Adsense advice needed

[mrfelton]

My site CodeGobbler.com has been up for about 1 month now. I have a decent amount of traffic (1 month of service - CodeGobbler's first month site statistics | codegobbler.com) but my adsense earnings are next to worthless. I'd really appreciate it if someone could take a quick look at my site and tell me where I'm going wrong, or how I could do better with the ads.

Page impressions: 4193
Clicks: 12
Page CTR: 0.29%
Page eCPM: $0.04
Earnings: $0.17

[CaffinePhil]

First off I love the site.

The ads are pretty much hidden and you have to really look to find them. Try a different place for a month and see if you get any better results.

[Bloggeries]

You have no ads man! That TINY TINY link bar??

I've had much success with a 160X600 down the LEFT> Try one down the right and see what happens.

Also be cognizant of what you write about; it influences the ads and the amount of $ per click. I left a post on pre paid credit cards on my blog and one day found it made $3.11 in one day. Average is sadly $0.5-$1.5 a day. Usually near the lower half.

[mrfelton]

Originally Posted by Bloggeries

Also be cognizant of what you write about;

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. I write about web development. Are you suggesting I should go off the topic of my blog purely to target specific AdWords advertising campaigns?

ps. I've done as you suggested and added a 160x600 block to the right... we'll see what happens.

[Bloggeries]

Originally Posted by mrfelton

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. I write about web development. Are you suggesting I should go off the topic of my blog purely to target specific AdWords advertising campaigns?

No but find the higher paying keywords IN your niche and try and include WHEN you can. Also I meant it more like don't expect huge adsense earnings for writing about gardening compared to someone who writes about legal or real estate stuff.

[CaffinePhil]

You would be better off monetizing your site selling links to other web design/development services but that might take away from your business.

[mrfelton]

Originally Posted by CaffinePhil

You would be better off monetizing your site selling links to other web design/development services but that might take away from your business.

How would you suggest going about this? Contacting companies directly and asking if they want to buy a link? Or are there some sites out there that can help me with this? If I have to do it myself (which I don't have a problem doing), how can I know what to charge?

[CaffinePhil]

A lot of the time prices for linking (as in text links) are still normally worked out by page rank. If your site has PR3+ check out the buy sell trade section here and over at digital point.

I have a PR3 tech blog that I have sold over $300 worth of text links on this month.

If you have any questions feel free to PM me.

[cipals15]

Use only one ad per page..

[CaffinePhil]

I'd definitely go for 2 ad spots per page. once near the top or in the post and one in the sidebar.