Adsense Placement Critique?

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.

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?

#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,
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.

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.

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...

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.