Time to say goodbye to Adsense. At least on 75% of my sites. I am pretty sure I have been smart priced by the Adsense program. I have Adsense splashed across a numerous amount of blogs, many Blogger, and I am getting pathetic CTR. I get a ton of page views/impressions but no clicks. I don’t know much about smart pricing. I read some corporate crap from from Google, which said that they are providing the best ad experience for their advertisers, blah, blah, blah. I then tooled over and read some stuff that Court wrote entitled How to Get Worthless Adsense Clicks and decided it was time to pull the Adsense on all sites that were not getting clicks.
There was a time that my so-called “money blogs” were getting a nice rate of return for the Adsense clicks. Now I’m seeing clicks worth far less. When I started building my AMA blogs and putting Adsense on them, I had days where my Adsense doubled. But now I’m actually making less than I was before AMA. The amount that some of my original blogs were making is now quite a bit less.
Last night I went through and cleaned off Adsense on almost all of my Blogger blogs. It was probably a bad decision to put it on there in the first place. I then transformed them into the Ebay/Niche franken-sites by using a modified Blogger template and Ebay widgets. Sometimes I’m not the brightest bulb in the pack. I’ve been doing OK with this method but never really ramped up production like I said I would. Instead I decided to try building ugly blogs and placing Adsense front and center. It works for some but clearly it does not for me. Visitors simply ignored the ads. I can’t blame them. I ignore Adsense ads too. I find it amazing that Google makes any money at all. Anyway…
I now have about 20 new franken-sites. I have a ton more Blogger blogs I built for AMA that I will be converting to franken sites as well. I’ve always seemed to do well with my datafeed blogs and StoreStacker sites. These franken-sites seem to pull in sales as well. Yet I continually come back to Adsense. It would be nice if I would stick with things that works.
Getting smart priced was probably the best thing that happened. If my earnings hadn’t dropped across all my blogs using Adsense I would have just stayed the course probably. Too lazy to try anything else. But now, in an attempt to stop being smart priced on those blogs that miraculously get Adsense clicks, I was forced to try something else like the franken-sites on those blogs that are getting traffic but no Adsense clicks.
Will this work? I dunno. Seems like if visitors aren’t clicking Adsense then what makes me think they will click an Ebay link? But at least I can start repairing my Adsense income on those sites that do get clicks. Quite the irony that my earnings turned to shit about the same time I dropped Adsense on Lost Ball.
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
OK, I am ignorant, but what is a Franken Site?
Sounds like you were totally smart priced. I’ve never understood how it works exactly but I think it’s Google’s way of punishing you for not have 100% of your sites getting excellent click through rates. If you have some that suck, some that are okay, and some that are good, they punish you. I got smart priced out the rear about a year ago and haven’t looked back at Adsense since. Switched all my WP and other blogs over to promoting affiliate links or CPA offers and low and behold, now I’m finally making as much as I’d be making at your average office job just from those sites. Now I’m doing other affiliate sites and continue to move on.
So anyway kudos to you for getting rid of Adsense. I can’t believe how heavily Adsense is still being promoted to beginning bloggers at the IM forums. Nobody is talking about smart pricing and how it’s basically killed the whole “blogging to the bank” technique that worked years ago.
Lots of us are in Adsense rehab these days, and actually, it’s a great place to be.
Dan
Hey Fielding. No you’re not ignorant. It’s just a made up, on the fly, name I gave to my Blogger blogs using niche content and Ebay widgets.
Hey Dan. Adsense is so easy to utilize. It seems like you can be lazy and use it. On Blogger blogs they encourage it by having a simple button to check if you want ads between posts. Of course what they don’t tell you is that you better get clicks. You can get all the traffic in the world but if you don’t have high CTR you’re sunk. Seems like it would be the other way around. If I was getting eyeballs on those ads, it would be the publisher and Google’s responsibility to make the ads enticing enough to click them.
Whatever. I’m pushing affiliate programs where possible. People love Ebay. And I’m having an OK month with Shareasale and CJ.
I have one Adsense site that get lousy CTR but does great anyway so far as Google is concerned. The few people who click there convert really well so advertisers buy site specific ads there from time to time. It’s clickers that convert that count.
Hi Splork,
Frank said – ‘It’s clickers that convert that count.’
And I agree. There are some types of sites (that don’t provide that many alternatives for people who are close to buying stage) where giving them adsense works very well.
Say you have one main option for buyers. They have hit your site for ‘something’ they need just prior to making that buying decision. Your site gives one main option and it’s not what they want. Adsense is perfect in this scenario.
If you happen to have 2 options (non adsense) then guide them to number 2 (and avoid adsense.) But as a last resort (because you only have the one viable option) then adsense makes a great option number 2 for the reason frank gave.
I mean this more (generally) in terms of non ‘make money online’ stuff. Real physical products for example. Potential ebay buyers for example, who hit your site but decide that ebay isn’t the right place for them with this purchase.
On that note, EPN (ebay partner network) have just adopted the same smart pricing policy (called quality score) for the US program – as I’m sure you know. They have basically learnt from google’s smart pricing model. It’s very clever and plays on fear and human nature.
It means you can use a ‘secret’ algorithm that keeps everyone guessing, but trying everything they can to comply with your vague guidelines.
This means that you can study your vast metrics, find trends and then apply ‘punishment’ or ‘reward’ to certain subsets. And you can bet your life that after a time they go back and re-visit the metrics and observe an increase in ROI. My point being, that is the business that they are in – analyzing data and squeezing out every penny. Wouldn’t you?
EPN have taken it further by using their program expirations to instill a fear factor as well.
If you ask people to do what you want them to, they sometimes don’t do it. If you go for the jugular instead and threaten to reduce payments to people, or worse – cut them off for good – this works much more effectively in getting ‘herds’ of people to comply.
If you look at the EPN example, people are over-complying and panicking like lemmings and throwing content around their listings like it were life or death. For some, expiration would feel like it was death as it is their only major income stream.
And by using this model they (google, ebay & the rest) can ‘control’ people. They can get people to change their plans just by adjusting their payments without given reason and leaving that person to fret and speculate over what is happening.
This is why the guidelines and communications from those who use this system are always sparse and vague – it works!
For proof, see the above post
Hope this helps.
Right on Roger. I can only go by what has gone before me. I take things at face value sometimes and the post by Court and a couple others about it made sense enough to me to try something different. Smart pricing is real. I can see it in my stats. It’s not for lack of traffic to some of these sites. If you were getting day after day of 100-200 visitors on a niche blog and yet not one single Adsense click after a few weeks, wouldn’t you think it’s time to try something different?
I don’t really care about being smart priced if all the sites I have out there were collecting clicks. But the fact is they were not. Changing up these websites to Affiliate/Ebay sites over Adsense was more about not getting any clicks. Time to try something different and see if I can drive people to buy something now. It can’t hurt.
This is great info. One site I generate revenue with is at http://www.flixya.com. It’s a site that offers 100% Adsense Revenue. It works! Check it out?
I’ve always felt like somewhat of an adsense loser.
I got inspired to focus on adsense about a month ago when Griz was banging the table about it…So I re-deployed it across several sites.
Thousands of impressions later with a measly CTR, I gave up again. Could be smart pricing, could be niches that just aren’t adsense friendly. I put back my affiliate ads, and my earnings went up.
I think its just part of playing the game. Some of us are good at adsense, others are better with affiliate programs. Sure I’d love to be good at both, I would feel a lot better with some better diversification, but its just not happening here
aaronk, that’s exactly how it went, and is going, for me.
Splork,
My AdSense earnings fluctuate wildly, anywhere from 5 cents a click to 60 cents a click. My click through rate is about 2.5%, which indicates that I should be clear of Smart Pricing. I agree with you about getting rid of AdSense, it’s a lot of hassle and the space could probably be put to more profitable use.
I keep reading your mentions of StoreStacker — is it worth the price? It seems as if you are a big fan and know how to use it. What’s the learning curve?
If I click through from here, do you get the credit?
Cheers
Splork, have you ever tried something like the Rubicon Project or another amalgamator? I am considering switching all sites to them, to let their system choose the best earners… but the one site I tried, I mostly see they use Adsense anyway. So it appears Adsense beats the other options within Rubicon.
Hey Barry. Yea I like Storestacker. It was worth the price to me. I use it as a bolt on store for some of my sites. I use the Ebay, Clickbank and Amazon modules. Like most site builders it takes a lot more work than the salespage leads you to believe. It’s an easy setup, but to get the most out of it you really need to take the time to do your keyword research and write some good content to go a long with the products. It can be used as a stand alone site builder.
The trouble with it is the templates are near impossible to modify for all but those that are experienced in programming with the Smarty engine. I could only make a few rudimentary changes.
I managed to make enough sales to pay for the software in a couple of weeks I guess. I wrote some content on my blogs and pointed some links to the “store”. You still need to get backlinks to the store like every other site.
I’ll get a commish if you buy through my link. And I will appreciate it if you do. But just make sure you need or want to put up a store. It may be enough for you to simply do Ebay widgets like Frank at Optemp and I’ve talked about. Or you may just simply want to link to individual products.
And that’s another thing: Make sure you already have an Ebay account before purchasing.
I like the product, but I can also see why others might not feel the same.
Let me know if you have any more questions and I’ll try to answer them.
Freddy I haven’t. It seems like a good idea, I just haven’t taken the time to give it a try.
You pretty much hit on the problem with all these click programs. Adsense beats them all hands down…unfortunately.
Splork,
Here’s a short discussion of Smartpricing from a British group. Maybe it’ll help you. The surprising thing to me was that they say that ads placed away from the hot area may be worth more than a hot area ad. Go figure.
http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/adsense/smartpricing.html
Barry
Yea all it takes is one site to screw your network payouts and then it takes like 1-2 weeks for them to return to normal and all the while they’re still getting full payouts from advertisers…
Diversification is always a good idea.
Whats up with AMA? No more Blogger Blogs?
Too bad about the Blogger blogs: “Publishing AMA articles on the free blog platform that you selected violates the terms of use of that service. Hence, sites on that domain are not allowed in the network.” It will make AMA stronger not to use Blogger anyway.
I think the thing that sabotaged my Adsense was adding it to Blogger blogs, coincidentally enough. You know in the layout where you can simply check a box and it would add it between the posts? I did that to something like 25 blogs. I’m pretty sure it caused my smart pricing. I went back and unchecked them all and I returned to getting prices for the clicks I normally get on my other sites in about a weeks time.
Hi Splork,
I just received this from the Big G. Thought you might be interested in the hogwash they’re putting out.
Dear Publisher,
We understand that the recent economic turmoil has created a lot of uncertainty in the lives of AdSense publishers. During these difficult times, we’re continuing to invest in innovations that improve publisher monetization and advertiser value in the content network.
We’re focusing on further developing our product offerings and boosting ad performance for publishers. We recently announced advancements in AdSense for search and experiments to make ads more effective. We’re bringing DoubleClick technologies to AdSense publishers, and we’ll continue to launch new products and features. We’re also continuing to improve our offerings for AdWords advertisers, making it easier for them to target the Google content network. Features for advertisers, such as the new display ad builder, are designed to improve ad performance on AdSense publisher sites.
We’ll keep driving technological progress, but our best asset will always be our publisher partners. The strength of AdSense lies in the value of the content you bring to users and the quality of the sites you bring to advertisers. Our success is tied to yours. We look forward to partnering with you for the long term, and remain dedicated to helping you succeed.
Sincerely,
Kim Scott
Director AdSense Online Sales & Operations