I have to come clean on this, I seem to be missing the plot with Google AdSense!
(update – today, my click thru on AdSense is 1.97% with just over 4 hours to go til the day end. Odd, right?)
For sure, I don’t have many sites with AdSense as the center of monetization. Not nearly as many as I used to have, anyhow. But the ones I do have, and although some of those are seeing regular visitors – well, they are not seeing clicks.
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Where at one time they seemed to be doing okay for clicks – some of them were seeing a regular 14 – 25% click through, I now would be fortunate to be in receipt of 6% click through. Take yesterday for example – a 1.96% click through over-all. That is diabolical! And that is fairly representative of the past week or two. Some days, anyhow.
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I suspect I have left AdSense set up on some sites where it should not be. And I’ve forgotten where, actually. You know how Google have this thing about only showing you a certain percentage of where your income and visitor flow has come from? I really wish they would show more. After all, I must only have about 20 sites with Google AdSense, so why can’t they show all the stats?
Even on sites that used to see reasonable clicks – its currently so poor. May be just a mid-month crisis sort of thing. I have found that when folks are not buying in general (mid – month tends to be bad for buying) then they are not clicking on ads either. Not sure if you find that with your own sites?
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I always dreamed of making my AdSense fortune but maybe this is a sign. Maybe I should focus on other forms of monetization from now onwards.
eBay does pull my chain, its got to be said. However, I am very fearful of relying as heavily as I currently am doing upon eBay. eBay can be (almost) as temperamental & fickle as Google, so what if one day you wake up and find that they changed all the rules and no more income from eBay?! That’s a big OUCH from me! Look what’s happened to BANS! I never had any BANS sites fortunately so was not caught out with that.
For sure I have many of my eBay sites set up in that they can be re-focused on either AdSense or on Amazon products. Not all but most. But the amount of work to change over would be scary. It would take a full month at the very least working every day to do this. That would mean a real plunge in income for at least a month.
And further, there is absolutely no guarantee that the sites would do nearly as well as they have been with eBay.
Hmmmm… on the other hand, they may do better…
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What about turning my attention back to Amazon?
Oddly, when I was utilizing Amazon on about 30 of my sites I was finding that folks were clicking through to the main Amazon site, but they were merely browsing when they got there. If I remember some stats from those days when I relied more on Amazon for doing the goods for me, many months were seeing something like a 1% buying rate, and that was from those who had already clicked through from my own sites.
That’s rubbish!!
With eBay, and for the same sites (many of my previous Amazon sites I redirected to eBay instead) I am seeing a much better buying ratio. To provide exact stats is not possible but I would take a guesstimate that its more like 3 to 4% month on month. May not sound much but its a huge improvement on Amazon!
Oh and I don’t use the likes of Commission Junction because CJ sellers tend to want to assess your website and visitor stats before granting permission to sell their wares. I got fed up of that even though there is good reason for them wishing to do so. Its kinda like “BIG BROTHER” says who gets in and who does not. Nope, not for me Big Brother!
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What about selling ad space?
In a recent post I read on Famous Bloggers by Hesham, he quoted figures like you have to have 30k unique monthly visitors to your site before you could expect to receive $15 a month per ad slot.
Oh come on! Even though I do very poorly with AdSense its still a lot better than that!
None of my sites gets any where near this volume of monthlies anyhow. Its not my game. I go for lower end traffic volume which tends to be less competitive, and have never built up a super site on the scale to be receiving 30k plus visitors per month. Its not my game.
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Having said this, the SEO tips blog that you are reading now may one day be achieving this sort of visitor flow, but for now its no where near this. Mind you, its 3 and a half months old, so what to expect? And I’ve only just begun to target specific keyword phrases for SEO’ing. I use the Link Juicer (links to my previous post – the Link Juicer review) for that as its very easy to do.
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On a brighter note. I checked my AdSense account today only to see a sudden rise in visitor numbers to one particular site. Odd. I have not even looked at that site for 4 months, and have a single backlink to it, nothing more. Ooops, that’s a lie – its received about 8 backlinks, according to Yahoo Site Explorer.
I checked it in Scroogle and sure enough, its risen to third in Google ranks. What the heck is going on?
I check in Google Analytics and yesterday it received some 53 uniques, where the average was 3 per day. Haha. Finally something has gone in my favor and I did not have to do anything!
Mind you, when I check in Google AdSense, the page impressions there simply do not tally up with Google Analytics. Either I’m missing something really big here, or Google are lying to me. Which of those do you think it is then?
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As always, any and all comments are welcome. But those who want to write about Xerox photocopiers, no thank you! 
Spam, spam go away, and don’t come back another day!
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Google analytics and adsense never seem to line up for me either.
I have been told that analytics lags behind by several hours, so it should line up when you compare days several days later. I’ve never actually tested it though.
Also, do you have many hubpages or infobarrels? That’s what seems to always drag down my overall CTR. They are both dreadful in comparison to the majority of my adsense sites.
Hey Josh, yeah that seems a bit silly – Goog Analytics and AdSense not lining up together to show the same visitor tracking. After all, wasn’t there a fairly big thing not long ago about tying one up to the other.
I find it really hard to “read” Google sometimes, but then this is precisely what they want, right? To be shady and what many others would argue as downright devious. If you ever read up on SEO book’s (I think its Aaron Wall, but don’t necessarily quote me on that) email broadcasts, almost every single one of them is about exposing Google’s deviousness.
I do have a few hubs yes, but visitor count is very low. However, I certainly understand where you are coming from Josh – I have never found Hubs or Squids to do at all well with regards to AdSense. Maybe I’m not using them right, but its not my thing anyhow, so worries there for me.
I know Courtney Tuttle did very well with regards to his Hubs AdSense income challenge (I think that’s what it was, anyhow), but I never studied his techniques regards to how he works the ads, so can’t comment about it. If I remember, I will ask my friend David – he talks with Court Tuttle at various times so maybe we can get some feedback about that.
Thanks for your input Josh – you make a couple of very good points!
Jo
Hey Jo!
I’m having the same problem with Adsense. My CTR is going down every week, although traffic is going back up. A few months ago, with the same traffic that I have now, I used to get $3 – $5 a day from my main site. Now, I’m lucky if I get $0.50. What’s going on?
You know a couple of weeks ago I tried a niche ad network — but their code gave an error and I got no response from them, even after 3 emails. Amateurs…
I never got approved to EPN. I tried for several months last year and lost a lot of money because of it. You know, because you’re not supposed to run any ads on your sites when applying for their program. They waited almost 2 months before rejecting my application for the third time, then I gave up on them.
Amazon doesn’t work for me either — yet. I know Tiffany and Chris Guthrie (http://www.makemoneyontheinternet.com/) make money with Amazon — but I just don’t get the hang of it.
Anyway, yesterday I was looking at alternatives to Adsense. I found a couple of recommendations on ProBlogger: Shopzilla and Chikita. Apparently, both of them do well on product sites. I’m going to try and apply for those. Not sure if low traffic count will cause be to be rejected, but it doesn’t hurt to try!
Good to know I’m not the only one then Selena
! Actually, I know I’m not the only one – just have a quick look see on Digital Point for example and you always see posts complaining about AdSense.
It is actually very interesting what you are telling me regards to your own CTR. This past couple of weeks and my CTR has been very bumpy indeed. And generally speaking – very bumpy in the negaitve sense more than in the positive. Today was another shockingly disappointing day!
Thus if AdSense want to lose what potentially is a half decent “playa”, they are going about it the right way. Not that they care. God is GOD, after all, right???
Ah, so you tried emailing to this niche ad network with no response. You wanna try out emailing AllPosters.com then Selena (you’ll remember them from the days on the Warrior Forum Challenge
). Erm, on second thoughts, maybe not. They are totally hopeless at responding to emails! And in part, that is why my Twilight posterz site is making no income whatsoever. Thanks AllPosters.com, but no thanks!
If it were not for eBay’s affiliate program, I would possibly not be where I am right now. Yes sure, Amazon was going fairly well for me back then, but it was eBay that really ‘fixed me up’ to leaving the UK well and truly behind!
I was knocked back the first time I applied. Then I re-applied about 4 months later after reading up – on a forum that I used to frequent, a few methodoligies to achieve success. There was nothing groundbreaking I read or did, and as I have mentioned before, the site that actually won the day with regards to eBay’s affiliate program, was henceforth de-indexed by Google a couple of months thereafter. Never was re-indexed either.
If you wanna persevere with eBay then we can work together on that, if you want to do so Selena. I can’t guarantee their acceptance, but in my own opinion its very well worth re-trying, time and again! It should cost little to no money to do so either.
Ah yes, Amazon. I still make money with them, and they were the first affiliate program that I made regular income from. I would swear by them but for the fact that the conversion is very low. And I am not talking about click thru to Amazon, which on my sites was reasonable, even though my sites were so, so basic. I am talking about conversion once the visitor is on the Amazon site. eBay, I have found to be a lot higher!
I tried out Chikita a long while back – meaning 18 months ago. I have little to no recollection of the results so obviously not much was happening there… Not to say they were bad. It was me who was ‘bad’, back then
Do let me/us know how you get on with Chikita and Shopzilla please Selena.
I’m tinkering with the thought of messing around with Clickbank once again. Not with regards to internet marketing products mind you. Those are the ones that are up for sniping, so I will not go any where near there! I was thinking more along the lines of “panning for gold” sort of eBooks…
Hey, after all, is internet marketing not “panning for gold”??
So AllPosters didn’t respond either? What a shame — it seemed to be the perfect affiliate program for your Twilight site! I saw that some people offered to help you with your aff links — any success?
I could give it a try too, if you want. I’m no coder, but I know my way around WordPress. Unless it’s something really tricky I can probably sort it out.
About the EPN thing — I’d love that! I know nothing is guaranteed, but if you could point me to the right direction it would be great.
Na, AllPosters are shocking when it comes to contacting affiliates when they need a bit of direction. So I’ve dumped them!
One momento Selena – I’ll just go check to see if my affiliate links are indeed working on Twilight posterz – I hooked it up with eBay again only yesterday…
Yeah, the links are working but I’m not getting any credit for the sales. Forgot (or rather, was not aware it was necessary) to go set up my back – office with eBay Trading Partners. I best do that now before I lose even more sales
Okay, I’ve reset the campaign ID, so hopefully now all will be well with this thing! What’s the odds that there is still a problem…
With regards to re-applying to eBay. If you have a site that you can use right now then great.
What I suggest is that you ensure that its a site that will not only be of benefit to yourself, but from eBay’s perspective its going to be something that they like – decent looking, easy to navigate, nicely laid out etc. It does not have to be a large site. My own site was about 5 pages of content with a few images and not much more. A freebie wordpress theme too.
I purchased my domain name for a 2 year period rather than just the one (in a sense that was a mistake as Google promptly de-indexed the site, so a waste of money there). This goes to prove to eBay you are looking for a longer term relationship with them. You simply have to put yourself in eBay’s shoes and show them that you have their interests very much at heart.
Ensure that within your application you go over the top with regards to helping yourself to help them and that besides earning money, you are very keen on real quality sites where ever eBay is concerned.
Should you be rejected again Selena, persevere with this particular site. A mistake made by many is to simply give up. If you write back to them asking for specific reasoning why they rejected your application, then you will be answered by an individual rather than by the automated eBay answer system. This means that they will see you are very keen to work WITH them, and not just in this for quick profiteering.
I urge you not to give up though. Christmas is just around the corner and eBay and Amazon are obviously winners when it comes to Christmas! I’m already getting excited and have been re-working a number of my own sites purely in prep for Christmas sales via both Amazon and of course eBay! In just over 3 months Christmas sales will begin in earnest. We have to have our sites preped in anticipation, which means the site being nicely set up (links are working – just like they have been in my Twilight posterz site
), and you have to work out how you are going to manage ranking the sites too, which is of course the biggest headache for most of us.
For me I’m lucky – many/most of my sites are sitting very near or right at the top for my chosen keyword phrases. What I will do is start putting out a few backlinks to each very soon, just to allow Google some comfort zone for when it comes to ramping up the links. I don’t want Google to get all flustered when I have to hit those web pages harder (simply to outcompete my comp, which I am more than capable of doing cos the comp tends to be the likes of Amazon, eBay and the other biggies around there), so best I prep them up a bit now. And we all know that for new sites Google gets easily flustered if we over-do the backlinking just a bit. Start early.
Don’t hesitate to ask anything that you are not clear about Selena – I’ll try my best to answer.
Jo
You are lucky to have such good ctr. When I ran Adsense on my sites I was barely getting over 1% ctr. Even though I tried almost every placement possible, it was still getting a low ctr. I don’t use Adsense anymore for making money on my site because it was so bad. I do use adsense on my YouTube video though and that has a low ctr also but it still manages a lot of clicks a day so its good.
Oh dear Bidet – that is too low! I would be disappointed in getting 5%, let alone 1%. I think 5% is about the average over-all but it would not be high enough for me, unless they were high value clicks and I had tried out various ways to improve it, such as you have done.
Some of my sites get around 35% click thru over-all. But, having said that, they have lower visitor volume. Thus if I managed to get more visitors then that click thru may level out a bit. But in general, I would be looking for between 12% and 20% over-all. And if I were not able to achieve this then AdSense would potentially be on the chopping block. After all, in some ways you could argue that Google are failing us, if we are not seeing decent ad click-thru, so why would be stick with them if we could do better with their “competitors”?