High CTR = Low EPC explained
September 27, 2006
Conventional business wisdom dictates that the more of something you sell, the more money you make. If you make ten bucks on an item and sell five of them, you make fifty dollars. Sell ten and make a hundred. That just makes sense.
That's not how AdSense works. Finally, Google has officially explained why not on the official AdSense blog.
High CTR, Low EPC
That's Google's official explanation. The shotgun method of advertising pays less because it draws a lot of traffic in but doesn't convert as well for the advertiser. A high click-through rate (CTR) therefore often translates into a lower earnings per click (EPC).
Low CTR, High EPC
The flip-side is that you may be getting a low CTR but still maintain a high EPC because your ads are appealing to a niche crowd who are more willing to buy.
So is high CTR bad?
This announcement from Google might lead some to believe that having a high CTR isn't a good thing. That is a mistaken assumption.
Yes, a high CTR will often lower EPC, but you will still earn more overall. For example, if you earn $25 per one hundred clicks with a CTR of 10%, that translates into $0.25 per click. One thousand clicks is therefore worth $250, and it takes 10,000 impressions to earn it.
However, with a lower CTR of, say, 2.5%, if you earn $50 per hundred clicks (twice as much), that translates to $0.50 per click. Sounds great, right? But since your CTR is only 2.5%, that same 10,000 impressions that earned $250 in the former example only earns $125 in this example.
So unless you're earning a phenomenal EPC despite a low CTR, you're still better off maximizing your pages for high CTR.
Soapbox Time
It's nice to have an official proclamation from Google about something AdSense publishers have been speculating about. Those proclamations are few and far between for the "lowly" AdSense publisher. I mean, we only earn Google half its multi-billion dollar income. But that's no reason to keep us filled in…
Article Builder Launches Today!
September 26, 2006
You've been waiting for it, and now it's ready! Thanks to the fantastic feedback from many of my readers, Article Builder is five times as powerful as I originally intended it to be.
This project has really shown me the power of doing a pre-launch and letting my readers and customers see videos of how the system works and make suggestions before the official launch. I will certainly be repeating this method of launching products in the future.
So go to Article Builder now and sign-up for a free demo account. See for yourself if it's not the most fantastic site-building and article building system out there (and for the best price too!).
P.S.
I have to give credit where credit is due. I got all of the ideas for the way I launched this product from The Butterfly Marketing Manuscript, and I strongly recommend you read it if you're serious about not just selling, but launching products on the web.
The truth about ready-made AdSense sites.
September 19, 2006
I get a lot of emails from my readers about packages of sites that have been pre-built and are ready to load with your AdSense code. They are often in niche categories and contain dozens or hundreds of articles, and the are usually pretty cheap (under $100).
On the surface, these packages sound like a great deal: they save time because you don't have to build them yourself and you can focus on promoting and ranking the sites. But the truth is that most of these packages are not worth a dime. Let me tell you why.
Duplicate Content Galore
The primary reason why you should not purchase packages of ready-made AdSense sites is that they are selling that same package to hundreds or thousands of other people. Every one of those customers is buying the same package containing the same sites.
The search engines are smart, and they will filter out duplicate copies of the same articles and sites. Chances are that by the time you purchase and upload one of these ready-made sites, dozens of others have already done so, and your site will get filtered.
If you're going to purchase a ready-made AdSense site, make sure that you are guaranteed to be the only one purchasing that site. This means that you will be paying a lot more money for the package, since you'll be the only customer.
If the site owner claims to be selling unique packages for $97 a piece, be very, very wary. Usually a quality ready-made site will cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars, so anyone offering them that cheap is probably reselling the same package over and over again.
Web Site Optimization
The ready-made AdSense sites I've seen have almost never been very well designed for the search engines, and almost never have the AdSense laid out in the most effective manner.
That means that even if you are the only owner of the package, that it will be difficult to rank well in the search engines, and that you won't make as much money from the sites as you could have if you had laid out the AdSense code in the proper places.
So if you're going to purchase a ready-made site, make sure that it is already optimized for the search engines and uses the proper ad placement.
Lack of Content Control
A third thing I don't like about ready-made AdSense sites is that you don't have much control over the content of the sites. The articles selected were selected by somebody else, and if that person isn't knowledgeable about the subject (and they usually aren't), their content choices may not be good ones.
Summing It All Up
The bottom line is that I've yet to see any ready-made AdSense sites that were worth purchasing. They're littered with duplicate content, aren't optimized for the search engines or proper ad placement, and you have little control over the content of the sites. So I don't recommend them.
P.S. If you're really interested in saving time, creating unique-content quality sites fast while maintaining full control over the content, check out ArticleBuilder.net which officially launches September 26th.
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. 
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