Links!

Links are what people click on.

Yes, but the ad copy should look like copy on your pages. If your main text is black, have the main text in the ad be black.

Should my ads look like links, or should they match the text?

Do I assume that you mean that your AdSense "color link" should look traditional blue #0000FF or you are considering the complete ad to be the same colour as your page text?

That's up to you however don't forget that surfers, in general, know that blue is the traditional link colour and if they're scanning your page and need to know where to click it needs to be fairly evident.

Was that your question?

aleahey-

Welcome to Webmaster World!

You were wise to avoid including a URL... this is the rule from the TOS that would be relative.

13. Please do not drop promotional urls, signature files, nor specifics that would lead people to your site.

You can always include your URL in your profile, however, site reviews are typically discouraged (but we do them anyway).

In regard to how people treat the URL's in their ads... they do both! Some blend them in and some have them stand-out. I personally do the latter.

Chapman

Hmm. Okay, thanks a lot for the tips and the TOS quote.

I've been trying to blend, my site is relatively new, about 3 weeks. I'm averaging about 400 uniques per day, but only getting 1-2 or at MOST 3 clicks per day. So I was thinking perhaps I was doing something wrong.

wow.. ..how did you get that much visitors in 3 weeks?
care to share?

My site has about 600-700 visitors per day but it gets about 40-50 clicks per day. Have you done any optimazation?

Sure, I don't mind sharing at all. I basically studied the front page of digg.com, del.icio.us and reddit.com and wrote articles that I thought I could see fitting in.

None made it to the front page, but one made it to the second page of digg, giving me 6500 uniques on my second day.

Just a fluke/luck I reckon.

What do you mean by optimizing? I tried to blend the colors as I said, but other than that, I haven't really done any actual tinkering. To be honest I'm not sure where to begin.

Yeah, I'm new to adsense too, but base on the number of click I got from that much visitors, I'm cool. not bad but ok to me.

Yes, blending + ads positioning.. ..stuff like that.

Thanks for the advice ^^

go to digg now! digg me! ^^

What do you mean by optimizing? I tried to blend the colors as I said, but other than that, I haven't really done any actual tinkering. To be honest I'm not sure where to begin.

AdSense has a section on optimizing:
[google.com...]

Unfortunately, you're not going to get many ad clicks directly from the Digg crowd. I've had about one article per month hit the Digg front page, and while my uniques go through the roof for a couple of days, ad clicks just get a modest bump. I think most Digg folks either use ad blockers or have become completely ad blind.

The real benefit of getting an article on Digg is the number of backlinks to your site that can follow, as well as possibly getting a handful of people to bookmark your site and become regular visitors. But these are more long-term benefits which will start to snowball as the months and years go on.