Bloggers Don’t Click Adverts
June 3, 2006 by Mary Jo Manzanares
Filed under Business
A friend came to me recently and asked me why he wasn’t making much money from adsense. I asked him what his blog was about and he said blogging and how to make money online. I then proceeded to tell him the following;
BLOGGERS DON’T CLICK ADVERTS
If you’ve had any experience with running websites, tweaking ads and performing search engine optimization – you’ll notice that we become blind to adsense. When we read a blog and see adsense adverts plastered left right and centre, we understand that the author is attempting to create a revenue stream.
We will often criticize the website in question, and think in the back of our minds how a Google ad would look better here or there.
We will wonder what the click ratio is and what the paying rate is for the keywords we see plastered all over the site in the most obvious locations.
We will laugh and mock sites that have the infamous Google public service adverts.
We will cringe when we see adverts that aren’t blended.
However, we will never click ads; for that would be giving money and hope to the competition. It’s a harsh world isn’t it?
Be a sport sometimes… there are interesting ads from time to time and u know u wanna read it. So what is there to loose? Just click.
I know I know, your right. There are some interesting ads, you’ll often find me drawn to the adverts that advertise that you can earn truckloads with adsense blah blah, just to see what type of scam they are selling :)
I ran AdSense on my marketing blog for quite some time and noticed that hardly anyone clicks on them. Since I’m writing to the Adsense-savvy crowd, I figured that most of them are probably like me – immune to the “Ads by Google” ads. :) I finally removed all AdSense ads and used that real estate for something else.
I too am ad-blind, but not afraid to click on them .. Mostly, because I see great ads on my own sites and – well THESE are the ones that I’m afraid to click on. Although, only when I’m actually surfing for information, than just surfing blogs for reading or enjoyment.
I consciously try NOT to click on the ’supported links’ when doing searches directly from my Google tool bar. I would much rather have somebody like me earn the commission than forego it to the Google Bottom Line I’m just like that! I mean someone is paying for the ad anyway .. someone else may as well earn the commission, I figure.
It’s not just ad blindness, it’s a lack of variety. If you blog about one main subject, then you’re going to get the same ads all of the time. Coupled with the same people and the same ads, you get low CTRs.
The trick is diversity and search engine marketing. And by marketing, I don’t mean PPC. The best ad conversion sites I’ve seen (and run myself) are sites with a wide variety that also have excellent SERPs (even just long tail SERPs). Search engine traffic is by far the best, because those users are actually looking for something. When they hit your website there’s a good chance that either your content — and hopefully your ads — have what they’re looking for.
Bottom line, if you’re wanting to make money off of advertising like AdSense, keep the content diverse and make sure your layout code is optimized for search engines to help improve your SERPs. Using this tool is a good start for the latter: http://www.sitening.com/tools/seo-analyzer/
Cold but true. Occasionally, I’ll click an ad as a way of donating to a site, though, if the content is good.