If you are one of the many people who want to make money from your blog you will probably already have or will soon include advertising on your site. There are many different things to consider when choosing an ad network or other advertising options, even if you are placing private ads, they all have one variable in common that can seriously determine how successful they will be - it's placement. Like they say, location is everything and that applies to advertising in a very big way. Placing your ads on your blog in a less than optimal position can render them almost completely useless and seriously damage your chances making money from your blog.
The key to optimal ad placement on your blog is strongly related to how the human eye behaves, especially when perusing a written page or a web page. The human eye reads from top to bottom, scanning left to right. Optimum ad placement has to do with understanding how the human eye functions while scanning a web page. Don't worry, I will spare you all the scientific data and explanations, we'll go directly to where the folks in the know say you should place your ads.
Follow up:
Google Adsense is one of your best sources for advice, I mean really, wouldn't they be the folks in the know here? Of course they are, they have experience on their side and ultimately it's in their interest to help you succeed. Below is an image (the full-sized one can be found on this support page at Google), it's a "heat map" image of optimal ad placement. Dark orange represents the best places to postition ads, medium orange gives you the next best locations and the light yellow are the least effective, but better than the white areas. Forget the white areas all together they are dead zones and blindspots, ads in these areas are almost never noticed.
Placing your ads above the crease is also very important. What this means, is that when someone arrives at your page - your ads should be immediately visible without having to scroll down. This applies to anything your put on your page that you want your readers to pay special attention to. Location, location, location, I just can't stress this enough when you are attempting to get something noticed.
Blogs require special attention when it comes to placing ads. We bloggers have some challenges to overcome including: predetermined page formats, highly targeted content (if you're niche blogging and doing it right) and return visitors who may become immune to the static ads on the blog. But there are things you can do to overcome these obstacles such as blending your ads into the background, using bold colors for your ad titles, keeping the backgrounds and border colors of your ads the same as your page backgrounds. Think chameleon - make them a natural part of the page. This helps the eye to follow them - they are visually and integral part of the page - if they are too different from the page norm they will scream ADVERTISEMENT and the reader will skip right by them. You can find more blog specific ideas and color palette advice from Google.
Other tricks for having successful ads on your blog:
Place ads in close proximity to eye-catching content on your page, such as headlines and images.
Keep your pages uncluttered and dont be afraid of white space. Don't crowd your page content.
Wider ads are easier on the eyes, recommended sizes according to Google are:
- 300x250 medium rectangle
- 728x90 leaderboard
- 160x600 skyscraper
Remember much of the advice in this article can be applied to almost any type of advertising you want to add to your blog. Getting people to notice the important things on your blog is largely a matter of optimizing their placement. I hope this article helps you monetize your blog more effectively - keep on blogging.
Source : http://blogswithwings.com/
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