Bad Adsense layout

Do you notice what he is doing wrong? If not then make sure to read my post about the best Adsense colors and the hot-spot ad positons.

The first problem is that he is using a 728*90 banner. Banners are Web 1.0 – nobody clicks them anymore. They suffer from the problem known as “banner-blindness”. We got used to normal horizontal banners and do not click them anymore. Leaderboard and banner ads are out! Don’t even think about using them if you have alternatives.

If you want to get a decent CTR and not one click per year then you must work with the large rectangles. They attract a lot more attention and look less like banners as long as they are not showing an image. Replace them on your website and I am almost 100 percent certain that your CTR will improve by 1-2 percent. I have been using the banners before as well and no, they did not work for me neither!

So how do you place two large rectangles next to each other? The answer is simple, use html to create a table for your Adsense units. The code to do so is:

<table>
<tr>
<td>Code 1</td>
<td>Code 2</td>
</tr>
</table>

That will place your Ads next to each other drawing more of the visitors attention and as a result improve your CTR. Really, whenever you make a website – this code will get you a decent amount of clicks!

The next problem with his Ads is the color. He is using #FEA20F as the link and URL color. What kind of color is that? Have you ever seen someone using it before? Don’t invent new Adsense improvement strategies! Use that what works! Blending Ads with bright URL color has never worked for me and won’t do for you as well. Choose a dark blue as link color. #000080 is definately my favorite and most successful one. The reason for choosing the blue is simple: people are used to blue hyperlinks and will consequently click them more often. #0000FF is the color almost all websites use for ad-links – that’s also a problem, people got used to it and do not click ad-units in that color that often anymore! Take a darker blue as link color!

You also don’t want the readers to have a look at the URL – you want them to look on the link and click that one right away. If they look too long on the URL they will notice that it is an advertisement and probably not click which means that you do not get any money at all. Make the link color a grey like #cccccc or the same color as the text in your advertisements. So if your text is black, then make the URL black, or grey.

2 Large Rectangles

That’s what gets you the highest CTR with Adsense in my opinion. Let’s have a look what Kiraly changed. He implemented my suggestions and is now using a #021588 as link color which is almost the same as the navy-blue #000080. But what the heck? Why is he using a #21588E as URL color? That’s not the best solution if you ask me. You should make it the same color as the text-color of your Adsense unit. In his case the text-color of his Adsense unit is #424242 which means that he should make the URL look the same. That way the people tend to look and click the Link of your ad more often.

One last thing which I would suggest in case of his website is to place the Adsense units not in the middle, but more to the left. People look at the top-left corner of a website when loading the website. That is in fact the best position for advertisements. Try to allocate your Ads more to the left by adding a <div align=”left”>(your table with the adsense ads)</div> around your table. That will move them right into the so called “hot-zone” and result in a higher CTR, too.

Embed all those changes and I am more than sure that you will experience a CTR-boom. I did the same on all of my websites and believe me – my click through rate is way better now. It is like in your local shopping-center. The people arrange their products psychologically to make you buy products more often. Same applies to the Adsense ads – you want to magically make users click them! Let me know if you need assistance with the placement and look of your ads.

1. Mozilla Firefox

Yes that’s right, I’m a big fan of Firefox since 2.0 and haven’t even thought of switching back to Internet Explorer. That being said; Firefox is limitlessly extendable, fast, and lightweight. If you’re still using any other browser (even Google Chrome), then switch to Firefox immediately, it’ll boost your productivity – I can guarantee you that.

There are also countless plugins available, check this post on the 25 must have plugins for bloggers.

2. MemoKeys

I’ve discovered a nice Tool that will help you saving time by saving common used text in a specified keynumber(for example F1 to F12). Just save the text you want in one of those F keys and press it somewhere in word or msn and it will paste the text immediatly into the window.

Click on the image on the right side to see a complete overview for it.

3. Microsoft Office 2007

Not as highly needed for just the Word, since you can use notepad which is already giving in Windows itself. It is handy for making PowerPoint Presentations and Excel sheets. I also have it for Outlook since it can handle multiple mail adresses.

If you don’t have the money to buy it, then I recommend the OpenOffice, which is free and some say just as powerfull.

4. WordWeb

Misspelling much in English? Try out WordWeb.

It is a powerfull English Dictionary tool with about 150,000 words in its database, although it also allows you to look into online sites such as Wikipedia. WordWeb’s a feature rich dictionary & thesaurus tool and a must have for bloggers who write their own content.

5.  Digsby

Digsby is an all-in-one IM/social networking client. It supports most of the IM protocols out there, like Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, and AIM. It even supports Facebook chat! It features tabbed conversation window, allows you to manage your email, and stay up-to-date with everything that’s happening on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn accounts. As its makers say: Digsby = IM + Email + Social Networking.

What Do You Use?

I’m sure that I’m just covering the most important ones here, but I’d love to hear from other PC using bloggers – what applications are you using?

You gotta decide between PPC (also known as CPC, stands for Pay per click), PPA (also known as CPA, stands for pay per affiliate and CPM (PPM, pay per impression). Some blogs tend to work better with CPA programs, others with CPC programs and others with CPM programs.

I made the experience that CPC programs run best when you have a niche blog. Your blog should not be about different topics, only about one. That way the CPC-programs can easily put related advertisements on your website which then tend to be clicked by your visitors more often. One very good advertising program is Google Adsense (you probably know it, if not you must be a newby lol). Because of the intense amout of advertisers Google is able to put extremely relative ads on your websites. As said before, the advertisements are appealing to the visitors and will consequently get clicks. To make it a little easier to understand: Let’s say your blog is about lawyers in a district of New York – there is an advertiser interested in putting advertisements on websites about exactly that topic. The ads are shown the user and they click on them because they were looking for a lawyer. Always keep in mind that the success to Google Adsense is the niche relevancy and the amount of clicks. The more clicks, the more money. The relevanter the better earnings per click (general sites suffer from smart pricing). I have mainly worked with Google as CPC program, but alternatives are Yahoo, Bidvertiser and some others of which I currently forgot the names.

The next category of advertisement are CPM ads. Those advertisements will get you money per impression. Sounds great because it is independent on clicks, however, those advertisement programs usually tend to pay out less. They do not have as targeted ads as the CPC programs, therefore do not have a large ROI (return on investment) for the advertiser. For me they pay out around 50% of what google-adsense pays. Usually you are forced to use those programs simply because you either got banned on adsense, or notice that your money per click gets lowered drastically. I worked togehter with some of them and made best experiences with: Adsdaq and Tribalfusion. If you need wellpaying pop-unders then Valueclick is the network to go. Their pop-unders pay out like on no other network. Cpxinteractive is good if you want income without really doing something. Just place their code and you can expect medium-earnings. The prior networks pay out well if you dedicate some time to play around a little. I will be writing a post about ad tiering for more money soon (helps to get more money out of CPM ads).

An alternative might be CPA advertisements for you. There some niches that are known to payout very well with affiliate advertisements. The dog niche for example will make you rich with CPA ads… You probably ask yourself why – in fact I did so too… It is fairly easy to understand – look at the audience of people that are interested in dogs. Most of them are 30+ and already have an income. Those people have money and usually (at least in Western-countries) do everything possible for the health and good of their pet. Those people are eager to buy products, the conversion rate is extremely high. An example: A dog is suffering from a disease – the person owning the dog searches for help on the internet and then finds your website. The person sees an advertisement related directly to her problem. The chance is high that she will click it and perhaps buy the product. So if the product costs around 500$ (some people pay that for the good of their dog) – then you get around 15% – what is 75$. Some friends told me that their sites where extremely well converting with a conversion rate of almost 5%! Wish I had such a blog and could run CPA advertisements hehe. Popular ones are the Ebay Commission Junction, Amazon-ads or Google Adsense. I have once been trying Zanox – but they scammed me around 200$. I am still waiting for a payout. Would love to know if you made better experiences with them.

CPA advertisements really depend on the niche – for example on my main website (it is about computer games – D3scene.com) – I would not be able to make any profit from Affiliate advertisements. The audience is maily around 15 years old. Most of the users do not even have a credit-card or paypal account. The chance that they really buy the product is very low. And the money behind a computer-game is not higher than 50$ – making it unattractive for gaming niches to run CPA ads.

Another possibility if your blog is about a specific software would be to use Pay-Per-Install advertisements. Those advertisements get you money whenever someone installs software. However, you will need to merge the software’s .exe with some kind of sponsor program .exe – which will make the audience of your blog never come back. Trust me, if a website tries to install crap on my computer I will NEVER even open them again. Zangocasg is the most popular one.

All in all you need to experiment – there is no 100% perfect advertising solution for your blog. The advertising niche changes every year and has new products which might increase your money. I recommend you to try out different advertisement programs and to see which one performs best for your blog. Not that I know everything, but I already know a decent amount – still – there is so much that influences your advertisements and I can not tell you the perfect solution. As stated above – experiment.