The SBI Mall

If I were you, I would read this whole post, even if some bits in the beginning don’t interest you. You will see why as you reach the end.

Here is a little story. I was trying to promote a little website I had that I created to sell a product.

(You know, one of those sites where you have a long salesletter and a big buy button that you can click to order an e-book or whatever? Yeah, that one. I used to hate them too, till I started creating them and making money from them. For example, this website I mention consists of exactly three pages and makes about $1500-$2000 per month for me in profits. Anyway, on with the story…)

So there I was, trying to use Adwords to promote the site.

(Yes, yes, I know I said Adsense in the title of the post. Bear with me, my friend!)

Anyway. So I was trying to use Adwords to promote the site. I was already seeing great results in the search network, and wanted to try advertising in the content network as well.

As you may know, the “content network” consists of the actual web sites that display all these ads that we call Adsense ads. From the advertisers point of view, it’s the Adwords ads displaying on the “content network,” and from our point of view, it’s Adsense ads.

Anyway, this is what I found:

• Unless you are willing to pay high click costs, your ads will get displayed in lower positions where no one will see them
• Unless anyone sees them, you won’t any clicks
• If you want clicks, you need to either raise your bids, or experiment with image ads (which I did) because they have far less competition than text ads
• Image ads that look like they are designed by a graphic designer tend to get very poor results in terms of clicks. On the other hand, image ads that look like “text” perform much better
• A few words on a big sized image ad work the best
• Big sized image ads with a few words on them and a horrible color combination work the “bestest”

So what does this mean for us SBIers?

What the above means is that we have just stumbled upon a cool way to make more money from the Adsense ads that get displayed on our sites. Now, read carefully here, and try to follow the logic. This is important.

• The image ads I mentioned above worked well because they drew attention
• They drew attention because they looked ugly and out of place in the website
• Looking at this from our (webmasters) point of view, the ads that draw attention will get more clicks and hence make more money for us
• But image ads typically pay a lot less than text ads, which have higher competition
• So if we customize our (text) Adsense ads to make them look ugly, we get the best of both worlds – ads that draw attention and ads that pay more

Just trying to make sure you didn’t miss that last one: If we customize our (text) Adsense ads to make them look ugly, we get the best of both worlds – ads that draw attention and ads that pay more.

I am sure you already know how to customize the look of your Adsense ads, so I won’t go into that here.

A word of caution

It’s important to be careful here. You don’t want to create ads SO ugly that they make you lose your credibility with your visitors. For example, don’t have ads that hurt the eyes, or make your site look like a kaleidoscope.

It’s a fine line you need to walk. In my opinion, always err on the side of making more money. You are monetizing, after all. You can always change it back to a little less ugly if it doesn’t work for you.

And don’t forget to do some testing of your own first. Just because it looks like a good idea, it doesn’t mean you will necessarily have success with it. Always test an idea first, before rolling it out full scale.

So what do you think of this approach? Good? Bad? Ugly? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And if you have similar (or different) experiences of your own, please share.