Making Money with Adsense and Ugly Web Design

Hi Mikael, this is actually very true.

And in addition to having a not great looking site, your content shouldn’t in depth offering full explanation on a topic.

You should provide enough information to get your visitor to read, but not enough to get them want to click on the ads. If your article is TOO good, and your website looks TOO good, the visitor don’t want to leave, and don’t need to click on ads.

Personally, this is exactly why I don’t use Adsense on my site.

@Nicolas, a very true point and actually something that I have prepared talking about in the coming days.

@Seo Blog, Grizz makes money from a lot of different sites and not just that specific site. If you read the articles on the blog I refer to you’ll see what he does. However I do agree that he must have taken Adsense off the site recently (it has been there for as long as I recall).

At first I thought that he was hiding it for visitors that they come from search engines but it doesn’t seem that way though.

This is very true. All my sites that I make for Adsense are all “ugly” any that I made in the past that are good looking perform badly!

I must say though, if a site looks good it is easier to get backlinks.

When it comes to monetizing with Adsense you will earn a lot more by getting rid of all other links on the page except Adsense.When there is nothing else for your visitors to click on they can either click on the browsers back button or an Adsense ad.

Pretty sites tend to confuse visitors because of the many banners and other distractions on the site and this affects the adsense earnings.

Well, I have a theory, and that’s really all it is. We creatures are attracted to shiny objects. Our eye gravitates toward things that standout and it makes it easier when there’s a strong contrast between the ugly and the pretty.

So when we look at an ugly site, the shiny things — the ads that look at least a little more organized than the rest of the site — stand out amongst the ugly.

Having said that, it goes against my belief that a well-organized site should be more successful because it shows forethought in its construction, which should create credibility and trust in the visitor. But Nicolas may be onto something here in that if the visitor is satisfied, there’s no need to go anywhere else.

Yes, that was my thought — a prettier site is a converting site. But testing is definitely the key to figuring out the balance between pretty and ugly among other factors.

Hi Rod, I agree that it doesn’t have to have anything to do with “being ugly”. It is all about directing the visitors to do exactly what you want them to do and in this case it is clicking ads.

And as you say, most blogs today are almost as filled with dynamic banners as websites in the 80s were filled with animated gifs… All of which will only confuse visitors coming from the search engines and thereby lower the CTR.