If you are an Adsense publisher then you need to take care in your quest for increased visitor numbers. Some visitors may actually be costing you money, and I am talking about a sizable percentage.
Your income per click may come down to as low as 0.05c per click ‘across all of your Adsense sites’ when they could be earning as much as 0.80 or more per click.
The income you receive per click can be affected by poor click through rates. The optimum click through rate (CTR) is between 4-9% or higher. If your CTR drops below 2%, Google will often tag your site as a poor performer and only pay the lowest possible rate. The problem is, you will receive the lowest possible rate for all Adsense units on that account.
This means that although you may have a very good site receiving 4%+ CTR, that site will still only receive the smallest per click price if one of your other sites is performing below the 2% thresh-hold.
Visitors I label as ‘tip N run’ are those that arrive on your site through social media. Stumblers, diggers and Entre Card visitors are notorious for not clicking on ad units. Stumblers will stumble to the next site, diggers will return to digg and EC users click through to the next EC card holder. If you are reading this from one of those sites, when was the last time you clicked on an ad unit? You are shopping, you are visiting so it is only natural that you wont click these ads.
These visitors are all increasing your visitors numbers, however the number of clicks on ad units each day is staying the same. This has the effect of dropping your CTR – your CTR is, in simple terms, a mathematical equation that divides the number of visitors by the number of clicks. The more visitors, the lower the CTR.
Some promotions work better than others. Through the use of Entre Card my CTR has fallen to about 1% so I have been getting only 5 cents per Adsense click. Prior to this I was receiving around 40 cents per click. Buying traffic through Better Traffic (see ad at top of sidebar) has seen my CTR increase to just below the required 2%. At a cost of $15 per month I am making a marginal profit. If I can lift the CTR to above that 2% thresh-hold my income will jump dramatically.
You need to keep an eye on your CTR through your Adsense account. If a site is really performing badly then it may pay to remove the ads from that site. The lost revenue may well be made up by the sudden jump in per click income on your other sites.
Once all sites on your account get above the Google thresh-hold CTR the, income per click goes up. If you are blogging on a high paying Adsense niche, then you may be losing big dollars in the quest for extra visitors. Check each CTR level for all ad units on your sites. It only takes one poor performing unit to kill all of them.
Great info! I never really thought about that! My traffic has dramatically increased by having EC on my site, but I didn’t realize it was affecting my CTR! Hmmm… food for thought!
Good post I have been researching this myself. I wrote a similar post on this about a week ago.
Traffic Post
I’ve heard/read about this a few times already. Is this information conjecture or actually in the Google T&C’s?
Came here through Entrecard:
Very good article, and that is definitely true. I know that my CTR hasn’t been too high recently, and am attempting to increase it. But if EC is dragging down your CTR so much, is the influx of new potential long-term readers worth it at that point?
BayAreaMompreneur: thanks for your comment. Some bloggers don’t see a change in their CTR and due to the way Google measures stats, some EC and SU visitors don’t even get counted. Check Google anaytics if you use it – sometimes you can get say 100 EC or SU (or Digg etc) but the analytics only show 10 or 20 extra visitors. I am not sure why unless it has something to do with java enabled or disabled.
illiteratepoet: thanks for your comment. Interesting topic and interesting read. It is certainly food for thought and maybe a prompt to really look at analytics.
Entreprepreneur: Google don’t come out and admit directly – there have been several indirect references and when asked, they don’t deny the practice. The proof is in the data however. If you can maintain a decent CTR you wont have a problem – however EC and SU users generally don’t click ad units – they click the EC card to the next site or the stumble button to the next site.
Lou: Good question – what is more important $ or visitors. For me its visitors. My adsense $ have been at such a crawl I would be lucky to get 50 cents per day so the increase in readers has been worth it – by subscriber base has gone up to around 90 from 60.
Most of the comments here are probably from EC users so I repeat my question from the post, how many EC users actually click on an ad unit – serious click that is?
Thanks for all your comments.
I usually try and click on adsense ads of blogs I enjoy, especially if the ad is pertinent to the blog or something of interest anyways, but I know the favor is rarely returned–as my CTR clearly shows haha.
Lou: Perhaps your CTR will get a boost after today’s comments
les
Hi, Interesting point of view but it is not absolutely true. Google rank their adsense payments by specific keywords, not by CTR.
Imagine, If you remove EC, Stumble or Digg, you will lose a lot of traffic. Visitors clicks on the ads (no matter if it is Google or other ads).
Best regards,
Ukion
PS. You have very interesting posts. I visit your blog very often (form EC
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Hi Les,
I only use Adsense as a supplementary income source on a few main sites so I haven’t worried about Adsense CTR or even per click earnings but after reading your post I may need to reconsider those ‘Adsense sites’. I have about a dozen Adsense sites that may be hurting my overall earnings.
I’m not big on buying traffic but I trust your recommendations so I placed an order to Better Visitors using your banner ad. Just want to make sure you get credit.
nice info. i think to get high CTR, you must have quality post and also’ve quality visitors.