[the glyphon]

I have you standard personal website with a blog and some pages that link to publishers of my fiction, some book reviews etc. I get about 20-50 unique users a day--not ad for something that is basically for fun and a little self promotion (most of my booksales are through the publisher and amazon).

I have been putting up google ads but have come to the conclusion that for my type and level of site they are basically a waste of time. Tony income not really making up for the ugliness factor of having ads. Is it just that I am not using them well? I do use lower impact areas and coloring, mainly right column in colors that distinguish the ad from the main text.

I am also thinking, hey, I really want visitors to exit to sites that sell my books not some other competing site? Most come in using my name or genre as search words or from other pages talking aout my fiction, after all. They must be most likely to buy from me, and my royalties are much higher than any per click earnings...

What do the rest of you feel about the usefulness of google ad income on low traffic sites?

[Hybr!d]

Put it on your site and see, its the best way to test it out... if you find it doesn't make any money or it reduces your sales/traffic then remove it.

[Conred]

Well, I personally have experience with Adsense itself and I can tell you that its not just about if the website is a adsense style website but it also is your blending and traffic.

If you plan on using Adsense to earn extra money, not only can you use a website to make profits from Adsense but if you interact in Adsense revenue sharing forums, that is a little bit more here and there.

As far as Adsense on your website goes here is a few suggestions:

- Make sure the color blends perfectly
- Do not serve any incentives on your website for a member to click on the ad as this is against Adsense TOS (Example: Underneath the ad it says: Support our finances).
- Make sure you have the right ads. You can filter out advertisements by blocking certain websites from showing up in your ads. Why do this? You do this to stop advertisements that may get you a lower amount of money per click. You can also do this to make sure that you are not getting advertisements that do not match your keywords.

If your advertisements do not match what your website has as far as content and what audience visits it then you are not likely to get much money on each click.

Read up on all the factors that will help you get more money from it and decide if you should:

- Use Adsense
- Use affiliate programs (CJ is good for that)
- Just sell your own product/services

Thats all I have to say, but seriously do test it if you have a good amount of visitors coming in then its worth a try.

If you do want no competing companies on your ads, do as I said. Set it up with parallel content on a blog or free website and see what the ads show. Then filter out any URL's that are competing with you.

Instead of selling eBooks, by filtering them out you could be advertising "How to write a eBook" or something that matches the topic of other keywords on your website.

Changing keywords helps too :P
Thanks alot for reading and I hope this info helped you out,
Jason