Not getting the clicks!

Hi guys, would really appreciate some advice and suggestions here on making best use of the space available on my site. It's http://www.freewarebb.com and although I'm getting approx 1,000-1,500 impressions per day I'm lucky to get 5 clicks. I've tried a couple of changes in the few months I've been up and running yet nothing seems to be working!. Any thoughts???
Cheers
Marko

 

Uhmm... well I am no expert to say the least and I normally stay in the shadows here at DP so I am deciding to help.

Well at first look your site is a little unappealing to the eyes, very cluttered. Do people click through your site or are they just impressions; like visit then leave? Add more ad and link units and try to organize your site better.

 

thanks for the honesty chickuzt, I was beginning to think the site was looking a bit busy myself, but you know what it's like when you look and deal with something for long enough you begin to get used to it, but from a virgin eye things look a lot different!. Looking at my stats it's almost as though a quarter of those visitors are regulars although the other 3 quarters hit the home page and rarely get past another 2 or 3 so I'm guessing the quarter that stay and return are experienced enough to avoid clicking the ads. I had thought of doing away with the portal altogether and just going completely with the download section and scrubbing the front end forums as well. At the moment, they hit the front end (portal) and can then navigate through the forums which have been automatically created from the download section. If I get rid of the portal and forums I suppose this would allow me to concentrate purely on the download section - any for's or against's!??

 

I'm stuck there as well, Marko. I'm getting a ton of impressions, but not the clicks I'm looking for. Good luck to you!

 

Well, I'm thinking it's not working as it is, so I don't reckon I've anything to loose by changing it - so probably will take the plunge and strip it back a little - got a ton of file edits and mod's to revert though so might take me a while!!!

 

I feel your pain!!

 

Having a neater interface to your site may help. Try out that and let us know your results .

 

OK, I think I'm stuck with the front end I've got as I tried removing the edits and mods made to the site to rid it of the portal but this just screwed up the index page. All the other pages seemed to work OK just the index page! I've thinned down the graphics I had on before (navigation and category images) and will continue to strip out what I can from the front end - if anyone notices any improvement please feel free to shout STOP!

 

OK, just a quick update guys ... it would appear that by just making a few simple changes to my site such as remove the unecessary graphics and change the portal blocks around and refine just one of them that my clicks have almost doubled with earnings looking a little on the up. The amount of time spent on the forum and number of guest's also seem to have went up slightly (which would obviously tie in with the increase clicks) - at the moment I'm only on around 1,100 impressions which is still a little miserable to the click ratio although considering that I've had the odd day of 10-15 clicks, the 9 clicks I've had today have earned me more than those!. Over the past few weeks I've had very little in the way of people hanging around on the site, although today alone I've noticed no fewer than around 10!.

It's scary to think that the problem all along (or at least my problem for now) is trying to cram in as much info on the front page as possible to please everyone although all this does is obviously confuse the situation for many and quite possibly slow the page load down enough to put many off!. I'm going to keep an eye on things and tweak a little further in the right direction then hopefully once I've got the site sorted I can move on to what's best regarding the ad placement. Thanks to all for the input and please keep the comments and suggestions coming

 

Your colors are wrong for the signup section and that pink section, lose them both and change to tie in with your header. Then you will show some continuity. Also make sure your visitors are looking for an informative forum on this subject with targeted adverts. You'll see your clicks rise significantly.

dwbens

 

Thanks for the pointers dwbens, if I understand you right you were referring to the guest splash which I've actually removed completely as it was more or less there to inform people that our site doesn't have annoying pops and so on although I guess this is best left to the vistor to realise this which should only take them a second or so (less is best, so to speak).

When we talk about targetted ads I'm unsure as to how I can target better unless your referring to link units and manually specifying which advertisers to display - only problem I've found with this is that because we have little control over the link colours the ad units seem to fit best - could be wrong, please advise if I am. If I've missed/overlooked anything please feel free to tell me

 

I'll preface this by saying I am by no means an adsense expert. But as a USER...

I probably wouldn't stay at your site. nice domain name - that's where it stops. There's too much happening on the first page, and I want my internet time to be spent constructively, not fishing through piles of stuff to find where I should be going. Your front page doesn't grab me and drag me in the direction I want to go.

For layout I would consider looking at forums that have become established and do well. I even find DP a little busy for me - I like the cleaner layout of somewhere like warriorforum.com. I used to play swirve's utopia - and they have one of the simplest, yet most user friendly forums I have seen(unless they changed it in the 2 or 3 years since I quit).

Another thing to turn me off was looking at the latest post section on your front page. I thought each post took up too much room, and my first impression was here is a pile of posts and not one has any replies.

Sorry that this all sounds very negative, but hopefully it will help you earn some more cash.

 

Rob, thanks for the comments, all feedback is good feedback as far as I'm concerned - took a look at warriorforum.com which is nice and clean without a doubt although unfortunately I may be stuck with the portal for the moment as I had terrible trouble taking it off to achieve the same reslts as them, but it's not to say it's impossible, just may take me a little more thought and patience. It's got me thinking now that the portal is definately not the best front end at all and I was even thinking of scrapping the front end forums for the download section also just to radically simplify things to the max - if anyone else cares to reply and share their thoughts on this - should I keep the portal or 100% scrap it and focus on the download section with say maybe a few forums at the front for other content? Any replies appreciated, and thanks again Rob for your input.

 

although some people say it's against tos...i suggest getting random "friendly" clicks.

 

If you are suggesting what it sounds like you are suggesting - there is no 'some people say' about it. It's directly against the terms of service to solicit clicks in any way.

 

No SirJorge you are wrong there, dont do the random "Friendly" clicks with adsense. Google has a way of knowing al these tricks. you will get caught

 

By friendly clicks are we talking specifically asking people to click or clicking ourselves, the latter is obviously something I wouldn't even contemplate for obvious reasons although specifically asking for clicks I think defeats the whole purpose of adsense surely - it's much better to provide a link that people want to click because of the relevance as if they willingly click so will others - good for me, good for them and something which will be consistant rather than random clicks from friends who can't be bothered. My whole point isn't just the fact that I want clicks (obviously this is what we all want) it's a matter of how best to make the visitor think "oh, that's what I'm after" ... click! and so forth, and even then I want to make sure that they are clicking something which is useful to them, not just a click away from my site which turns out to be useless as the chances of them returning to me are reduced I think.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand, I've (only just) managed to get the board back up and running after stripping out the front end portal (you really don't want to know how long it took me) and although the format will stay much the same I'm still in the process of replacing the banner and so forth as my original skin took a hammering from the portal mod. Strangely enough even after this short space of time it would appear guests are hanging around and moving slightly deeper into the site, not much but it's only just changed - let's give it a while see what happens but as always comments welcome.

 

Right guys I've more or less went for a whole new theme to the site in an effort to brighten and simplify things, I'm hoping the changes will be noticeable and easier for visitors and members alike. I've taken out the portal and thinned down on the image ads to make page loads a little smoother/faster. I've also kept a few additional mods out purely to ease the queries on the sql server, again to make things a little faster/smoother. Please feel free to comment for and against

 

yes, it is against tos, but i know people that have 3,000 people clicking, periodically and still haven't got banned.

 

....... yet! What people do with their clicks is their business to be honest, I've nothing against it but I can't see the point in it to be honest - I'd rather have no clicks than fake one's, I've even got to the point where I've taken all ads off my forum because I'm not getting anywhere near the amount to justify me having them on in the first place. Once the board heats up a bit and I see regular traffic up considerably I may consider placing a few key ads but I'm not sure whether it'll be google's or not, they just don't seem to be cutting it recently with payouts down and profits up, nice business if you can get it!