Why Faceless Untargeted Ads Will Exist For a Long Time

When sites ad banners for the first time, they often see a higher initial click-thru-rate than that which they'll see sustained going forward. That's because those ads are new and people click on them to see what's up. If you only added AdSense to your feed for this experiment, you might be seeing a 'novelty' response.

Just curious as to what is making you the most money online.

Hand-picking seems like a difficult thing to do unless you're armed with the kind of matching data that Amazon has. It's such a complicated formula to determine what people want and when. I wonder - if there was a way for people to opt in to allowing their buying habits to be used for online and broadcast ad serving, how many would take the opportunity to lose some privacy and get relevance in return? Maybe even reduce their ad exposure too?

@Kris - speaking gigs and consulting and other stuff that's more "hand sold" is the answer. But then, I'm not yet in the business of making money solely from a website.

What about you?

Hey Chris - Interesting experiment. I also think it matters what you are using these programs for and what kind of websites they are used on.

For example, we tried out eMiniMalls after Pro Blogger (Darren) wrote about the success he's had with the program on his Digital Photography website. This didn't work so well for us on our DVD review website, because a lot of the results that came up were electronics not relating to the DVDs we reviewed.

By the same token, on li-reviews.com and li-kids.com, Amazon is one of our top money makers. We get more regular payments from Amazon than we do from Google Adsense. Of course, the more visitors we get, the more our Adsense revenue also increases.

The time of year also affects sales. We sell WAY more by Amazon around Christmas time. That's actually when our sales numbers are at their highest. Why is pretty self-explanatory. Additionally, our toy reviews are more likely to trigger Amazon ad revenue/sales from them (on LI Kids) than our DVD reviews.

As for my other websites, like dominickevans.com, they aren't making much (if anything) from Amazon. All the major revenue is coming in from Text Link Ads, Adsense, and private ad sales. I have put fewer Amazon ads up on these sites, as a result, because they just aren't selling anything.

The key, I believe, is finding the right ad programs to work with your particular website/blog/niche and going from there.

Chris,

Interesting results. I too have been researching on-line business strategies, and keep coming up short.

I do not have the take on the 'psychology of sales' or why people buy on-line. I do not know 'color-theory' or what makes someone click on one ad and ignore another.

There are countless 'e-books' programs and 'killer-product-sales' techniques espoused by some 'experts' most of which recount the same information in Google's Adsense Learning Library for free at www.Google.com/adsense

For me I'm going 180-degrees from the marketing crowd. I'm preparing a massive donation launch for next week, web page is under construction, and I'm going to do all of the manual labor myself unless it goes viral, and then I have volunteers lined up to assist with the logistics.

This will continue until I exhaust myself or the funds that are collected. In previous projects I have had the stamina to subject myself to 16-hour days on my feet and traveling across the USA. These were paid gigs in technical project management or broadcast television systems design roles.

This project has fired a passion in me that is today spreading to others who are stepping up and latching on.

I will provide details and a link to the website once it goes live. Suffice to say, it may rekindle the US Economy, one donation at a time, and the beneficiaries will know that someone cares about them. Someone they have never met.

Respectfully, Nicholas Chase
Twitter/nachase

@Nicholas - Finding a way for people to buy is one thing. Finding people to buy what you want them to buy is another. With Amazon, someone who clicks your ad can browse Amazon and you still get the sale for ANYTHING they buy during their visit to Amazon. This is even if it doesn't relate to any item you have featured in your Amazon ads. We get many of our sales from items we know cannot possibly be listed on our website.

I.E. our latest and "weirdest" Amazon sale was for something called "The Big Penis Book" - We know this cannot possibly be listed on our websites (and are slightly disturbed by the prospect someone visiting LI Kids, could have clicked our ad then looked up this book - but since we have no idea which ad on which site they clicked - can't be sure that's where they found our ads), yet we still got paid for this. Let me tell you, as far as books go, The Big Penis Book turned a pretty good profit!

My point though is, despite being great fodder for me on Twitter, this sale was not something I expected, because I didn't place ads for this book on my sites. You can lead a person to Amazon or any other affiliate you have, but they are still going to buy whatever they want and truthfully, if you make money from their sale, it doesn't really matter what they end up buying!

Hi Chris,

First of all thank you for the kind words.

Since you always seem genuinely interested in keeping your apples and oranges straightened out there are a couple of things I should point out:

1) Things to consider about Amazon: Of all commission based programs, although it pays frequently, Amazon's among the most stingy in giving credit to its affiliates. Amazon's cookie is "session only". What does that mean? If the user leaves the site for any reason and then comes back you don't get credit. The majority of advertisers in the affiliate channel have between 30-45 day cookies (and the average sale in my experience occurs in the first 7 days from a referral). A much longer window to land a commission.

Also with Amazon the amount of commission you earn is dependent on two things:
~Amount of orders. On less than 7 Amazon only pays 4% on products, which is among the lowest in the affiliate channel for box and other products, unless...
~Those products are from programs Amazon is really trying to drive like Unbox, Amazon MP3, Endless (their shoe site), or the Kindle. Promoting these products will get you 10-15% commission.

Not trying to give the impression Amazon can't be profitable it's just you have to be sure for your efforts you promoting the right thing.

2) It is unclear from the way you described the test as to whether both where shown an equal number of times. I suspect that products you hand picked via Amazon got less actual impressions than Google Adsense (if simply for the fact that your picks where occasional where as Adsense ran on every post of yours). It would be a more accurate comparison if you tested under the same bandwidth parameters.

You are right however, one in many ways is a "set and forget" revenue model, where one takes far more effort to be successful. Ultimately it depends heavily on what your core business objectives are.

Angel

I bought some of the books from your recommended list--because I value your time and judgment, and because I like doing things that will give a little something back to someone who puts it out the way you do. It's interesting that it wouldn't have occurred to me to click on GoogleAds to accomplish the latter. I'm just saying...

Yes, programs like Adsense will always work and that is why. I myself use them, but I do other things, too. As a pro blogger, I make $12K-$15K per month. Advertising is a big part of that, but I also have a premium membership program and about an equal portion comes from that.

Affiliate commissions can be a big source of revenue, but I have personally found that Amazon.com is a tough way to make money. Their payout is pretty low when compared to other programs you could promote.

If I didn't have Angel, I would know close to nothing about affiliate marketing.

Chris, you want to know what is even more scary? That is your success rate with affiliate marketing. You have a huge following and a very loyal audience. These people trust you and are willing to buy things you recommend.

Just imagine how hard it is for a small blogger to live off of selling other peoples products. It's actually near impossible.

No offense toward the Amazon folks, but since moving to my current home about 30 miles from any metropolis, I buy all my books from local bookstores. That is, when I'm not borrowing from the library.

If I'm buying local, why would I display an ad for someone to buy from Amazon when they have local bookstores, too?

Hey Chris -

Did you rotate the AdSense and Amazon ads in the same spot at the same time?

I'm not sure where all of your ad placements are located, but I see the FreshBooks ad goes direct to the program and not through an ad server.

If you're not using one, I'd highly recommend the hosted version of OpenX: http://www.openx.org/ad-server/get-openx-hosted

They provide lots of analytics to look deeper into which ad placements are working for your audience.

Making money with anything, not just a blog, is a matter of providing value to people who need it. The ways are endless. AdSense is just one of them. Amazon is another.

What really matters is to focus on your value not on the ways. I used AdSense and other advertising strategies. Some of them are better than others but none of them is totally tied up to your needs. There will always be gaps between what you know you can make and what they'll give you, because they have to satisfy an enormous potential market. The highest advertising value you can get is the lowest common denominator of the sites in which it runs.

Thanks for sharing some of the results and reflections Chris. I find all of this area a mystery so it's good to learn from the efforts of others!

One thing - as an RSS reader I do sometimes find it visually distracting to see the ads at the top - I sometimes start reading the ad works by mistake, or get confused as to what I'm looking at. I think maybe this is worse if there's a photo near the top too.

I would much prefer you put them at the bottom (so I could ignore them!) but maybe that reduces your income. I know it has affected my reading though, and means I'm skimming over more of your posts than I used to in order to avoid the visual clutter.

There is one thing that's slightly misleading with this post - presenting Adsense as untargeted.

Yes, it's done by keywords, and can vary wildly from appropriate to completely random, but it is attempting to target appropriate content, no matter how badly.

If you ran Adsense, hand-picked advertising, and a generic lifestyle brand and compared the three it would be interesting, and might be a better guide...at the moment it's a bit apples and oranges, although for the record, my own stats are in total alignment, although the numbers are smaller!

Although I have 4 advertising spaces on my blog, at the moment I don't use them for "proper" advertising - they
are more for charitable causes or where my blog is listed (Alltop badge, for instance).

I think if I did go down the advertising road, it would most definitely only be for something that I feel would benefit my readers. After all, they trust me for my opinions on my niche or they wouldn't visit/subscribe in the first place - and that trust is something I most definitely appreciate and wouldn't want to break.

@Dan Thornton- well, good point, but I can't exactly *tune* AdSense, right? That's my point there.

I've never used Google ads for the simple fact that I knew the ads would be for some products I wouldn't endorse.

I know it's not the same for everyone, but my interest is in helping people achieve a healthy lifestyle with small steps, not quick fixes, bogus products, and magic bullets, so I choose not to run them.

When you pick things you think people who read your blog might like, you're adding an element that has a built-in bias - you. No matter how objective you try to be, you never can be totally objective in determining the most appropriate ad targets for your audience - the total of all of your experience is going to color the results. Compare that to an algorithm that is programmed to pick ads based on content and you'll see why the "faceless" ads will usually win. Not saying that it will always happen, just that it is the most likely outcome.

I had to kick adsense off my Site (am still working to get it off all my webpages), because I'm siting right now in Hungary. They don't like ME countries. I gave my address in Germany, but need to verify a bunch of stuff.
So I said, screw it and they are off.
I'm advertising my own shop now and a few ads by Project wonderful. Small nickles and dimes still, but mainly fellow artists that end up there. Fine with me.
I didn't like the themes that popped up with adsense anyway.
Amazon seems to be a "be lucky or not". Sometimes it works a bunch and then nothing for weeks.
It's off now as well ;)
I'll follow your tips and see what you come up with.
But let me tell you, it sucks not to be in the US for this business ;)