Why am I getting < 1% CTR?

Ok, so my average CTR is somewhere around 0.5% over the past year. I have done a lot of reading and experimented a little bit, but I can't reliably break the 1% barrier. I have some days where the CTR jumps a bit, but nothing substantial.

I have 10k uniques over 136k Pages this month so far. But my revenue is only around $40.

I have had better luck with other websites, but this one is just not responding.

The link: * Link Removed *

The other day I split up the tutorials into multiple pages to hopefully increase my revenue by getting more pageviews. But a higher CTR would be great.

Any insight welcome. Thanks for your time.

 

The problem may be that your target market are technical people that are used to ignoring ads - They have become ad blind.

One thing that you might try is to make the ads stand out like a sore thumb - that way even the most ad blind individuals will see them. This may be a case were blending is not a good thing.

 

from what i can see your ads are not blending to well placement is odd.. I would recommend trying to blend the ads more and all websites do not have high click rates lol. Your site is related to gaming so your viewers could just be there to get the info they need an close there window...

Thats all i can say

 

im not sure what your talking about but his ads dont seem to be blended at all..

 

Background of page is white + background of ads are white = blended (to a degree)

Try image ads?

 

I'm going to try the "sticking out like a sore thumb thing" for a couple of weeks; I think I'll use the DP forum adsense as a starting point *lol*

Thanks.

(Btw, I'm also open to suggestions on how I could have blended better [for future reference])

 

your title is blue i tend to blend my ads really well so it looks as close as possible with the text on the page ... this is the way i like to do it anyway I dont like to stick my ads out to far... For me blending it completely works

 

If you really wanted to make it blend you would've make the link black.

But seriously, I think that vertical ad on the right is a throwaway. I went to the homepage looking for the ads and I scrolled all the way down and back up before I saw it, and it's on the codes page, too.

Try it on the left for a couple weeks, maybe with text wrapping around it.

I believe that placement is more important than blending or clashing. Put it in the middle of your content. Your content should draw the reader in, then interrupt them with the ads. That's what magazines do, and they've been in business forever.

I do not, however, know about the forums, and I suggest you get lots of opinions from forum owners. As a regular at a number of forums for over three years I can say I almost never click on ads (maybe a dozen times in three years of daily viewing 10+ pages).

DP, please don't hold that against me.

 

Yeah I'm not too worried about the forums. I figure the forums are just a great place for people to learn more and stick around the site.

The tutorials are what I'm mainly worried about (and the main page). I had the links blended black for a few months. Changed them to blue to see if it helped any. It didn't. I'm going back to black now to see if anything has changed.

Going to work on the rotating in-your-face style as well.

 

Ok while it may sound odd to most, try one of the pages using really different colors, like pink or something that suits your design but does not blend.

 

Ok, I blended everything to black links (except the forums which are still blended the way I had them --> I only set that up a couple of days ago anyway so that is still in testing). I also set up Lesson 04 to use brightly colored links.

I'll update in a couple of weeks which (if any) worked.

 

Here's your first problem:

If you're really concerned (and at under 1%, I would be), set up channels for each different kind of ad:
forum head
index head
index right
subpage head
subpage right

I am no pro at this, but I only added channels a short while ago (I still haven't made the changes) and saw how useless certain ads are on some of my longer pages: they are loading, but people find links along the way to lead them off the page before they even get to the ads. My CTR on other channels is much higher (5-10% higher).

I have a feeling when you see each ad's stats you'll find the ones that are getting lots of impressions but no clicks.

 

I do have channels set up, they all perform about the same.

I set up channels for the colored ones as well to compare directly day by day against the "blended" ones.

Edit: Looks like I only had channels set up for the tutorials and the forums. Odd.

 

Well after the first day.. not looking good. My CTR today was around .1% ! It's never been that low before. Any other ideas? I'm thinking about completely redoing the layout of the site.

(I tried the complete blending with black links, colored links, and image/text links.. all of which had a 0% CTR, the only clicks I got were from the homepage where there's no channel I'd guess since all the channels show 0%)

The link again: PSP Tutorials

 

I spent a few hours working on a new layout.. does it blend any better do you guys think? (credit where credit's due, I'm basing it off of a template)

Compare:
old - Lesson 01
new - Lesson 02

I'm trying it out for a day or two to see if the ads perform any better before I switch the whole site.

 

guy, CTR < 1% is too low. I think there are many way to improve your CTR

First thing, install adsense tracker to see what happen in your website and see where are they from.
Second, add Channel to every ad position. (important)
Third, improve ad position one by one from the top pageviews page first.
Last, Remove non performance ad out. which on never get clicked and cannot improved. just remove it out.

hope it help.

 

I improved my CTR by about 50%, but it's still below 1% overall..

Anyone else have suggestions? I'm starting to think that it truly is that my users are ad-blind. The highest of all the channels is at 2%.. but it's not very reliable data for that one since it only has 100 pageviews. (The one at the bottom of the main tutorials page)

Second highest is the blended one at the top of each of the tutorials pages.