Are your visitors Banner Blind?
The best place for a Banner is the Header or Navbar
For 99% of us trying to make money off the internet, we rely on our site visitors to click on our banners so that we can get a nice little check at the end of the month from companies such as Google Adsense, Adbrite, Chikita, EPN, YPN and the many more advertising companies out there.
Unfortunately most internet surfers these days suffer a “disease” from what is termed Banner Blindness.
What’s Banner Blindness?
Firstly Banner Blindness is not a disease! It is just one of the internet coined terms! Well then what is it? What it is, is that internet surfers are so accustomed to seeing Banners and Advertisements on just about all internet websites they visit, that they either deliberately or unconciously tune out from seeing the advertisements in front of their eyes.
I would say most people suffer from it, unless there is an deliberate need to click on the advertising banner, even I suffer from banner blindness and I rarely click on banners unless there is an urgent need to see something that catches my eye.
Banner Blindness can have a dramatic effect on your online earnings, this is why you should experiment with the placement of your affiliate banners throughout your website, but most of all in my opinion you have to be quite sneaky.
You should blend in your banners so that they look like they are a part of your website, basically you are tricking your members or visitors into clicking on ads on your website, which to them look like content, or part of the page.
This is not against Googles TOS so long as you don’t ask your visitors to click on your ads or don’t display more than the maximum amount of banners allowed.
I make most of my money using Google Adsense, and I would say 95% of my money I earn comes from my Ute Forum and once again 95% of the ads that people click on is the ad which is in the Navbar (I have attached a screenshot)
So having a Banner on the Header or the Navbar of your site, will likely bring you a good click through ratio.
I believe most people click on that ad because they visit my site, they are not interested in the sites content, so the only way out is the lazy way out of clicking on that ad to go to another site.
In any case, make sure you try and blend your ads in, change the placement of the ads every couple of months, do lots of experimenting until you find the best placement for your ads.
Just be wary … people really do suffer from Banner Blindness, always have that in mind when you are placing banners on your websites!
Read more about Banner Blindness
Authors Note:
If this post does not interest you, feel free to visit our other websites as follows:
LostTreasure.com - The Australian Metal Detecting Blog
BeautUtes.com - The Australian Ute Forum
BluePeople.com - The Depression and Mental Health Forum
RuralStar.com.au - Free Australian Classifieds - Event Listings & Articles
RuralStar.com/blog - The Rural Australian Blog
Comscout.com - Cheap $9.99 Domain Name Registration
Do you need a good reliable web host for your Domain Name to create a website? I highly recommend you try out HostGator.com, I have been with this Website Hosting Company for many years, and they are the best on the internet!
Headache causing Banners on News.com.au
News.com.au - Awful Ads and Invasion of my Internet Privacy!
I am a big news person, and love reading news websites, such as international news companies CNN, BBC and in Australia, my preferred news websites are ABC (Non-Commercialised) and News.com.au.
Around 5 minutes ago, I just went to News.com.au to get a quick news update before heading to bed for the night.
When the page opened, I was suddenly engulfed in a huge orange screen, on all sides of my browser was three banners for ING Direct advertising something called “Savings Week”
Usually I am Banner Blind, but this form of advertising actually caught my eye … not in a good way, but a bad way.
I felt as those my privacy was being invaded and the first thing I thought of was to contact ABC Media Watch … to report News.com.au’s desperate advertising tactics.
See the full Banner Invasion Screenshot
News.com.au has since removed the banners from the left and right of the screen, maybe they were just testing out possible placing of ads.
In my opinion it was horrible. What do you think?
Authors Note:
If this post does not interest you, feel free to visit our other websites as follows:
LostTreasure.com - The Australian Metal Detecting Blog
BeautUtes.com - The Australian Ute Forum
BluePeople.com - The Depression and Mental Health Forum
RuralStar.com.au - Free Australian Classifieds - Event Listings & Articles
RuralStar.com/blog - The Rural Australian Blog
Comscout.com - Cheap $9.99 Domain Name Registration
Do you need a good reliable web host for your Domain Name to create a website? I highly recommend you try out HostGator.com, I have been with this Website Hosting Company for many years, and they are the best on the internet!
Ebay Partner Network Ups and Downs
Ebay Partner Network - Aprils Earnings Drop Dramatically - Not Happy
It was not too along ago when I wrote a blog on my Google Adsense Ups and Downs complaining how my adsense earnings had dropped dramatically over a two month period, a whopping 42% and now things have changed.
My adsense earnings in April compared to my March adsense earnings increased by 39% which is fantastic and actually what I made from Adsense in April was the most I had earned since November 2009. So lets hope that the trend continues in these days of economic doom.
But unfortunately my Ebay Partner Network earnings April were the worst I have ever seen, since joining the affiliate program in August 2008.
My April commission earnings dropped a dreadful 56% compared to what I had earned in March with Ebay Partner Network, and so far this month, things are not looking good, without even a single commission earned yet.
And even in April my banners, rss feeds and text links I use with ebay got an extra 270 click throughs compared to March, so I am hoping that this month I will do alot better, because the money I earn from Ebay, helps so much towards paying the bills, domain name registration, and little day to day luxuries.
As I have said before, you need to get used to the ups and downs of earning money on the internet, I don’t make that much money from Adsense or EPN, but I don’t know where I would be without it.
It such hard work trying to make money from your websites, when you consider that you may be working on your sites for 6 to 8 hours a day and you end up make $20 in a day, sometimes I question myself is it really worth it.
And it is, because I love doing what I do, I love writing, I love talking about experiences, whether good or bad, I love offering the best advice I can, not as good as the experts, but every little tip and trick helps, and if it helps just one person on the internet, then my goal has succeeded.
I have also just putting Adbrite Ads on my Ute Forum, just to test the water, and see how that goes, so far I have only made a few lousy cents since the start of May, lets hope that that picks up as well!
Ebay Partner Network - March Earnings - Very Happy
Authors Note:
If this post does not interest you, feel free to visit our other websites as follows:
LostTreasure.com - The Australian Metal Detecting Blog
BeautUtes.com - The Australian Ute Forum
BluePeople.com - The Depression and Mental Health Forum
RuralStar.com.au - Free Australian Classifieds - Event Listings & Articles
RuralStar.com/blog - The Rural Australian Blog
Comscout.com - Cheap $9.99 Domain Name Registration
Do you need a good reliable web host for your Domain Name to create a website? I highly recommend you try out HostGator.com, I have been with this Website Hosting Company for many years, and they are the best on the internet!
Sweatshop workers earn more than Me!
Sweatshop Workers earn more than Me!
Some days I spend over 12 hours on the internet working on my websites, trying to make a living off the internet, most days now it is usually around 5 -6 hours a day in between my other hobbies, such as metal detecting and gardening.
Isn’t is so frustrating when you are battling to make $10 a day through google adsense, and have been doing this for around five years now. I am sure there are millions of other webmasters with great websites and are in the same boat as me.
I remember when I was averaging around three dollars a day with adsense, that was a couple years ago and now I am in the two digit average per day! Wow great money isn’t it? NOT!
Don’t get me wrong, $10 a day adds up to a few hundred dollars a month and it comes in handy, paying for my web hosting, site upgrades, banners and so forth.
But after five years with one website at Page Rank 4, another site at Page Rank 3, and the others Page Rank 1 and 2, you’d think I’d be making at least $20 a day with my click throughs going at about 100 clicks a day and 10,000 plus impressions per day.
I put so much work into my websites, I have tried everything, adsense, adbrite, ebay partner network, commission junction, click bank and many other affiliate programs.
Some people earn around $10,000 a month using google adsense, I’ve earned that in five long years … alot of money and I don’t know where I would be without it, but I have invested way more than $10,000 into a couple of my websites. Maybe one day it will pay off for me. I hope so.
Earning money off the internet has a big advantage, if you lose your job at least you have the internet to fall back on.
I am closing on to my late 30’s now and sometimes I wonder if I will be doing this internet stuff when I reach retiring age … will I still be selling domain names when I reach 80 years of age? Will I still be running my ute website when I am 80, modering young kids who sign up for the love of utes?
Maybe I will be, but when I do retire and I am living off my pension, and if I am still blogging on the internet and selling domain names, at least I will still have a side income coming in.
But right now I have to admit, I am lucky to be earning a proper wage, however just like alot of webmasters I would rather be making a full time wage from the internet, from my domains, blogging and from my discussion forums, working from the comforts of home.
Having my domain name portfolio helps a bit also, especially when I am struggling a bit for money, I have more domain names to turn too, and it is a bit of coincidence when I am really struggling that all of a sudden I will get an offer for one of my domain names, usually I will one one or two serious offers a month for my names.
But right now what I earn off the internet is no worse than what a person in an Asian Sweatshop earns a day, $10 lousy bucks.
Lets hope one day I get look back on this post when I am making $100 a day, if I am, I’ll let you know and in the meantime I am seriously considering moving to China to work in a Nike Sweatshop, it sure pays better than this internet working!
Authors Note:
If this post does not interest you, feel free to visit our other websites as follows:
LostTreasure.com - The Australian Metal Detecting Blog
BeautUtes.com - The Australian Ute Forum
BluePeople.com - The Depression and Mental Health Forum
RuralStar.com.au - Free Australian Classifieds - Event Listings & Articles
RuralStar.com/blog - The Rural Australian Blog
Comscout.com - Cheap $9.99 Domain Name Registration
Do you need a good reliable web host for your Domain Name to create a website? I highly recommend you try out HostGator.com, I have been with this Website Hosting Company for many years, and they are the best on the internet!
