Adios Adsense

[dazzlindonna]

Let us know the results of that test, RP.

[earlpearl]

Out of curiosity are there topics or types of topics that generate more money? You don't need be super specific but how would you characterize sites/topics that generate ads clicks versus sites/topics that don't?

[eKstreme]

Not webmaster stuff EP. Definitely not webmaster stuff. We're a nonclicking bunch.

Pierre

[dazzlindonna]

Oh absolutely, there are. But you really asked 2 different questions.

Topics that generate more money. (yes, there are)
Topics that generate more clicks. (not really...that's more a factor of ad optimization)

Listing them would be difficult however, as there are so many. But there are lots of resources out there that list "best paying topics". In general, anything you get in email as spam is probably a decent paying topic, along with many tech terms that you don't get spam for.

ADDED: after reading the above post, let me amend mine. not so much topics that generate clicks, but what types of USERS generate clicks. tech-savvy...forget it. Aunt Hazel....click happy.

[Jocelyn]

The bottom line is the end product value... games sites do poor cause the end product is not expensive. Car ads will give much more cause a car is a bit more expensive than a game.

Some things are more specific to a season. My plant sites does poor starting at fall, people don't pay much for the plants ads in the winter and you get low $. Now the season is starting and the $ for the ads is better.

You have to filter the crap sites. I get dating sites ads on my construction site... people that wanna fix their house dont necessarely look to date a carpenter to get it fixed.

I have sites that do super on week days and poor on the weekends... entertainment sites are the opposite, do much better from friday to monday.

Adsence is like that... if you can't handle the peeks and dips, it's a hard ride. You have to diversify your set of sites so when a site is dead on a season, an other will compensate.

Using too many ads is not always best either... more you have ads, more some will be cheaper... so more ods to get a cheap one clicked. An other problem I noticed was the ads not showing all the time with IE... but in FF they are always there.

[Robert Paulson]

Donna, I will certainly share the results. I have to get hard down on some B&M things for the next day or two, but then I'll spend an afternoon getting everything switched over and loaded up.

The thing I'm hopeful for with YPN is that you can choose categories of ads that are not tied to your site's theme, but that you think your audience would appreciate.

[earlpearl]

DD, Joc:

Those are good answers to my question, without having to be too specific.

Of interest I looked at some of my ad campaigns very quickly. the ads are for a local business and the landing page is to a contact form, which is a free action step by the visitor.

Just relooked at the google data.

While click throughs off of google rank for a specific phrase from 5-50% with overall averages running about 10%...the content ads on your sites aren't all that productive.

click throughs for 3 campaigns run less than 1 percent in all cases; 2 tenths, .18, and .04 of a percent in 3 different campaigns.

While most of the ads on G are typically at a position of 2 or higher, the ads on content pages are only running at positions that run about 3-6; much lower.

We are spending about $1/ad. About 1/3 of our advertising expenditures are going to content ads.....so some of you guyz are getting our money!

[Robert Paulson]

Yup - you have to be careful with the content spending in AdWords. I dropped it altogether because it just wasn't turning into anything of value, either for my B&M or main main (non-B&M) site. For my main site I was paying roughly $5 per conversion that were probably worth $.25-.50. Better off optimizing for organic serps.

My main site gets between .75%-1.5% CTR, but I have a little hobby site that regularly turns in 20-40% CTR. But it's a highly focused theme. Oh, and the navigation sucks, so the ads look as much like navigation as the nav links do. Knowing there are scumbags like me out there is another reason I don't do content ads.

[earlpearl]

We've always had conversions off content ads so I keep em. Also total ppc advertising is real small relative to revenues....so I'm not watching it like a hawk.

on the other hand we are not doing as well off ppc as we could.

[skitzzo]

With Google getting ready to release the information about where your ads are appearing if you're running Adsense, I think the content network might turn out to be a valuable resource.

On the flip side, that might kill off a lot of the MFA crap sites that live for adsense earnings....