4 replies to this topic

[despot]

I have posted something like this in another forum but no constructive comments there. Reposting:

Is adsense worth adding to the index page (which tells things about the site, like what is it about and why was it founded)?
There are good reasons not to have ads there like visitors may get more interested to browse, some people just see ads in the index page and close the page. Also, index pages should not bring me great revenue cause of cheap keywords and the google's policy does not "recommend" adding adsense to index pages, iirc.

But some visitors don't visit the site but the index page. If that's the case, I would loose some revenue.

Actually my site is quite little, but it concerns or should concern all the other sites I am planning to have so it's quite an issue.

Wondering what to do. And ideas?

[Joseph]

the anwer is "depends"....

on the one hand if u have a clean homepage u look professional and might encourage people to come back and visit and explore your site further. and maybe even book mark your site. i.e. you will get repeat visitors

but lets face it, repeat visitors don't pay the bills!!! ...unless they contribute to a forum and create content for you (which only applies if you run a forum or some such dynamic site)....its the one off or occasional visitors who are more likely to click an ad. a lot of them won't get past the homepage so you will not get any revenue if no ads are on the homepage.

also, it depends on whether you use CPM ads or CPC ads...if u do go for CPM then lots of repeat visitors are very important to keep the impressions high. so the above argument does not apply.

if i were u i would look at ad density on big sites/portals like msn etc and yahoo and amazon etc and copy them.....they do ok right!?

would be interested to hear others thoughts for this.

jo

[glen]

I have one thing to ad. If it is the repeat visitors who you think are not clicking on ads but are important for keeping the site alive and creating content etc then why not setup your site so ONLY non-members (i.e. people who are not logged in) actually see the ads?

That way you have the best of both worlds...happy members PLUS clicking non-members!

of course that is easier said than done depending on your programming skills. I know it is possible to do such a thing for a forum such as this one (Invision Power Board) by adding some "html logic" statements. I learnt about it a bit on the invision website. I guess this is also possible for most other website systems you are using, whether its a forum, CMS, etc ...just takes a bit of research.

I heard once of a guy only displaying ads to people who reached his site via google (it was done via some fancy javascript). That is too sophisticated for me...would love to learn how it is done though.

:-)

[glen]

hi despot,

hope you manage to get a few more hits soon...

all the best, glen