Adsense Placement Critique?

[unnameable]

Hi All,

following on from another thread, I'm trying to see if I have my adsense blocks are placed well? I know it's not just a case of fitting to the Google Heat Map due to the content of the site. For example, the story pages consist of a lot of body text.

Would anyone be willing to take a quick look and give their honest opinion/suggestions?

Here's the specific pages:

Short-Story.Net Homepage
Example Story Page
Short-Story.Net Forum

Many thanks as ever!

[tommen]

Hi, here is my opinions.

Short-Story.net: Use a 300x250 ad above the text for more clicks, and one 300x250 below the text.You can also blend the ads in the text itself.The ads are now at the side of the page and are not visible the second visitors arrive.

Short-story forum: That looks good, nothing to add.

[unnameable]

Hi Tom, thanks for taking a look!

My only worry about using the 300x250 block is instrusion into the main body text. I'll probably need to try them out to see. Also might be worth rethinking the three column layout maybe, or at least shuffling the contents of the left and right columns?

[togdil]

Originally Posted by tommen

Hi, here is my opinions.

Short-Story.net: Use a 300x250 ad above the text for more clicks, and one 300x250 below the text.You can also blend the ads in the text itself.The ads are now at the side of the page and are not visible the second visitors arrive.

Short-story forum: That looks good, nothing to add.

This is good advice. I totally agree with it and would like to add my two cents, if I may:

I learned from somebody long time back that the Skyscraper unit works better if it is on the left hand column and it should be above the fold, that is it should be visible as soon as a visitor comes to your site. This has worked well for me at least.

As for the 300x250 ads above the text, I am also implementing this placement as so many have recommended it as tommen has done here.

[bgmacaw]

#1 - Poor placement, page isn't a buying page

#2 - Poor placement, I came here to read a story and be entertained, not to potentially buy something.

#3 - Poor color choices, I came to participate in the forum, not to potentially buy something.

[unnameable]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

#1 - Poor placement, page isn't a buying page

#2 - Poor placement, I came here to read a story and be entertained, not to potentially buy something.

#3 - Poor color choices, I came to participate in the forum, not to potentially buy something.

Hi,
could you elaborate on these? Are you referring to the suggestions above, for example, or the current ads?

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by unnameable

Hi,
could you elaborate on these? Are you referring to the suggestions above, for example, or the current ads?

I'm referring to the current layout. You're tucking the Adsense block neatly away on the lower right sidebar, one of the worst placements you can make. It's almost sure to be ignored there. The best placement is inline with the text, not in a sidebar.

However, your site isn't a good match for Adsense. It is geared toward entertainment, not buying. The most effective and best earning Adsense sites are those that are built around buying keyword terms.

My conclusion is that you should not use Adsense as your monetization method on the site in question.

[unnameable]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I'm referring to the current layout. You're tucking the Adsense block neatly away on the lower right sidebar, one of the worst placements you can make. It's almost sure to be ignored there. The best placement is inline with the text, not in a sidebar.

However, your site isn't a good match for Adsense. It is geared toward entertainment, not buying. The most effective and best earning Adsense sites are those that are built around buying keyword terms.

My conclusion is that you should not use Adsense as your monetization method on the site in question.

Thanks for getting back to me! I understand what you mean about the type of site. Mainly my aim is to cover costs, and maybe earn a little pocket money to put towards christmas etc besides, as opposed to out and out money making.

What would you suggest as a better way to monetize?

[bgmacaw]

I think your best option may be to build an email list and market offers related to writing to that list. You might offer a mini-course in writing or something along that line to encourage sign-ups. Another option might be a low cost membership site. In other words, I don't see this being a passive exercise for you.

Should you want to use banner advertising, you're going to have to get in the visitor's face. No more nice, neat, sidebar ads. Put the ads inline with the text. I suggest taking a look at what relevant ads you can get from Commission Junction or, if you want to go a little on the sleazy side, look at CPA banner offers.

[unnameable]

Hi,
the trouble with going down the email list or paid membership route is that I want to keep the site as a free community for people to make use of.

I wasn't able to find much via Commission Junction, but I have found a magazine subscription affiliate program that offers one of the most well known writing magazines, Writers Digest with a 40% commission rate (on $20 per subscription). I'll see if this goes down well as a top of screen banner.

Mainly I think my stubling block at the moment is getting more traffic from Google searches. In other search engines the site appears very high for the basic terms "short story" and "short stories", but in Google it's well down the list.

[InternetMarketingIQ]

You're placement is attractive but won't make money as the ads appear as an after thought and are in low visual spots according to Googles own Heatmap.

[Fraggler]

I don't agree that you can't get ads clicked on for your sites content. The ads I am seeing seem attractive to your audience, I don't know what a click will be worth though. I run information sites also and it is usally attracting people who are already in the programs or just looking for more info - they still click Google Ads. You just need better placement and like said above, maybe a redesign/new theme.

Your content must also be good to get decent ads so you are cool bananas in that regards.

I just uploaded an the design I use (modified version of Thesis) that gets me a 7% CTR. http://plyplemadesign.com.au/blog/wp...nse-layout.png

As you can see I fit the content to the width of the large AdSense block to keep the text flowing - it is the first thing they will see and react to once loading the page. I place the image in the top right corner to push the other Ads down further and make the site look more convincing and to hopefully stop the reader from just thinking the site is ads. The narrow content column also makes the user browse down the page which brings the sidebars now into play.

I also use 2 sidebars side-by-side to confuse the user into thinking the AdSense ads are for navigation. The links for categories are identical in look to the Adsense titles. I blurred it out to hide the site sorry

I am tossing up whether I should try changing the colour of the Ads to make them stand out more. After venturing into Adwords and more specifically image ads, I have noticed that people will still (more likely to) click ugly images that are obvious advertisements...

[unnameable]

Hi, thanks for taking a look and giving me your opinion!

As things stand, the ads are very relevant which is a definite plus point. The only trouble is the click through isn't probably as high as it could be. What I want to capture is the visitors as they leave the site before they click away elsewhere..

I'll be reworking the layout of the main site to try a few ideas, but I don't think I'll got with the large 300x250 ads in case it puts off visitors just wanting a read. Instead I'll got for a decent sized banner top/bottom of each page, and maybe replace the side bar ads with the magazine subscription links as mentioned before.