In the world of blogging, especially in the adsense revenue sharing websites, it is of utmost importance to extract the maximum out of a strategy that works for you rather than trying to make the non-working strategy or a strategy that yields less work. Though there aren’t any official statistics for this one, but I’ll try to convince you with my my observation and justification in this matter.
For a adsense revenue sharing site, we can categorize the traffic as follows:
- Members with adsense associated to the revenue sharing site
- Newly joined members of the revenue sharing site who don’t have adsense for the first 6 months*
- Those who come from search engines like Google, yahoo, bing, etc. and other sources.
(*The 6 month restriction in point 2 is put by Google for new adsense applications which come through the revenue sharing site specifically for residents of some countries like India and China)
It has been observed that those who get adsense account approved are most of the times reluctant to click on any ads. This is because they are supposed to avoid clicking on their "own" ads anywhere, be it their personal blog, website or the revenue sharing sites. Now this mind frame continues and when they see Google ads on other articles or websites, the resistance they have developed internally to avoid clicking on their own ad continues there as well (till a certain level of course). Even if they really find it irresistible to click on the ads, some would still prefer to Google search the product to find more information instead of clicking on the ad (There will also be some who will break the resistance barrier, think once if the ad is their or not and click on the ad). This mind frame is developed because they have got adsense approved after good amount of efforts and don’t want to risk losing it. The 1st category above mostly falls under this. The CTR (click through ratio) is really less in this case.
The 2nd category is the newly joined members of a revenue sharing site which allows for adsense signups through them. Many of them don’t have adsense and want to get adsense within 6 months and start earning. And while browsing for ways to get adsense, they might have come across posts of users getting banned by adsense, click fraud issues, etc. Hence even these people start developing ad-phobia (new term coined by me ;)). Though the CTR is more than the above category for this set of people, it is still less.
Now, in case of the 3rd category which is the traffic coming mainly from search engines, these are people who are looking for information/resources. Now some of these might have an adsense account and ad-phobia applies to them as well, but we can safely assume that we will get a good mix of people from the search engine and other sources. Of course, it depends on the topic as well. But in general, these are the people who have already clicked on a search engine result and are likely to click on an ad which directs them towards the information they are looking for. They are in a sort of click-flow (another term coined by me!). Isn’t it true that many a times, we keep navigating from one article to a link on that article and so on only to find large number of tabs open in our browser. Let me explain this through another example. It is something like when you take out a credit card to purchase something online, after purchasing that, oh wait! You see another brilliant product/service. There is a good chance that you will purchase this as well since you are on a buying spree. This is the category from which a very high CTR can be obtained.
While, in spite of the above, you might observe that your earnings are more from the revenue sharing site members than from search engine visitors (it is difficult to get to the first page after all). This is because, out of 100, if you get 90 members from the revenue sharing site get 5 clicks and 10 from search engine get 2 clicks, you are still getting more clicks from the revenue sharing site members, but what I’m talking about here is the conversion ratio which is 5/90 = 5.56% in case of revenue sharing site members traffic and 2/10 = 20% in case of search engine traffic. You would want to spend more efforts in getting traffic from where you're having a better conversion ratio or a click through rate(CTR).
This can further be categorized on a case by case basis. For instance, consider the target traffic for that particular revenue sharing site. The adsense revenue sharing site IndiaStudyChannel gets major amount of traffic from Indian youth, so in this case, the characteristics of youth towards ads will need to be taken into consideration. If you use IndiaStudyChannel, you might want to see a customized post for ISC: "How to track the set of people who click on your ads and increase their reach?"
While all the above is not officially proved anywhere and there is a fair chance you might find that it is not the case with your articles. To check this for yourself, you can use the “Recently came from” feature of statcounter or referrers in Google analytics (Do integrate an analytics software if you don't have one). This should give you a good amount of information about your visitors.
It has been observed that those who get adsense account approved are most of the times reluctant to click on any ads. This is because they are supposed to avoid clicking on their "own" ads anywhere, be it their personal blog, website or the revenue sharing sites. Now this mind frame continues and when they see Google ads on other articles or websites, the resistance they have developed internally to avoid clicking on their own ad continues there as well (till a certain level of course). Even if they really find it irresistible to click on the ads, some would still prefer to Google search the product to find more information instead of clicking on the ad (There will also be some who will break the resistance barrier, think once if the ad is their or not and click on the ad). This mind frame is developed because they have got adsense approved after good amount of efforts and don’t want to risk losing it. The 1st category above mostly falls under this. The CTR (click through ratio) is really less in this case.
The 2nd category is the newly joined members of a revenue sharing site which allows for adsense signups through them. Many of them don’t have adsense and want to get adsense within 6 months and start earning. And while browsing for ways to get adsense, they might have come across posts of users getting banned by adsense, click fraud issues, etc. Hence even these people start developing ad-phobia (new term coined by me ;)). Though the CTR is more than the above category for this set of people, it is still less.
Now, in case of the 3rd category which is the traffic coming mainly from search engines, these are people who are looking for information/resources. Now some of these might have an adsense account and ad-phobia applies to them as well, but we can safely assume that we will get a good mix of people from the search engine and other sources. Of course, it depends on the topic as well. But in general, these are the people who have already clicked on a search engine result and are likely to click on an ad which directs them towards the information they are looking for. They are in a sort of click-flow (another term coined by me!). Isn’t it true that many a times, we keep navigating from one article to a link on that article and so on only to find large number of tabs open in our browser. Let me explain this through another example. It is something like when you take out a credit card to purchase something online, after purchasing that, oh wait! You see another brilliant product/service. There is a good chance that you will purchase this as well since you are on a buying spree. This is the category from which a very high CTR can be obtained.
While, in spite of the above, you might observe that your earnings are more from the revenue sharing site members than from search engine visitors (it is difficult to get to the first page after all). This is because, out of 100, if you get 90 members from the revenue sharing site get 5 clicks and 10 from search engine get 2 clicks, you are still getting more clicks from the revenue sharing site members, but what I’m talking about here is the conversion ratio which is 5/90 = 5.56% in case of revenue sharing site members traffic and 2/10 = 20% in case of search engine traffic. You would want to spend more efforts in getting traffic from where you're having a better conversion ratio or a click through rate(CTR).
This can further be categorized on a case by case basis. For instance, consider the target traffic for that particular revenue sharing site. The adsense revenue sharing site IndiaStudyChannel gets major amount of traffic from Indian youth, so in this case, the characteristics of youth towards ads will need to be taken into consideration. If you use IndiaStudyChannel, you might want to see a customized post for ISC: "How to track the set of people who click on your ads and increase their reach?"
While all the above is not officially proved anywhere and there is a fair chance you might find that it is not the case with your articles. To check this for yourself, you can use the “Recently came from” feature of statcounter or referrers in Google analytics (Do integrate an analytics software if you don't have one). This should give you a good amount of information about your visitors.
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