Are horizontal banners worth it?

Of course they work, many websites are using them, one which comes to mind which I was just on is gumtree.com, it's a classified ad website which I think is owned by eBay? It all depends on the type of traffic you got, how well the ad is designed etc... Try more variations of the ad, try different positioning and sizes. How much traffic have you had to your site?

Get a couple of hundred visitors a day or so. My site is about fitness and exercise and the banner is related to that. You can take a look at the Top Exercise Workouts link below.

My conversion have been very low. Nothing has really clicked yet. I'm getting pretty good traffic but only get about 1 or 2 conversions a month sometimes none.

Yeah man, those convert well if they are targeted and you have enough visitors. The worst converting banners I've used are vertical banners in the side bar.

PS What do you consider "pretty good traffic" to be?

Well my site is almost a year old now and for a long time I got 20-30 visitors a day starting out. I just checked my Google Analytics for the last 30 days is around 6000 or an average of about 200 a day. So for me that's pretty good

That's decent traffic, but not enough to make a bunch with adsense and banners. I don't know the content of your site, so it's hard to give advice about what would be the best monetization strategy. Have you tried placing a block ad within the content of your articles? Those have always converted the best for me. Check this page out:

Heat map for pages - AdSense Help

edit: just read your above post that your blog is about fitness. Can you link your site?

Yes I had tried some block ads within some of my articles and they don't seem to be converting any better.

Not sure what you mean here:

My site is for muscle building, exercise workouts, weight loss, fitness, all the above basically

Sorry Longblog I just realized I was talking to someone new-the link for my site is Top Exercise Workouts there is a link in my signature.

OK, I just clicked your signature link, and I'm guessing that is your website. Is that a ppc ad at the top, or an affiliate ad?

I'll make a couple of suggestions, you can take them for whatever they are worth to you.

1. Get rid of the fly-out opt in box. It's annoying and it makes me want to leave your site before I have even read anything on it. If you insist on using a fly-in, delay the timing so people have had a chance to actually see your site first. No one is going to subscribe to your list when they haven't even established that your site offers anything of value.

2. Don't use excerpts on your home page. Display the full articles and put the rectangular ad blocks in the articles themselves. The best converting layout I've found is one ad in the first article, one ad in the second, and no 3rd ad. The 3rd ad in my experience just drives down the average cpc on the page as a whole since there's less bidding competition for the available ad space (this only really applies if you're doing cpc).

edit: Those right placed sidebars actually do a decent job of converting in my experience. Put a rectangular ad above the slide show, or just below it.

Longblog thanks for the tips, I do appreciate it. My banner is an affiliate ad and if I get some traffic there I am considering making it a rotator so that it changes every minute or so. What do you think?

I will change the opt in fly out to give people more time to read first. I don't want to get rid of it because I get very little opt ins if its not there at all

In the sidebar slider if you click on any one of them it takes you to a review page that I have written for it (some also have articles) and from there affiliate links can take them to the affiliate sites to hopefully convert.

I was considering making the slider images link directly to the affiliate sites but I thought that was a little deceptive. What do you think about that?

I briefly looked over one of your "reviews" Muscle Maximizer Review - For the Serious Workout Enthusiast

and to me, it reads more like a sales letter than a review.

Blog articles should be engaging and conversational. Personally, I got bored by the 2nd paragraph and stopped reading. Maybe take some time to evaluate how you are communicating to the viewers and analyse if you should change your approach.

How do your readers perceive you and your blog? Is your blog just hawking products, or are you someone sincerely interested in fitness who writes from the heart? These are questions the reader subconsciously answers for themselves within their first 30 seconds on your website. If they decide you're the former they move on without clicking anything except the back button.

You can probably increase your user interaction by a great amount just by changing your approach and writing style.

The link at the end of the above article is alright, but it would be more effective within the article itself. Hotlink the name of the program within the article. That way the user can click through as soon as you peak their interest rather than having to hunt for the link, or even worse, getting bored before reaching the end and leaving your site. Web users have a really bad case of ADD and you have to design your site with this in mind.

Last but not least... as far as I can tell, you've used images from adsense ads for your slide show images. Users already have ad blindness, and you're essentially trying to get them to click what is probably perceived as one ad (on your sidebar) just to get them to click another (at the end of your article). Make sure it's clear that the sideshow links to your articles not some ad, and then write the articles in a compelling, interactive way with your links built right in. You'll be pleasantly surprised at the difference in user interaction (CTR).

Thanks longblog for the great tips I really appreciate it.

Maybe it is just a crappy ad?

I run adsense on one of my sites with a 728x90 at the top of the page, a 160x600 on the left side, and a 468x60 at the bottom of the page.

The 728x90 and the 160x480 perform equally well. The 468x60 doesn't do well, but I don't expect it to, since it is at the bottom of the page.

Try inline 468s inside posts they get great click thrus.

I would simply test it and see if I were you. Test and tweak, test and tweak and see how many clicks the horizontal banner ad generates. The results may surprise you

Hey Longblog and all you others that have been so helpful in this thread, I took your advice and completely re-did my Muscle Maximizer review. I agree that it was really not done right and I was pretty green at the time.

Please check it out again at Muscle Maximizer Review and give me some feedback, good or bad.

I'm thinking I may re-do all my reviews in this format.

Much appreciated, Joe

Hi,

You know you could probably make a lot more money if you used an ad for someone else's website as a PAID AD. If you are getting a good traffic you can charge a lot more money and each page of your site can have a different ad on it.

You might be surprised at the number of click throughs to a free gift ad, I would use that space to build my list that way rather than the drop in, which people don't like.

Or use Exit Splash software to redirect to an optin with a free gift or free offer for optin and get building your list when they exit.

Just a thought...

Jennie Heckel
Sales Letter Copywriter

You should set up a squeeze page and direct email subscribers to your Clickbank affiliate products. Your website leads me to start clicking everywhere - and it's just not cohesive.