Ugly Sites Make Loads of Adsense Income

Joseph Plazo | Sep 10, 2008 | Comments


If you’re a blogger living off Adsense, chances are you’ve tweaked everything from ad colors, placements and sizes. You experimented with heatmaps, placed icons next to ads and even bought Joel Comm’s overpriced adsense books. But yet, your ads just don’t seem to reap the revenues you lust for.

I share your pain. My idea of the ideal adsense site is one that makes a thousand smackers a day. I don’t hit that.

say that A typical gadget/business site of mine made about $100 a day in adsense. I used the standard blogger’s format that embeds the ads inline flush to the left. It looks like this:

The ads are well blended and don’t annoy the user. It occasionally compels a few clicks and plunks $100 a day into the ole bank account. It definitely won’t land me in the fortune 500.

Then sometime mid this year, a happy accident occured. I was editing the adsense code of my site and my ads ended up showing this way:

Look at the page. It’s ugly, isn’t it? The page begins with the Heading or Title, then followed by my boxed ads. The body text don’t wrap around the ad, but goes way below, after the ads. Looks like crap, right?

I didn’t notice that my posts were appearing this way for some two or three days… that is, until I checked my adsense stats.

WOAH. Those past three days, I actually made $200 to $250 off the same site instead of $100.

Ugliness made people click!

Hmmm… I surmise it may have been for the following reasons:

1) People thought the ads lead to the main article, without seeing the following text (perhaps they used tiny eeePCs) and hurriedly clicked the ads to go to “the next page”

2) People hated the layout and wanted to escape the ugliness and clicked on the first thing they saw to escape the site.

After a few days of consistently making over $150 to $250 a day, I reverted the site back to the old layout because the high paying layout simply looked unprofessional. My earnings dropped back to lower than $150.

Seems ugliness pays….

What do you think?


Read Related Posts

  1. How To Supplement Your Adsense Income And Increase The Total CPM For Your Pages How To Supplement Your Adsense Income And Increase The Total CPM For Your Pages
  2. Problogger Adsense Earnings Survey And Expanding Blog Income Sources Problogger Adsense Earnings Survey And Expanding Blog Income Sources
  3. Is Someone Sending Me Personal Messages Via Adsense? Is Someone Sending Me Personal Messages Via Adsense?
  4. Finally A Decent Looking Google Adsense Image Ad Campaign! Finally A Decent Looking Google Adsense Image Ad Campaign!
  5. Guide To Google Adsense Smart Pricing Guide To Google Adsense Smart Pricing



««
»»

Latest Posts

Filed Under: Blogging • Software • Tools & Tips • Web Design

Tags:

About the Author: Joseph Plazo is a recognized persuasion expert ... but can't persuade his business partners and clients to leave him alone.He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-selling persuasion, attraction and influence resources. You simply can't be persuaded to miss out on his massive library of free Mind Power downloads.

  • One of our most successful sites ever is also the ugliest, it's so ugly in fact that we don't admit to owning it - but we can't bring ourselves to change it because it just works!

    It doesn't run Adsense so it's not just clicking, people buy from ugly sites too.

    Read John's latest blog post....How To Start With Nothing And Make A Million In Just 28 Steps>>>
  • I guess ugly urges people to do something. And online there aren't lots of something options except clicking. :)

    Read Rarst's latest blog post....Computer you won’t dream about>>>
  • Ah, thats a bad news. I just wanted to make my site simpler and neat so that people will like it. But if keeping it ugly pays more, then its difficuilt to decide which one, :)

    Read Mobilejgames's latest blog post....T9 redefined for touch screen devices>>>
  • I've often wondered about this when looking at articles on profit from ads. They are always short term tests. They generally show that techniques that make the adds more prominent or annoying do increase revenue but they don't measure the likelihood of a reader returning. If you always used the results of these tests to drive your decision making you could over time drive away much of your custom.

    When I subscribed to Connected Internet's RSS feed it had a lot less adds. I haven't unsubscribed but I doubt I would actually subscribe anymore. Of course I'm not a good customer because I don't remember ever clicking on an add here.

    Maybe revenue is maximised by annoying readers and the lost traffic is worth it. Most likely there is a balance and you need to measure long term trends as well to find the optimum annoyance.
  • @Ken
    As far as I understand lots of sites target ads not on regular readers but on those that come from search. Searchers couldn't care less about becoming readers they want quick answer and to jump further.
    That's why some type of sites require hundreds of thousands visitors to become profitable and some bring money with relatively small traffic.
    I think every good site can be profitable but not every profitable site can be good.

    Read Rarst's latest blog post....Computer you won’t dream about>>>
  • I know people who specifically design the ugliest looking sites they can so that people will click on the ads and they can generate adsense revenue!
  • Ive never really had any success with adsence, the most I ever had was $2 in one day, and my site was really ugly.
  • I wonder if any of it can be explained by the fact that frequent visitors become familiar with the placement of certain types of content such that it becomes visible to them.

    When you change that layout, and in particular 'ugly it up' such that it becomes even more prominent perhaps it draws the eyes of those users. I wonder if over time that uptick would level off to the click rate you're currently used to as people get used to those placements.

    Read kidlet's latest blog post....New Butt Freckle Toys For Kids!!>>>
  • Content is king..dont take me wrong but that what drags your readers and what interests them most
  • That's interesting. Did you notice if your Average Page Views or Time On Site decreased during the "ugly" period? I wonder if the short-term gain would translate into a long-term advantage?

    Cheers, Jon

    Read Jon's latest blog post....Salons for Sale - Business for sale websites>>>
blog comments powered by Disqus