Forums are different than web sites that are run for a profit. I run a web site to generate income, not develope a following.

Mike

I don't think it's a simple case of regarding a click as an exit - that may not necessarily be the case.

I did run a tracker for a while to see what ads were clicked. The result was interesting in that where the ads were relevant, the visitors often hit the back button. So if you have relevant ads to the topic and interested visitors, it may be that the click is not an exit click but a temporary diversion.

Who cares whether visitors stay on your site all day long , all you want is an adsense click, but you don't your visitor to think that your site is a MFA.

And most importantly yo don't your visitors to hit the close button as soon as your webpage loads.

You want to create a good impression in the first 2-3 seconds.

Cheers!

Oh dear.

Why do you think the visitor is on your website?

a) for the information they are seeking

or

b) to see a wall of ads and click on one?

People often underestimate the value of returning visitors. I think there is a lot more to getting good earnings from adsense than merely having a site that is intended to get visitors to click an ad without appearing like an mfa.

Then again, it is nice if they press the back button ;) lol.

Not where smart pricing is concerned. Enough people do that and your AdSense income will go down.

hi David, what script did you use to analyse that?

also, am not sure who your questions were targetted at :p

People are on my site because of my unique content.

Content and visitor loyalty ahead of ad profiteering

AdSense ads ARE content technically, and if the visitor saw an ad that helped them in their quest then you may get visitor loyalty from the simple face they found what they wanted on your site.

I've got a couple of ad blocks on my page and it's not uncommon for a visitor to click more than ONE of them looking for something, so it appears to be of value, therefore content.

This question is a source of continuing worry for me

For websites offering a product, the answer must be different from that for "informational" sites

Does one lose a potential customer?

For example, you get a $0.30 click income, but miss out one years of $30.00/purchase sales,

I'm okay with adsense, its a good thing, but how to get the customer to return to my site,

I suppose thats why one also uses adwords an SEO, what goes round hopefully comes back round

Cheers all

For me it's always a balance between visitors who click AdSense ads and those that stick around to use my services.

As I have a very specific product in the tourism industry to offer many people do not find what they are looking for on my sites.

Before AdSense they would just leave and go back to the SE to find other sites.

I now give them an option of seeing alternatives to my products through AS and earn a income on them.

As I am full most of the time anyway it's not that big a dilemma however in those months that are a little slow I do have the odd stomach twinge.

hi David, what script did you use to analyse that?

Hi, it was adfreestats. It tracks exit clicks so you see what ads have been clicked unless it was an adlinks unit.

I would say that Google doesn't really want you to use trackers for a variety of legitimate reasons, but they don't seem to be against the TOS. So I would advise you to check with Google first before using a tracker.

The other issue is that they are javascript, so may not work on some clicks and may slow down loading of your website. That may cause you to lose more money than you would gain by the information.

I was wondering if people here actually ever think about NOT going for the prime click locations on a page, but putting Content and visitor loyalty ahead of ad profiteering.

It gets even more complicated than that. I've got an editorial "content site" that earns more from affiliate partners than it does from AdSense (not by accident, but by design). I love it when users click an AdSense ad that doesn't compete with my affiliate partners, but in cases where advertisers are competing with my affiliate partners, I'd rather take my chances with an affiliate click that, in many cases, will lead to a commission. So there's a fine balance between making the AdSense ads visible enough to be useful but not so overpoweringly visible that they take traffic away from my affiliate partners.

As for "putting content and visitor loyalty ahead of ad profiteering," whether that's a concern obviously depends on your mission and business model. I subscribe to the traditional publishing model ("If you built it right, they'll come, and then they'll come back"), but many AdSense publishers would rather use content as filler, attracting traffic from search engines or via PPC ads and turning those one-time visitors into clickers. That may appear to be a shortsighted approach, but it apparently works for publishers who lack the time, interest, or ability to build "sticky" sites.

I was wondering if people here actually ever think about NOT going for the prime click locations on a page, but putting Content and visitor loyalty ahead of ad profiteering.

I've done something that may qualify. I tried a single 234x60 ad just under my top-of-page nav bar and just above the main content photo on the page.

The whole photo was still visible above the fold, even at 800x600 screen resolution.

The result was a 30% reduction in page views but about the same number of clicks in total due to a higher CTR. That pretty much left me with the same income either way.

Under the circumstances of unchanged income but much lower page views I chose to not use the 234x60 ad in that spot.

I don't know though, had my page views stayed the same and my income gone up substantially I might well have kept the 234x60 ads in place.

Hi ken

you seem to have done the opposite of what the OP asked about