Updated Adsense TOS / UI

Sorry to be a party pooper to the "cool interface, cool top channels" party, but I think that in a few weeks time these forums will be innundated with shrill protests from people dropped out of AdSense for not having enough ad impressions / clicks!

I for one am scared

 

What's too few? If I were google, I wouldn't want to maintain accounts that take numerous months to reach the $100 payment threshold. If you can't do at LEAST $100/month in Adsense, you're not trying hard enough...


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Derek

 

I'd disagree.. Adsense is the highest CPC network I know of, as far as the minimum ammount before payment goes. I mean on one of my sites, I'm just not getting well-paying ads. Clicks are almost to xxxx per month.. but the price per click just isn't much. And due to the nature of the site, I can't really change the content to make it more high-paying keyword friendly.


Josh

 

I have a bottom-barrel keyword site with $.03-$.06 clicks the norm. It makes enough with a normal amount of site promotion and good ad placement to easily make the $100/month. Even with the current google penalties or whatever they're doing to me(I'm betting coop related, but I won't go there on this board), I can STILL reach the $100/month mark a couple times over with that site alone. Low paying clicks are not good enough reason.


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Derek

 

What about no traffic as good enough reason, I now have close to 150 pages and 45+ mini sites and still average under 200 unique visitors a day total.... yikes!

But even with them figures, luckily I make the monthly payment amount....

The scary part is, who knows what figures google is talking about with the new TOS requirements, they may want sites to get 1,000 uniques or more a day..... or 5,000 or even higher.

 

Firstly, I think they're discussing accounts, not sites. If you only have 200 visitors a day on 46 sites, you have a lot of site promotion and SEO to do. I'm sure they'd also allow for a 'probation' or 'starting up' period the first few months...

Either way, you proved my point-- even with such little traffic, you still made the monthly payment ammount.

I can simply understand how Google may not want to maintain accounts that take 6+ months to reach the $100 minimum. That's $0.55/day.

Someone could also argue that the lower volume sites are also more likely to have fraudulent clicks, as the account holder has less to lose(loose argument, i know-- doesn't mean Google wouldn't use it)...

I honestly don't think Google wants to kick anyone out at this time-- they simply are reserving their right to do so in the future if they determine the cost of maintaining those accounts(DB maintenance, payment processing, stats processing, fraud investigations, etc.) to be more trouble than the income they generate.


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Derek

 

Well.. I think as long as they are providing valid clicks, Google shouldn't have any reason to worry about them. I think in their eyes, the more sites they have using Adsense, the more it will appeal to advertisers. Get their name out in as many corners of the net as possible.


Josh

 

For all those people who use Sysense, there is a new version out that makes it work with the new Google update.

Click here

 

True. But I wonder what provisions they will or won't offer for letting you try again. Just cause you sucked in the past, one day you might end up with a site which would do well with adsense-style advertising...

-w

 

Thats a reall good point. And since you can't have more than on adsense account.. and when they terminate that account, it still counts as an account.



Josh

 

They give a period of 2 months.

 

Anybody else notice that since the change the figures match? I was always having to jump between one report and another to get the latest figure but now both day and month figures are the same.

 

Shrill protests of that there is no question! There are going to be some massive cuts!

If you have ever been thinking of selling your low performing site, now may be the time!

 

I only have one site, and it's one I've worked on for the last 6 months to get good traffic and good PR/SEO and it just got updated to a PR4 with 300-500 uniques a day. It's a 3D art site/general entertainment site and no matter how much content I've added, I cannot get people to click on the ads very much, and if they do, it's usually so low paying that I only get a few cents a day. I try not to do anything offensive like pop ups, etc.

So if I understand this thread correctly, I should be punished for doing the kind of high content site that you are supposed to do. It's certainly not from lack of trying. I've tried all kinds of ad placement options, but since people find a lot of things to do on the site, I guess they don't pay as much attention to the ads. On the artwork, I can never get them to target to the picture's subject, instead on the software used to make the image which the general public could care less. I would love some suggestions on how I can raise the level of the CTR and all to reach that $100 in a month. I certainly don't want to be dropped from Google for trying to do the right thing.

The site is: shadowwindmanor.com

I haven't been here long enough to make that a live link, sorry...

ANY suggestions would be greatly appreciated on how I can maximize the site, as so far I've come up empty. I don't want to sell the site as it's been a personal quest for me to get it to where it is today.

 

As soon as I load the page, my attention isn't on the ads. I can't even see them until 4 seconds of hunting and that's me purposely looking for them.

It looks like you could put the leaderboard in that design in the top half of the page, with images above it. The improvement in CTR would be phenominal!

Please try it and report back...300 uniques/day is a good number imho. I'm seeing 1/4 of a reasonable salary from just 200 uniques/day.

Get them Adsense dollars!

Pete

 

The first thing to realize, is that "Above the fold" is very valuable real estate. On your home page, you waste the absolute RED SPOT heat-map wise with "welcome to...what's new...".

You also have a plethora of ads(I think) right up front on the left. This is where people first look for a main menu-- either put it there, or put Google Ads(I like adlinks there) there. Your 'menu' is hidden in a border between the top header and the main content area. I have to admit, that my initial inclination if I were to hit this site, would be to reach immediately for the back button.

Lastly, your site is slow. I found myself waiting 1-4 seconds for a page to start displaying-- considerably slower than most sites. While I don't know the figures, you can imagine 'every second is x visitors lost per day'. Fix the speed problem or get a new host that can.

Lastly, if you simply want profit, have more than one site. There's just so much traffic to draw in for one site.


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Derek



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Derek

 

Thanks for the advice, I did what you said. Will let you know.

Also a bulk of that traffic goes to the gallery since all of our images are now indexed in Google. But everytime I try to put G ads on there, I get topics based on the software rather than on the topic at hand. For instance, in the celebrity gallery, I would like ads that relate like Spike from Buffy show Buffy DVD ads. But instead I get ads for Photoshop, etc. Is there a way to fix that?

Yes, I am trying to figure out how to lower the load time of the front page. I have tweaked it some, but need to tweak it some more.

 

Derek,
You would have the inclination to hit the back button because the menu is across the top? I can move it to the side if you think that would help. On other pages than the front page, which is the entry point for a good majority of the traffic, there is no left bar at all, so that is why the menu was chosen to be at the top.

The ads on the left side are paid ads which is why I had to give them above the fold. Not sure what to do with them.

You may be right about one thing, the Manor was never meant to be a profit center when it came to ads. It's kinda of a personal site that reflects various interests, that don't seem to coincide with the ads. I guess I start to really need to look into other sites to augment the income potential.

 

I would never put paid ads in that location. I'd use the left hand side, the upper right top, the bottom footer area, in the content, or the left hand side below my navigation.

When I get to your page I don't see content. I see ads, 'what's new' fluff, and very little else. The navigation bar is hidden to me and the gaudy colors make it look spammy and advertising-like, so I don't see it at first. Either make your navigation at the top LOOK like navigation(hard to say how), or move it to where navigation goes these days. I'd also put the same left bar on all pages for consistency.

I think this is exactly what Google wants to filter out-- joe schmoe's who have a single low traffic site that they just 'have online' that they don't do anything with, and they hear about Adsense and say, "sure, that'd be great". They put the ads up, and then wonder why they don't perform. I think Google likely wants people that try to make the ads perform-- to both increase $$$ for Google and to create more leads for their advertising clients, and theoretically more sales for them.


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Derek

 

I agree... just look at the threads around here.. "I am earning 20 cents with adsense, what can I do?" -of course they forget to say that they get 2 visitors per day - "my earnings are going down, any help" - and they have a site with pictures of their dog-...

Only quality sites with decent traffic will make it... it took me 15 months of very hard work to be earning $1,500 a month, and that is only peanuts compared to some other members here