Ugly..... Doubled My Income

11 replies
So, recently I've been trying to increase the income of one
of my websites.

The website is in the adult niche, and it gets plenty of traffic. My aim
was to make more money from the current traffic that the website
recieves, instead of working on getting more traffic.

So I started searching for a related product to promote on my website.
I found a premature ejaculation product which seemed good (good salespage
etc) and I sent some traffic to it to find out it's average conversion rate. It
was pretty good, so I decided to put some banners of it on my website to
make money.


Well the problem was, not a whole lot of people were clicking on the
banner, which was very eye-catching and nice.


So I did a little test of my own. I created my own ugly banner and I threw
it on my website. Suprisingly enough, the CTR doubled, and so did the income.

How did I create the banner?


With paint. Just a plain static banner... white background, and some
words on it in black and red (The most powerful ones were in red and
in capital form).


Normally nice objects are much more eye-catching than ugly objects, but
on the internet, it can work the other way around.


That's why it's very important to TEST... always test new stuff guys. You
would be surprised at how one little feature can improve your earnings.

In my case it was an ugly, but unique banner that doubled the income of one
of my websites.


It probably happened because people are used to seeing the same
ads all over again, especially on adult websites. And naturally most
of them would just ignore them.


Bottom line is... if your website is getting a considerable amount of traffic,
focus on making more money out of it by testing new stuff. One little change
can result in a dramatic increase in your earnings

Cheers,
Johnny
#doubled #income #ugly
  • Profile picture of the author gadget_man
    Good advice Johnny. I'd of never even considered such a basic banner. Goes to show never underestimate the power of testing things out.
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  • Profile picture of the author duncanb
    Great post Thanks Johnny.

    Its amazing (psychology like that).

    Cheers
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  • Profile picture of the author lowjo
    I watched a webinar recently where they used really basic (ugly) banners with the nasty flashing red words on a white background all over the Google content network and they performed like crazy with big click throughs.

    Never would have thought about that myself...and so much easier and cheaper!

    So......did you buy and read the ebook? How did that perform?
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  • Profile picture of the author n7 Studios
    Just throwing an idea in here, but could this possibly (in part) be due to the industry you're in having site visitors who are somewhat immune to adverts boasting outrageous claims (which are typical on adult based sites) - or users who are just immune to the same old looking adverts?

    Your simple, different banner which stands out and looks more 'real' (if that makes any sense!) is probably refreshing for the user, hence the increase in CTR.
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    • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
      I have been doing this for quite a while now and the difference is massive. The difference between a great looking banner which you think is going to get clicks vs a plain text is no comparison, I've had over a 1000% increase in clicks in some cases. I've tested it over and over in a few niches and text wins every time. The basic rule is simple, words sell, not pretty pictures. Most of my banner ads now look like 468x60 adwords ads.
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  • Profile picture of the author SantiSantana
    Copywriting taken to the extreme... So if you can get the absolutely right words, the rest is all fluff....

    I think I´m going for that as well. More mods for my new site, yay!
    Signature

    Writer for hire

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    • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
      Originally Posted by SantiSantana View Post

      Copywriting taken to the extreme... So if you can get the absolutely right words, the rest is all fluff....

      I think I´m going for that as well. More mods for my new site, yay!
      Yep, treat them exactly like you would an adwords campaign, keep split testing until you find the best one. I also add a google script so that I can monitor the clicks in analytics.
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      • Profile picture of the author John Atkins
        Originally Posted by n7 Studios View Post

        Just throwing an idea in here, but could this possibly (in part) be due to the industry you're in having site visitors who are somewhat immune to adverts boasting outrageous claims (which are typical on adult based sites) - or users who are just immune to the same old looking adverts?
        The second one is the good reason in this case... If you take a look
        at adult sites similar to mine, you'll notice that 75% of them have
        the same ads, and the other ones have similar ads. So, most surfers
        here will become 'immune' to old looking adverts.
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  • Profile picture of the author lexilexi
    Awesome post. As they always say, people who test, do better than people who think they know what will work best.
    Banners in general suffer from "banner blindness". People are used to "tuning them out" because they will in all likelihood not contain what you are seeking. Putting the keywords in huge and simple in a banner is a great strategy for catching the eye.
    Signature

    "If there is no door, it becomes necessary to break out through the wall."

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  • Profile picture of the author talkingsmith
    thanks for sharing.... care to tell us what is the new ecpm after the improvement?

    I always want to enter this niche, either making website, or create list, just not sure what kind of CPM I can acheive in either way.

    I used to promote adultfriendfinder through my p2p traffic, if taking all the rebilling into account, that amount to 7-10$ cpm
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