I have a problem.
The problem is that barely anyone is clicking on my Yahoo Ads. I’d love to make a little bit of money from the clicks. So, in this post, I’m going to attempt to analyze the problem. I can use all the help I can get.
Lately I’ve been getting a lot of visitor traffic.
Please, feel free to try to help me figure why no one is clicking on the Yahoo Ads. Eli tried.
First, let’s look at the Yahoo Ads. Not too relevant, huh? Yeah, that could be the entire problem itself. But, let’s explore a little more.
Maybe, it’s the format of the ad layout. For example: Which unit works best? Leaderboard, skyscraper, Link Units, etc?
Maybe it’s the ad placement? Such as:
1) Ads in the Header.
2) Ads in The Sidebar.
3) Placing ads above each post’s content.
4) Placing ads inside the content of each individual post.
5) Placing an ad just over the comment link.
6) After the First Post.
7) Ads in RSS Feeds.
A well known strategy is to make the ads blend into the site content by making the ad border, and background color, the same color as the site’s background color. I tried that. It didn’t work.
I haven’t tried some of the other basic adsense strategies yet. But, I certainly intend to.
Although, I can’t help but wonder if….even if I did everything perfectly…the horribly un-relevant content within the Yahoo ads, is preventing visitors from clicking on the ads.
I guess the best course of action will be to just test, track, and optimize the results.
No related posts.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Shimon,
I think your problem is that the Yahoo Ads are out of the way. I wouldn’t even see them if I wasn’t looking for them.
I bet if you did an eyetools tracking study, you’d find people start from the top left of your blog and continue down on the left side. My blog gets far less traffic than yours (probably because I never update), but I do get a few clicks daily. You need to integrate your ads.
>>I guess the best course of action will be to just test, track, and optimize the results.
I think you should figure out a different way of monetizing your blog. I doubt that your readers are the type that are looking to click on ads. Contextual advertising seems to work a lot better on sites that are more commercial in nature, or have a less savvy demographic.
You have a good point Greg. Someone else told me I should put some affiliate links/banners on here. Not sure how well that’ll work though. Could be worth a small test.
I think yahoo ads are just way to irrelevant. I also think you need to look at opportunities other than cpc ads. For example, those coming to your blog are coming to learn from an expert, yet those people coming to plentyoffish.com are looking for dating, so are more inclined to click on ads. You need to better understand your audiences needs and then get the products or services they need.
You may want to start analyzing the value of second tier search engines etc, and then putting afffiliate links in your reviews, so would be marketers who haven’t tried those engines will sign up and you will get recurring revenue on their cpc on those engines.
Did you ever think about selling text links? Many of the top SEO blogs do. SERoundtable, SEOMoz, are just to name a few. Put a “Your Ad Here” on your blog and see if anyone bytes….
Make sure you use an image for “Your Ad Here” or your links will be devalued. There’s a good tool at webconf called the Link Price Calculator to help figure out the value of a link from your page.
First put the ads smack in the body of the main post. Second make it so the ads only appear on posts older than 7 days. This way you don’t annoy your regular readers, but give the ads prime placement for the search traffic you hit long term. Lastly blend those ads in.
Just like Avi said, I would sell textlinks.. There are always people who love to buy that!
So, you are looking to generate some mulah (gangster talk for cash). The fact is that your site does not appeal to anyone but internet marketing jabronies (gangster talk for Bum). How bout adding so content to get regular wiseguys to hit this site? RIGHT!~ Put some ads that maybe regular geeks will want to click on.
Shim, I sent my thoughts about this to your personally, but it is in line with what Greg noted. I would be interested in how to sell text links on my site – so keep me informed if you go this route. sph
You could also try blending those ads in directly at the end of your “categories” field just before the “text links” ads and get rid of the borders around those ads.
Saw you moved your ads. Let me know how that works.
I think part of the problem is that the ads are beneath the fold. Plus, there’s not enough of them (I see only two) to attract attention. Advertising has to be interruptive. I’d say certainly move the ads above the fold, and consider plugging them in where the reader can’t help but see them. Take a cue from Weblogs Inc, who are using text ads successfully. They merge ads into the main column, though keeping them separate from the posts themselves.
As to relevance, I haven’t queried your blog enough to know if there is sufficient contextual relevance to provide a strong enough pull to the reader to click. I use Adsense on one of my blogs and it often returns starkly irrelevant returns, enough though I think my posts are keyword-optimized enough to make sense to Google.
My advice…try making one change at a time and see what effect that has, almost like A/B split testing. That way you can narrow down the problem and hopefully find effective solutions for it.
Shimon,
I hate ads, but I WILL click on a relevant ad when I see one.
Problem #1: I had to scroll back up to the top of your site to look for them when I read this blog post (they weren’t there) and then scroll all over, actually LOOKING for them.
Problem #2: The ads I saw were completely un-interesting to me. Sorry, but I already have a web host and I don’t need to find any more web-directories (those were the ads served up).
In all, I would make the decision on IF you’re going to montetize or not, and then optimize your result, and don’t look back. Don’t try and do both.
If you want to be monetized by this blog (I think you should), then place relevant, contextually appealing ads on the blog in smart locations and then FORGET ABOUT IT. You go do your thing (blogging well and digging up cool stuff), and it will do its thing (pay you). With people like Steve Rubel pitching your blog, you’ll be doing fine in no-time.
I had a blog way back called point-n-click with a similar appearance to this one, if it helps you with ideas.
What’s important, again, is that the ads are VISIBLE and RELEVANT.
Personally, I suggest you test google adsense on your site in an equally viable place on your blog as the Yahoo ads. I click very few ads, but almost ALL of them are Google ads–none of the other ones serve ads that are very interesting to me.
If you know enough web wizardry, have every odd visitor see google ads and every even one see yahoo ads and track their respective clickthrus.
Good luck! Great blog.
Hi Shimon,
I see you’ve changed the way your ads look recently, and I’d like to suggest something to you – have you ever tried blending the ads in to your site or maybe making them stick out like a sore thumb?
Also, I seem to get better results on some topics, and if you create zones so you can track ads in different sections, you’ll know what topics to focus on even if they might be fluff articles, they might still interest your readers and help monetize the rest of your site and help to push you to write more (you’re a talented writer!)
Anyway just my two cents, of course, and your mileage may vary.
Good luck!
Ryan of blandname.com
I know that my comment is 4 years older than this post however during the time this post was written (2006) I was killing with YPN. July ’06 alone I made close to $8K from the YPN. Maybe its the traffic.