Adsense Site not performing like the rest. Any suggestions?

[callstar]

I don't want to say what my adsense site is but here's a bit of info.

It's a genealogy related site, here's an example.

These niches are pretend to hide the identity of my websites.

Chinese Genealogy gets 20 people per day and receives a 20% clickthrough rate.

Catholic Genealogy Gets 20 people per day and gets a 50% and sometimes 120% clickthrough rate.

Various other Genealogy websites that are similar still get 20% CTR or more.


I have one Genealogy site that gets 80 - 120 unique visitors per day, it's a PR3 and ranks highly for some nice terms.

Somedays it gets no clicks and other days it gets about an 8% CTR.

The ads are all the same format as the others and the ads are just as related as the others, the only thing different is the nationality of people.

Are these people smarter? Do the local ads appear differently?

I want to know if there are any good Genealogy affillliates that warrior members have actually tried.

Also any other ideas that might bring in more income for this website. I have thought about a (nationality) names ebook?

I would really appreciate your thoughts.

[susinggih]

Yup, local ads appear differently. If 2 people see the same adsense site, one from US and the other one from India or Indonesia or China, the ads will likely to be different. That person from India/Indonesia/China will see more ads coming from their own country (assuming there are adwords users from that country). Sad thing is, CPC for local ads are far cheaper than those from US.

[JamesM]

I also think you might be right in thinking that different nationalities display different behaviours. I have adsense sites that target both US and UK visitors. Visitors from the UK produce a far lower CTR, while US visitors seem comparitively 'click happy'!

[fenix34]

Originally Posted by JamesM

I also think you might be right in thinking that different nationalities display different behaviours. I have adsense sites that target both US and UK visitors. Visitors from the UK produce a far lower CTR, while US visitors seem comparitively 'click happy'!

The reason for that might be also in ads themselves. If your site and ads are not international offers - to US visitors are shown ads from US advertisers and to UK visitors ads from UK companies, it is possibility that US ads are more attractive, have better offers, stronger call to action or simple more related because probable lack of relevant ads in the UK area. All of these are just assumptions, but there are so many factors that can influence CTR so it is unrealistic to conclude that visitors from one country are more likely to click on ads without testing on multiple websites in multiple niches.

[callstar]

I hope I'm not crossing a line here and someone tell me if I am but the particular website with the very high CTR is a very american religious organisation that believe in some very silly things (by most people's standards). Surely people with faith in obviously false things are more likely to think that the ads are part of the website and be more click happy.

The ads are slightly more enticing but it's the particular interest of their group.

I think it could be a combination of the 2.


Anyway, my original question was: does anyone have any ideas on how I can monetise the site because of how low the CTR is.

Sometimes I get 100 visitors and 0 or 1 click. The same format as other that perform much higher.

I've built a list from these sites of about 600 people, I was thinking about doing something with that as well.

[fenix34]

It would be much easier to if you would just give us the url. To which country is the site with low CTR geotargeted?

[callstar]

Sorry, no URL.. you can understand why. Most people don't share urls of their adsense sites if they can help it. At the moment it's my livelyhood and I can't take any chances.

It's more targeted at a nationality rather than a country. Maybe I should set the country itself at webmasters so it appears in their local results.

[Zeus66]

Try a more indirect approach. Capture their contact info and send a weekly newsletter or a couple of quick emails/week. First, get them to see you as a provider of really good info about the topic. Then slowly work in ways to monetize the list. There are probably some books at Amazon you could earn commissions on... I'm sure there are related products beyond books, as well. Look at CPA networks for related offers. Not sure there will be any, but it's worth a look. If all else fails and you know the topic well, write a basic ebook guide about the topic. Sell it to your list. If you've done your job early on and built a good relationship with your list, they'll buy it.

John

[callstar]

Hi John,

I have made no attempt to build any sort of a rapport with the list. I have no knowledge in the area so can't write any books. I might try a few more ad layouts as well.

It's a pretty specific group of people, maybe I'm just buggered with this one. It's first 4 pages are pr3 so they are good for linking to my other genealogy websites but maybe the genealogy niche is terrible anyway.

The one with the high CTR actually got banned from google because someone hacked it and someone added a virus to the website.

since the ban it gets yahoo traffic only, before that it was probably one of my best adsense sites.

But back to the topic of the problem site, maybe i could try genealogy affiliates, they don't pay much and I've had no luck in the past. I could also try to get them to use google search within my site to send them to another one of my websites that has a higher CTR (assuming it's not their nationality that makes them click less)

[callstar]

I think I have figured it out.

The adverts are all targeted to the main subject of the website but most of the traffic is coming from a sub-page that wouldn't have as much reason to click on the ads.

I am around #80 for the main term and #2 for the one that drives all the traffic.

The good thing is, I don't have any targeted backlinks using the main keyword of the webiste and the traffic volume is quite decent if I did have the top ranking.

I think the answer is to SEO the main page of the website and get onto the first page. I could also still target the sub page with something else like an ebook or somehow get them interested in the main topic by having some persuasive copy in the page that is already popular, once they are interested in the main topic, the clicks may increase.

I've had this site for 3 - 4 years now and it's been though a lot of layout changes. At one point it earned twice as much as it does now so maybe I could also tweak the layout again.