WHY don't they click ??

Hello Digitalpointers,

your opinion, please :

i run a photo gallery about traveling, covering lots of well known turistic places, the content is quite unique, the layout is modern, minimal, and fast.

at the moment i use only Adsense.
i started with 2-300 pageviews/day, the CTR was 1-2%, now
(adsense stats) i have around 3000 pageviews/day but CTR is 0.2% - 0.4% !

and not only that, clicks pay an average of 10-20 cents each while few months ago it wasnt unusual to get clicks paying 0.5 or even 1 dollar.

i use a leaderboard 728x90 below the top logo and menu, and a big box
in the middle of the images (images are displayed vertically with captions so the box
is in the 5th position)

whole site is large 728 pixels, so no place for skyscrapers or side banners,
yet at the same time, no way to AVOID seeing the ads.

tried different placements, but more or less the CTR stays the same.

the site is fully static i havent changed anything since months, yet the pageviews keep growing month after month, yet the pay out is NOT good at all, i know people getting 10-20 bucks a day from 3000 pageviews.

now, is it because my site is mostly of photos and short comments ?
or is it because my keywords suck ?

(the ads popping out are mainly about hotels, flights, and holidays)

what can i do ?
is it normal for that particular niche market ?

would it be better making 10-20 stand alone sites about each city instead
of a one big site with all the city on it ?

 

I've seen very poor CTR's from photo sites. Visitors are usually there just to browse the pretty pictures.

The best CTR's I've seen are on my buying guide pages. Visitors are there to shop.

 

that's exactly why i came here to ask on opinion !

people watching my pics are NOT there to BUY.

the few ones clicking maybe click for curiousity or because 1 in 2-300
there's always someone who's looking also to buy, but that's not
much compared to normal sites.

at the same time, if this theory was true, there would be no business apart from the e-commerce sites, which is not the case at all, so there must be a reason for why i don't reach at least 1% CTR which is the norm in other markets

i'm adding affiliate banners from CJ regarding hotels, etc but i'm quite skeptic about their performances : the best paying banners for travel on CJ are infact the text ones, so if they don't click on google why they would click more on CJ ?

for 100 clicks on google i get 10-20 $, for 100 clicks on my CJ affiliates the EPC is 30-40 $, we'll see, but all in all the pay out is deeply disappointing.

 

The only thing you can do to fix this will be to entirely change the focus of your site, and attract different visitors. Add things like "a guide to choosing hotels in ..." and turn the focus to the sorts of things people will spend their money on, and you should do better.

Or, if you don't want to change the focus of your site, you could keep the gallery and sell prints, mousemats, etc. Don't think that you have to use Adsense to get the best return, because it isn't ideal for all types of site.

 

i agree, and that's what i'm thinking about ...

i do have many visitors, but all they want is watching pics, not BUY, nor CLICK.

if i change the focus i will lose tons of visitors and nobody assure me they'll buy.

i mean, or you do something or you do something else...

my pics are not about hotels btw, not even about airplanes.
quite the opposite, they're about budget traveling ...

there are 1000s of sites already having small reports abotu cities
and selling hotels etc why my one should stand out ?

gotta think about it .. but talking about my othe question,
do you think making 10-20 sites, one for each city, pays better than
one-for-all ?

 

10-20 sites definetely pays more then 1big, but it depends on traffic really.. I suggest you to use image ads instead of text ads, if your visitors aren't reading text, maybe this will help..the bad part of this, is that imageads don't pay more then 10cents, at least for me.. send the site's link, then maybe we'll have a clear image..

 

Yes, I was going to suggest using image ads as well since I assume you are currently using text ads.

 

What is the main purpose of your site.... Is it just to make money from AdSense....... If it is, then I agree with the person who said you need to restructure your site.... Not your main page (maybe a link), but add inside pages to your site, like buying guide, and advertise those pages. So, you won' lose your old clients you'll only gain new one's.

 

i'm adding image ads (banners from CJ), i really think they could work much better than the text ads, we'll see.

purpose of my site : of course the purpose of my site is NOT to sell anything, it's just a photo gallery, but excuse me there are tons of other typologies of web site who dont sell anything but get higher CTR than me, take forums, news sites, blogs, etc , should they all convert in an e-commerce shop ?

all i want to know is if it normal for photo gallery sites to have so low CTRs or the reason lies in bad layout, bad positioning, text vs image ads.

 

Yeah, it's normal.

 

There are also tons of other sites out there that make very little money. Don't assume that because they exist, they are profitable.

That said, many of these sites that are making good Adsense money are text-based. Your site is based on images. This is a problem for the Adsense bot, because it may not have enough text available to allow it to figure out the most relevant ads. So making your short comments longer and more specific might help.

 

every image has an average of 3 lines of text.

the adsense text banners are usually relevant to the spefici city or country
of the photos.

yet, CTR quite low, i think i really must try image-ads or give up to the fact that sites like this can not produce high CTRs

(i dont care, i've a multitude of other sites running fine but ...)

 

What is the url?

 

Good question.^^

I suggest blending the ads in between content if it's a clearly profit oriented site (profit from ads). An example would be a be a link unit between paragraphs of text.

PS- Are you THE rocco siffredi?

 

It's hard to say what will help without knowing the url of the site.

However, if your visitors are only there to look at the pictures, perhaps you should be selling them on photography instead of travel.

Perhaps you should try Chitika ads and use the keyword "digital camera". I am not saying this will definately work. Generally Chitika ads do best on product and shopping style web pages, but it may be worth a try.

Do you know how many of your visitors are repeat visitors or new visitors? CTR can decrease due to regular and repeat visitor ad blindness.