#1 Real Estate Blog - Need Review of Ad Placement/Colors

Hey guys. I own Homes of the Rich (www.homesoftherich.net). It's the #1 real estate blog with over 1,000,000 monthly page views. However, I am still only making around $1,500 - $2,000 per month, which is the same amount that I was making 3 years ago (with much lower page views). Real estate is a high paying niche, but for some reason my CTR is extremely low. For 2 days last month my CTR hit 2% each day (record high) and I made $200-$250 each day. I have no idea why it spiked though. How are my ad placements and colors? I would LOVE to see a consistent 2%+ CTR everyday.

Thanks!

 

Remove the ad widget and add a square add in the content

 

I would ditch Adsense and promote affiliate products instead. I have a luxury travel website and I made 8,896.25 off like 60k views for the month. If you're getting 1 million a month then I would ditch Adsense asap and find some niche related affiliate offers or services. Why waste time with Adsense when you could sell a product or CPA offer.

Do you mean 100k a month? This is what I'm getting from your site.

 

Those stats are not right. I average 170,000 visits per month and 1,000,000 page views per month via Google Analytics

 

and it's 6 pages/session and a bounce rate of 3%

 

Oh ok cool must be the program I'm using no worries. I've sent you a pm with a link to the affiliate use

 

So can anyone give advice on how to increase my CTR?? Would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

As for me, your AdSense placements are pretty good.

Maybe I would just put one of those in the middle of a content, not in the end of it.

Anyway it's quite useful to test.

 

yeah use affiliate ads that are relevant, and google adsense to fill the voids... relevant affiliate programs should do much much better

 

I like your site. Your ad placements are great, but what I would do is instead of placing one beside your logo I would place an ad right above the rotating images at the top of the page. Because that is where I looked when I first visited your site. I think it's a hot spot. Try it and tell me what happens.

 

The first thing I notice is there is a lot of information on the first page when I click your link.

When I think of "Homes of the Rich" I'm thinking I'm going to see large photos of beautiful homes, but the photos are quite small. Everything on the right of the photos: subscribe, follow, tags, categories, archives, etc. is taking up half the screen.

I would have just 2 columns: a wide left column for larger photos, and a slim right column for widgets. I would keep: subscribe, follow, and archive, and remove the rest.

I would also remove the scrolling news banner at the top. The main photo is already scrolling/moving. It's hard read images if they are all scrolling/moving at the same time.

I too would use affiliate ads instead of adsense. I would use mid to high-end home brands like Restoration Hardware and Williams & Sonoma, which are the type of goods you would find in a rich home; and also use brands like West Elm, Crate & Barrel, and Macy's, which are actually affordable. Not everyone coming to your site will be rich, so they need something affordable to buy.

You can put a "Shop for your new home" widget in the right column and place your affiliate ads in there. And also put it at the bottom of each individual property listing under "Related Items".

I think these changes will make the site more clean, readable, and easier to navigate. You want the ads in plain sight so they can be seen and clicked on. Instead of covered up by unnecessary items on the page.

Hope this helps.

 

I went to several of your pages and all I saw was image ads. Are they always image ads? Image ads alone has never performed well for me. Make them switch between text and image ads.

Secondly, I wouldn't be surprised if your bounce rate is higher than what you think it is. Your traffic is huge and that's why you're still making a decent income, but you could do better if it wasn't for all the jquery going on on your site. The ticker at the top, the slider, the back to top button (which I don't even know why the back to top button should be on the index page in the first place), the fb widget - all contribute to slower index page loading.