Ezine= 30%ctr/ ArticlesBase=5%ctr/ Articlesnatch=3%ctr/ Assoc.Content=4%. Why so Low?

Wow! Very interesting numbers!
I am curious to see what could be the cause of that.
It may well be the ads!
Hope you can increase to 15% or 20% for other directories!

The trick to getting a high CTR is having a strong resource box with a strong call to action.

The biggest mistake people make when writing their resource box is to start talking about themselves (e.g. John Doe has 5 years of experience with building stuff, blah blah blah). No one cares about that. And to the reader, that signifies the end of the article, so they can move on to the next article.

What you ought to do is put your articles ending sentences in your resource box with a strong call to action. Here's an example;

"Finally, when building your bird bath, you want to apply a generous layer of paint for that extra vibrant color! Would you like to learn how you can build a bird bath in just 1 hour without any of the hassle or stress? Then click over to my website, and I'll banish your building woes."

On the other hand, if these statistics are consistent with most of your articles, I would suggest focusing on just EZA; submit your articles to EZA, and then promote those articles with social bookmarking, RSS feeds, and so on.

Hope this helps.

James, I think it's primarily about who the readers are, rather than the possibilities you've suggested above.

Increasing your click-through rate doesn't necessarily increase your income at all (indeed, there are even circumstances under which it can have the opposite effect).

Two distinctly different groups of people read the directory copies of articles:-

(i) People who have found them through a search engine. These people are potential customers. They have typically not heard of the article directory, don't know what it is, don't care, and just want to read information on what they were searching for. It's unfortunate for me, when they find the article directory copies - obviously I'd far rather have them finding the copy on my own site.

(ii) People who find them through a search within the article directory. These are not potential customers. These are the people for whom I'm submitting my work to article directories, because they include people using them as article directories (i.e. looking for available content to syndicate). The chances of them clicking through and looking at my site, if they're thinking of syndicating, is somewhere between 99.9% and 100%, I think: they not going to want my backlink on their site or in their ezine/newsletter without having a look at it first, are they?

One can't tell just from "views" and "clicks" which proportion are which, of course.

It may be that one particular article directory is giving you a far higher proportion of one than the other (I'm convinced this is true for me).

I think you already know what a huge mistake it can be to build backlinks to other people's sites, so I'll say no more here about the folly of sending traffic to article directories rather than getting traffic from them.

at the end of the day Ezines is the most popular of the article directories

James,

I know you said you've implemented my ideas to place content on AC. If you want to increase CTR there, here's a quick suggestion:

Place your anchor text within the 1st sentence of your article AND towards the end of the article.

This is what has helped me receive the most clicks from AC. Getting that URL right at the beginning should help raise it a bit.

I guess I didn't take advantage of these other directories letting me put links in the body, especially in the beginning of a paragraph.

I experienced these low CTRs before.

And you gotta really study WHY people click.

And it goes back to the affiliate marketing model.
(If you have been doing affiliate marketing, you'll know it's vastly different from writing articles for AdSense websites)

The Offer

Is it a must that visitors want to click on your offer?

Relevance of Title (This Is A Big One)

I have tried writing articles that have titles like "oval window shades" but having the resource box pointing to "window blinds".

In this case, oval window shades is somehow related to window blinds, as a sub category.

Results?

CTR is nothing to boast of, which is below 5%.

But...

It's a REALLY DIFFERENT story if you have titles like "oval window shades" and the resource box says "oval window shades" too.

Hope that helps James.

Isn't 30% CTR on ezine is bit too high? not realistic? Am very very curious to see your author profile, will you please send the link?
You must be the best one, if its true. 30% CTR, thats crazy!