Hi friends. I am new member. Just wanted to say Hi and thank you for the great site and useful info. I have spent the evening reading the FAQ and studying up on post. In fact, I have been a lurker for a few weeks but decided to sign up finally. -------- I created a live webcam site www SFBayCam com to share the great views here and assist kite boarders, tourist, sailers, weather aficionados. I am looking to recoup some of the camera and web hosting cost, so I added Adsense 3 months ago. 1. Avg 80 hits a day, lucky if I get 1-2 clicks a day. Why low CTR? Do I just need more traffic, or does my design layout suck? I don't want to use trickery, just honest good layout. 2. The more ADs I add throughout the pages, it seems that I make less money per click? How can I increase ad coverage without the cost per click going down? 3. Any advice or words of wisdom to increase the return on my particular site. ---- I hope to one day be able to offer others advice, as I learn and experience this new world. And get a nicer camera once I recoup the cost. Thanks -K
People come to your site to look at webcams. Surrounding your cam pictures with ads that are blind to your visitors in an ineffective way to promote anything. And more ads is usually not better. Figure out why your visitors are visiting and then redesign your site to make the ads more useful to your visitors. You've picked a niche that is not a good match for high clickthroughs. You can also set up Google Analytics to get some good information on your visitors and what they are looking at and for how long.
1.) on your main page (bay.html), you could make your adsense link colors black, and url colors gray. keep in mind that when it comes to the layout and design, what's effective isn't always beautiful (no trickery there, you just have to make your ads noticeable). 2.) more ads MIGHT cause less money per click - because if you have less ad blocks, those (relatively) lower paying ones won't show up since those that pay more are prioritized to come up on ad units. 3.) you might want to consider joining affiliate networks and/or putting up cpm banners.
Try to move the ads to other places (for example under the webcam image); yes, it is like alchemy but usually worth trying. Second remark: I dont think the CTR is very low for this kind of site, more visitors really would help.