Computer People Don't Click on Ads
Ok, so everyone knows that, but I was particularly surprised. LangPop.com got on the front page of Hacker News the other day and I got a ton of hits. But virtually no one clicked on the advertisements - just a few clicks for many thousands of page views. Some of my other sites, which are of a more general-interest nature, do way better with far fewer visitors.
Not that I'm really complaining, I did langpop.com for fun, but it's a good reminder that it's a lot better to produce and sell things to a more general audience. Programmers expect, and largely get, most everything for free - me included.
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31 minutes later:
Ha! At last someone that have a good analysis on this.
This subject is what I always ponder when I see a site full smacked with ads: -"Who the h*ll clicks on any of these eye soaring ads?"
about 1 hour later:
Daniel - I pretty much agree, but I'm glad that someone does, because many commercial sites would not exist without some revenue model, and the alternative is paid subscriptions.
LangPop.com is a fun project, and will of course continue whether or not I make enough money to buy a beer or two every month, but other sites need to employ people to keep them going.
about 1 hour later:
My advise
and finally
about 8 hours later:
I wouldn't say it's just computer users - it's more readers of social news sites in general. It's fairly well known Digg users don't click on ads for example.
about 8 hours later:
I think that's generally true, but I also think it's because the economy is poor right now. Less companies advertising means less relevant ads and lower click through rates.
I've had bursts of traffic from social media sites that actually click through at a decent percent (2%ish) even on pages that are technical. It used to happen way more than it does now and I definitely blame that on less relevant ads.
about 21 hours later:
Christoph - your last point is the best one. I'm not going to fiddle around with formats much when people mostly ignore them anyway. If anything, I'm tempted to just remove the ads and be done with it.
btmorex: good point, but I'd assume that that would be true across most all categories of sites. It is really obvious however, that the programming ones I have generally perform much worse than the more general ones.
1 day later:
Chess players don't click on ads much either.
I think a lot depends on why people are surfing.
I can make some beer money of a site with 3 pages, and 60 visitors a week (mostly bots), because it only attracts people who intend to buy what it sells.
Where as I can see months go buy, with 500 visitors a day to a chess web page, and maybe see one click (then probably accidental) and no conversions. Even with adverts for chess books, chess computers and the like.
Rich people about to buy expensive consumer items - "What Apple?" should be your next site.
On the site making my beer money, I discovered from the advert statistics, that the two big banners were making almost no money, and the text link advert was making >95%. I deleted the banner ads, no point.
2 days later:
My observation is that when people click through from another site they tend not to click on adverts.
When people get to your pages from specific web searches they are much more likely to click.
For example I've written several posts comparing computer products and services. While none of them made me rich they did give a better result than average, if someone seeks a post comparing the merits of two products then they will be very interested in an advert for a similar product in the side-bar.
If you could get a lot of targetted traffic to posts that review and compare computer products then you would expect to make a good income from it - many people are doing just that.
I think I'll be stuck with "beer money" on my blog though.