Hardly Worthwhile

It just occurred to me today that I practically never get any clicks from the Google AdSense ads I have on a certain site I won't name. It's common knowledge that Google does not permit websites to "ask" readers to click on their ads. In fact, they seem to want you to avoid mentioning them at all and to just let the readers' own interest lead them to click for more information. So I hesitate to talk about this, even though I usually write honestly about pretty much whatever is on my mind on this blog...but the click rate is so bad I'm considering just removing the AdSense ads from this page altogether.

If you think I'm exaggerating, try this on for size: 6 months, 3 total clicks for a total of 57 cents! I have heard that blogs about Adsense itself and blogs about blogging itself are notoriously bad AdSense earners, but I thought I would do better than 3 clicks in 6 months?! True, I'm talking about a page that gets only minimal traffic so far, since I don't even really promote it anywhere, but it definitely gets SOME traffic daily. I recently even changed to a template that now allows the ads to be positioned on the left side of the page, which has supposedly been proven to work best...but still only 1 click in the last month anyway. The ads look nice, they're blended to the overall look of the rest of the layout and they're all about various ways of making money...they just practically never get clicks.

I guess the problem is that most of my readers know exactly what the ads are since they probably also use them on their own sites. So most fellow bloggers and webmasters tend not to be curious or interested in them enough to click. But still, you would think these ads would be tempting enough to entice more than just 3 clicks in 6 months. I expected so, anyway.

I'm not sure what the real reasons are, but I'm starting to wonder if I'm getting proper credit for clicks I might be receiving. I have no way to test this if I'm not allowed to click on them myself under any circumstances. But if the ads continue to keep drawing practically no clicks at all, I'll probably just remove them altogether. Or maybe the Yahoo version of the ads might get better results. You never know until you try...and I guess that goes for just about everything in life anyway.

Discovery Of An Accident (Sequel to last post)

I figured I'll try to duplicate the success I had selling the lawn mower in the newspaper and sell the child car seat my son just grew out of. So I wrote a description for it and posted it with some pictures on the blog I used last time. Then I placed the free ad in the local newspaper, again including my domain name that points to the blog. Everything was pretty much the same as last time, so now all I had to do was sit back and wait for all the ad clicks again in between the phone responses, right?

Well, this time the newspaper quietly just deleted the web address from my ad. When I questioned them on this they said they don't allow web addresses in their free articles for sale ads, only phone numbers. So I asked if this is a new rule or something because my last ad was printed with the web address a few weeks ago. They said it must have been printed by accident, since only paid ads can have web addresses included. So my "Accidental Discovery" last time was actually CAUSED by an accident.

This is frustrating! You just can't get anything for nothing it seems. What an advantage that was to be able to publish a web address in a large circulation newspaper for no charge, even though it brought extremely targeted traffic literally overnight. But they realize this for what it is and decided not to allow it anymore...likely because I brought it to their attention, in fact.

Oh well. They do offer free photo posting on their own website...so perhaps I could brand all my photos with the web address. I could try that, but I wouldn't be surprised if they rejected any pics that advertised a web page for the same reason. They realize how powerful a web site can be to advertise with, since I could include a hundred more items for sale on it if I wanted to - none of which they would benefit from. But then, if they charged me $5 to place the ad, what good would the $5 or so the AdSense ads might bring in be?

It's easy to feel like you just can't win sometimes! You can though...I guess I just have to think bigger than this. I thought I was though - in addition to the AdSense ads I also included a few links to ClickBank products under my item description, as "recommended links". Problem is, nobody saw them anyway this time.

My other idea was to re-record the voice mail greeting on my cell phone to announce that web address first for people who are calling about the ad in the paper. Then, of course, offering to let them leave a message if they're interested. The newspaper can't stop me from doing that - they have to print my phone number!

This makes me feel like getting a great big bumper sticker printed for my car to advertise with - they can't stop me from doing that either!!! :)

An Accidental Discovery

I sold that lawn mower from the local newspaper ad very quickly. But I left the pictures of it on the blog that I listed in the ad, with a new post stating that it had been sold. Naturally, all the traffic stopped when the newspaper ad ended, and in turn, so did the Adsense clicks & earnings. This local paper also includes a listing of ads purchased in their seperate weekly paper, which is really just advertisements and is given away for free. So this ad just came out in the little weekly paper around the end of last week, so I started getting calls on the lawn mower again.

But here's the interesting part...I also started getting quite a few hits to the blog site again - and even several Adsense ad clicks! And once again, considering the number of visitors that statcounter.com reported - more than half of the visitors clicked on Adsense ads before they left!

So I seem to have accidentally stumbled on a partially devious way to make some money here. The ad continued to run, and even be run again in a separate publication, even though I really had no more product to sell. Yet, the traffic the ad brought in was so well targeted to the Adsense ads that appeared, the click-through rate was fantastic! So while they didn't find what they really wanted, which was the actual lawn mower I had already sold - many were more than willing to click on the ads for the information they provided.

This isn't to say that I plan on running a whole series of "for sale" ads for items I don't actually have for sale, but it appears if one was willing to do this they could probably earn quite a few dollars just on the ad clicks the want-to-be buyers would generate. Personally, this seems just a little too dishonest for my conscience, so I wouldn't actually run ads for things I don't have to sell. I'm not even very high on the idea of doing that with the plan of using a 3rd party dropshipping company to do the shipping of the items you advertise. That's considered a legitimate way to make money, and the hardest part of that is finding a dropshipping company that's worthwhile to use. But I do certainly see the benefit of using the blog to assist in selling items that I really do have for sale, so I will continue to do that whenever I have something to sell.

I must say, this makes it clear how easy it could be to create a substantial income from those targeted ads if you simply generate well targeted traffic. It doesn't even have to be a great amount of traffic, as long as it's very well targeted. So that's what I need to focus on is ways to do just that. But in the meantime, this was a pretty interesting little accidental discovery!