After looking at my website traffic increase from 50 uniques a week to 200 uniques a day for the last 2 years, i made simple adsense placement changes and thats it, money started flowing in. Every day, iam learning new things from my site. Earlier my thought was not to distract users from using features on my website. Now that users are familiar i started relaxing that thought and slowly becoming aggressive in earning adsense revenue. I was very hesistant in the begining, but with money started flowing in and if that also doesn't change my traffic then i will explore more in making few extra dollars. I was making peanuts before. Here is what most people think. 1) Placing adsense close to places where users lurk is considered taboo. Reason: They don't want to give user the impression that they are after money or eager to make a quick buck. Most also don't want to create unpleasant experiences for users. 2)Placing adsense in Headers, sidebars and footers they think and expect that users will click the. Nah, users mostly ignore those areas except if your header has really cool concept to draw the attention of a user. Little bit of intrusion is ok, if you receive more unique visitors per day and less pageviews. If you can only make money by ad clicks and nothing from CPM, then my advise is to play around and move adsense closer to where users actually spend most of their time on your website. Hope this is not a duplicate post. Link_dev
Awesome post. One of the best posts ever on DP. And one of the most useful ones... I am assuming that you have a forum website, and I can totally think of applying what you just said to my own forum site. I will do that soon, once I have time to... Thanks for the advice man!
Vex, Mine is not a forum website. However, you can apply that logic perfectly well for a forum website. On a busy forum, only 10-30% of the web page will be heavily concentrated area by almost all users on that page. Make sure you attack just that part of the page and optimize your advrts. You will reap rewards. Don't hesitate in experimenting it though. Good luck.
It works for any type of site. Most people who have a product or service that they sell put adsense code after that product. they figure they will make more off a slae then off adsense. But it is nice to make money even when someone does not buy from your site so it does work.
So in short, you have suggested placing ads within content and in hot spots for maximum attention. Why would this be the best post ever? Not putting you down but these suggestions are obvious and probably adopted strategies for every adsense user making over $1/day.
Don't ask me, why vex, kumiko felt the way they replied. I have put forth my views after trying it on my website. My main stress in my post was for those who hesitate to add adsense in the content or near places where users lurk.
Essentially, have the ads in the hotspot areas, is what you are suggesting. I thik thats fair advice. I can see why newbies will see this as great advice, but some of the more experienced members here, I think its old news. Good advice, anyway.
Old news but worth repeating... Especially for new folks in the industry. This is a "heat map" from Google that recommends placements based on the location of your content: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=17954 I've always had the most success by keeping the ads as close to the content or even embedded where the content wraps around my ads. I try to look at how some of the bigger sites are doing it. About.com is one great example of good ad integration.
Yeah, some of the bigger sites are great, well done with ad placement. But.. most of them are premium publishers as well... so they get a lot more freedom then us
great post, m8. and i agree with the intrusion thingy. I found that if your ads is placed too nicely, no one will ever clicks that often. so be more proactive in disturbing visitors
link_dev, you are absolutely right. I had earlier placed ad units in sidebar and away from content and closely observed each change I was making for at least a week before I changed the ad position, unit size, colors. After playing for months, I think I have got the best ad placement for my blog site till now. This month has been rocking after I put an ad unit with matching colors on single posts on my blog site. It all worked better and better when I kept moving the ad units closer to the content.
Gravis, I actually watched it for 2 years and just this month i braved to place add units closer to where users spend most of their time. The revenue for that page and especially from that spot jumped by $1-$2 per day. This is huge for me as i used to make much much less before. However, i have huge success with Kontera.