No Ads Are Created Equal
As mentioned the other day, I’m slowly testing various new ads to eventually replace Adsense, which has been dropping to an extremely pathetic amount. Even though I haven’t been approved with any networks on Adify just yet, I’m using their ad rotation system to do my testing (as I mentioned, there is the ability to put in your own ads, and if you put in more than one, it just rotates through them).
First off there’s the recipe site. I’ve actually got two sets of ads running on the category pages and the actual recipe pages. There’s another two ads rotating on the home page, and two separate ads in the navigation (top and middle). I’m mostly using CoolSavings, which pays me $1 per lead, but the navigation ad in the middle is CafeMom. I really don’t expect those navigation ads to pay much, so the real focus is on testing the ads rotating on the category and recipe pages.
So far I’ve done little tweeking, as I’m trying to get some decent numbers built up to compare with. All the ads are with Commission Junction, so I’ve been running reports daily to look at the number of clicks and number of leads. But I have noticed that different ads DO preform better than others. I’ve already kicked one out for not pulling in at least one click within 200 views, and more will probably follow. It’s all about tweeking and getting just the right ad where it needs to be.
Next is Idea Queen’s blog. I pulled a rather bold move with it, even though I didn’t have much to lose. It doesn’t pull in all that much traffic (maybe 100 views a day, more when the blog broadcast goes out). I completely pulled all the Adsense off it and replaced it with ONE banner ad. Yup, one. This one I’m really going to have to sit on my hands for though, since it’s not a pay-per-lead program (well, it is, but it’s not free for the visitor, so it’s different from the others). I thought it was a unique program that fit my visitors, so I’m giving it a shot. Since the blog only produces about $10 a month, this program has exactly that much time to produce one sale at $12. If it does better, GREAT!
Now even though I only have one banner up there now, I may just change it to rotate several because Commission Junction does allow you to set something like that up. Unfortunately it takes a lot longer for the stats to build up on this one since there’s not as many visitors, so it worries me a little to tamper with the testing when it’s got to pull in JUST ONE to be worth it. We’ll see what I decide to do there.
Last, but not least by any means, is Idea Queen. Oh have we been shaking things up there! For one, I’ve got the new ad on the side that I’ve been doing the rotating ad testing on, currently with 4 different 160×600 sized ads rotating. Since there’s several hundred views a day to the site per day, I can change the ads not even producing clicks within a few days. I’ve already replaced one. Now there’s 2 CoolSavings, 1 CafeMom, and one that’s the same $12 lead company as on the blog. Since this is a navigation ad, I’m not expecting fantastic results, but I do expect the ads I run to earn a few bucks a month at the very least.
The other recent change was to some of the recipe pages. I didn’t dare remove the Google Ads, but rather I moved them a tad. All the ads that were stuck right at the top have been replaced with CoolSavings, and they have already produced some leads. I’m not overly thrilled with it, but not disappointed either. I really don’t have enough stats to come up with a solid conclusion, but as of right now I see that I’ve more or less bumped the income up slightly. Could it replace Adsense? No, not at this point. Unless, of course, I find another program that produces some good enough results to run along side of the affiliate I’ve already got that would add up to more than I’m making with Adsense (or was, I guess, since I’ve already replaced some of that income with CJ affiliate programs).
Overall the stats are quite complicated to report in detail and wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but me anyway. The bottom line here is that if you are testing ads, test different ads from the same affiliate, because you never know what specific ad is going to run the best on your site. (And as a side note – don’t be afraid to use CJ’s EPC notes, those can be useful!)
Your fellow WAHM in success,
Kara
Topics: Ad Case Study | No Comments »