go other then the rest of your site.

 

OK, I made it a link unit and got rid of the forum post thing...which raised the first content within eyesight of the viewer... I think it looks nice. I'd actually remove adsense from the top now before I went back to not using those pics (i like that look )

I agree on the visitors first thing, which is why I never got into monetization. failed myself

hmm, thats not a bad idea... but I think im maxed out on adsense per their tos I will have to find something to put there to monetize...hmmm

 

ok, have blended the adsense on the right as well...you two were absolutely right, it looks a WORLD better!

 

I can see a couple of things that might be worthwhile.

in the left hand column, you have 2 120x600's on top of each other and the link unit in your content area.

When looking further down your pages, both the left and right columns are empty.

Getting a bit of balance regarding the overall page length might help you. Do you need that page length on your homepage? could you put say 3-5 articles 0n the front page rather than the 7 you have ?

What about the left column? try splitting up the Ads in the left column - put something between the 2 units. - At least try it and see if it works better.

You can actually have 1 additional unit on your page - you can have 3x adblocks and an link block + the referral units. see https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17958
Now what I would do would be to add a 468x60 unit below your last article snippet and above the news categories.

The whole thing about getting your ads in the correct spot usually involves experimentation and tweaks every few months on a site. I usually try to make a small change and leave it for a few days to monitor how it affected the revenue.

 

I don't understand why the second block on the left is showing up to the left of that menu-type place. Try aligning it to the right - or get it into the same type of format as the first.

Other than that: I second RRWH. You may want to just have the first paragraph of each of those stories on the front page and then give a 'the rest of this article' or 'more' or 'more on whatever it was' type link to an elaborate article page on that subject.

The advantage of starting monetization late is that you already know how to make a great content site, already have a decent visitor-stream etc. Many people come to adsense with the intent of making money, but no skills whatsoever when it comes to creating a good website and traffic to that website.

 

Well, it is starting to look very good. Just one more thing: the link-unit should have link-colors like the menu on the top-right does (probably the same color as the background to the ad-units on the left).

 

I would remove one of the Adsense skyscrapers and instead include one large rectangle (336x280) inside your first article - they are usually the best performing ad units (for me and others), especially if well integrated into the content.