understanding Adsense

[james00bond00]

Hey guys,

I'm new to this forum but started internet marketing back in April. I built a couple dozen niche sites since then which have grown and am getting decent traffic. My site logs and wordpress stats plugin indicate about 10,000 unique visitors a day. These sites are basically perfect for adsense, so i have optimized my adsense ad types and colors and placed them nicely on my sites.

The problem:

I'm not making much with adsense (10-20/day). I've done the research and these niche sites should have a high cpc. Also, the click through rate is way too low. I know adsense isnt counting nearly the actual amount of clicks i get. Usually it says i get 20 clicks a day and has a total of 2,000 page impressions. First of all, i have 10,000 unique visitors a day.... which each visitor will make at least one or two page impressions. Secondly my ads are very relevent and i would guess i should be getting at least 5-10% of my visitors clicking on the ads... and thats at the least.

Heres the interesting thing.... even though i use channels, adsense kind of combines the click through rates of all my sites. So for example, if i have a bad site that does poorly and never gets any clicks, that will interfere with a site that does get good clicks, and adsense will lower my clicks count/earnings for my entire account.

I removed all of the poorly performing sites and did notice a slight increase in earnings (went from 5 to 20-25 per day). Still, i think i should be making much more???! Is there any tips or hints, an adsense expert can give me?

my only guess left is that i have a lot of referral spam and maybe adsense is counting them as visits and since they dont click on my ads, it lowers my click through rate as well as my cpc rate....

any help on this mystery is greatly appreciated.

[scott g]

First or all make sure Interest-Based Ads is not on. Do you have 3 Adsense Ads per page? If you do I would try dropping it down to ONE Ad. Make sure you don't have too much on the site to take away from the Ads. The only OUTBOUND links should be to your other pages and the Adsense Ads.

I don't do Adsense sites anymore, but I had pretty good luck with this strategy. Very informative sites, not overwhelming - to the point - a picture or two. I try not to have links in the body of my paragraphs. Plain jane page.

CHEERS!

[james00bond00]

What is interest based ads? Wouldnt i want them on? Well I played around with multiple ad formats, but i did find that i liked the 4 ad block. I know it displays more ads so i will get payed less per click, but i seems to be getting more interesting ads and more clicks. My site is formatted well.

The point is, adsense isnt counting all the clicks. I think its because of spam bots and fake visitors that come to my site, although i do not promote it. I write unique articles daily and try to provide only quality content. My guess is that once i get rid of spam viewers and have only real people viewing my sites, my earnings will go up dramaticly. I just want to confirm this idea and see if anyone else had the same issue.

Believe me, i've made it very good looking and should be very easy for a viewer to click on my ads. Its just they're not being counted. : (

[scott g]

Originally Posted by james00bond00

What is interest based ads? Wouldnt i want them on? Well I played around with multiple ad formats, but i did find that i liked the 4 ad block. I know it displays more ads so i will get payed less per click, but i seems to be getting more interesting ads and more clicks. My site is formatted well.

The point is, adsense isnt counting all the clicks. I think its because of spam bots and fake visitors that come to my site, although i do not promote it. I write unique articles daily and try to provide only quality content. My guess is that once i get rid of spam viewers and have only real people viewing my sites, my earnings will go up dramaticly. I just want to confirm this idea and see if anyone else had the same issue.

Believe me, i've made it very good looking and should be very easy for a viewer to click on my ads. Its just they're not being counted. : (

I'm sorry you are 100% right. I was thinking do not display interest based ads. Do not display interest based ads. I'm pretty sure the default preference is ON.

Don't really know what to tell ya about the clicks. Compare with your Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. 10,000 uniques per day is pretty great! Do you know why your sites are getting spammed?!

[james00bond00]

Originally Posted by scott g

I'm sorry you are 100% right. I was thinking do not display interest based ads. Do not display interest based ads. I'm pretty sure the default preference is ON.

Don't really know what to tell ya about the clicks. Compare with your Google Analytics and Webmaster tools. 10,000 uniques per day is pretty great! Do you know why your sites are getting spammed?!

Unfortuneatly because my sites rank well, they are targetted by spam bots and stuff. Especially referral spam... i am trying hard to combat it. However, I heard that most adsense gurus say your ctr should be 5% so in my case i should be getting 500 clicks a day. And my clicks usually are a $1, so i wouldnt be doing bad at all! Oh how i dream of that day... ha ha. Though i seriously should be making that....

[rain21]

maybe u can change the ad placement and blend some colors ?

[Therlos]

You said you're using Worpress plugins to get the stats about your visitors? If so i think I have to tell you that you very probably don't have 10000 visitors a day. These Wordpress plugins aren't very good in deciding if the visitor is a real visitor or a bot, like the spam bots or spiders from search engines.So I guess the 2000 impressions adsense shows you are more accurate.

Daniel

[james00bond00]

Originally Posted by Therlos

You said you're using Worpress plugins to get the stats about your visitors? If so i think I have to tell you that you very probably don't have 10000 visitors a day. These Wordpress plugins aren't very good in deciding if the visitor is a real visitor or a bot, like the spam bots or spiders from search engines.So I guess the 2000 impressions adsense shows you are more accurate.

Daniel

Yeah I was thinking of that. I'm sure they are off a little. My awstats shows even more visitors than my wp statpress plugin. Although looking at all the keywords and search terms my sites are ranking for, it is hard to believe that i am only getting 2,000.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by james00bond00

I've done the research and these niche sites should have a high cpc.

Obviously, you did not do research on how google rewards adwords users and picks
ads for your site. Many people make this mistake and just swear google is cheating
them.

Huge amounts of targeted traffic and targeted ads. That's it.

Don't ever shut down a site because you think it's not making enough. If it turns
a profit, why stop it? Google will tell you right up front not to worry about CTR.

If a site costs me $5 month, and makes $20, that $15 adds to the bottom line.
Adsense is not a get rich scheme. Those that treat it as such will be sadly
disappointed.

Paul

[yukon]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Obviously, you did not do research on how google rewards adwords users and picks
ads for your site. Many people make this mistake and just swear google is cheating
them.

Huge amounts of targeted traffic and targeted ads. That's it.

Don't ever shut down a site because you think it's not making enough. If it turns
a profit, why stop it? Google will tell you right up front not to worry about CTR.

If a site costs me $5 month, and makes $20, that $15 adds to the bottom line.
Adsense is not a get rich scheme. Those that treat it as such will be sadly
disappointed.

Paul

That's pretty much what I was trying to tell someone last night.

They heard Blogger isn't worth having, they also said they made something like $50 per month from their own blogger blog. They read they should move to Wordpress.

Wrong move...

They should keep the blogger blog intact (change nothing), & create a second WP site, then recycle traffic from blogger to WP.

I never understood why someone would give up 100% Free money or traffic!

People act as If you can't have both Blogger & WP at the same time.

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by yukon

They should keep the blogger blog intact (change nothing), & create a second WP site, then recycle traffic from blogger to WP.

What do you mean by recycling traffic?

[yukon]

Originally Posted by james00bond00

Is there any tips or hints, an adsense expert can give me?

Do you have a lot of images on your site/theme?

If so, I would get rid of them.

Most of my own sites have very few images in the theme (not counting blog post images).

A simple looking theme helps to get a higher CTR on your Adsense, think Google Text Search (Very simple & no distractions).

[yukon]

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

What do you mean by recycling traffic?

I have a few old Blogger sites (around 4 years old).

I also have a few Wordpress sites.

My old Blogger sites get good Free traffic, I built a good reputation in the small niche that most of my sites are in, mostly from forum traffic.

If I can't get my readers to click on Adsense on the Blogger blog, then I try to move that old traffic to a newer (same exact niche) Wordpress site.

Here is the traffic flow:

1) Niche forum (not my site)

2) My Blogger site (niche = xyz)

3) My wordpress site (niche = xyz)

This gives me a 2nd chance to try & get my traffic to click on Adsense.

Both Blogger & Wordpress are 100% related, the only thing that changes is the site/theme & newer content on the Wordpress site.

Note:
Very few external links on the Blogger site, & Wordpress site promotion on the Blogger site.

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by yukon

If I can't get my readers to click on Adsense on the Blogger blog, then I try to move that old traffic to a newer (same exact niche) Wordpress site.

Ahh got it. I do the same thing. I have some old blogger blogs that still outrank my main site for certain keywords. Those blogs have only 2 ways out: Adsense or links to my main site.

[JoshuaG]

Have you tried experimenting with different layouts?
Or using image ads?
Or Section targeting?

[hattamuda]

I also have the same problem, I have been using google adsense for a year, but the results are only 24 dollars, I have many times replaced the themes, but still no change