Mikael Rieck is the author of more than hundred articles on topics of how to make money both online and offline. He has been online since 1999 and has always had a passion for money making opportunities and teaching others how to make a profit.The Ugly Google Adsense Website Design
You might recall the article I wrote a little over a month ago on why an ugly website make more money with Google Adsense.
There were a lot of great comments to that post and I therefore wanted to take it one step further and to give you another reason why you might find that poorly designed websites can make you a lot more money with Adsense. This post is inspired by this ugly websites article.
Ugly Can Be a Positive Thing
When you talk to most web designers and savvy Internet marketers the majority wants to have a website that looks good. Especially designers will tend to go overboard in order to show off what they can do.
This can be great if you’re trying to win an award for your design but if you’re in this business to make money from Google Adsense on your website then a pretty design is definitely not a main issue.
As was briefly touched upon in the previous article one reason why an ugly website might perform better with the Adsense ads could be that people sees it and want to get away as quickly as possible. To be honest I don’t think that is the case.
Instead I would imagine that people could click away from a website because it looked confusing and the least confusing part was the ads and therefore they got the click.
When it comes down to it then ugliness is probably more a matter of designing a site that will have people take the actions that you want them to take and in the case of Adsense that is to click the ads.
But apart from guiding people to perform the clicks another issue that I didn’t think about (but that was mentioned in the article) was that poor design can actually signal something trustworthy.
Poor web design will signal that there is an actually human being behind it and not just a big corporation with all its fancy web design and a staff of designers. The article argues that there is still a lot of people that are afraid of using the Internet and because of this they will actually feel comfortable arriving at a website that looks like crap.
Trusting your site while being directed toward the ads can also influence the likelihood of them clicking the Adsense ads.
Conclusion
Again the conclusion to all of this is that you do not need to spend too much money and time on fancy web layout if you want to make the most money with Adsense. Instead what you want is to direct people to take the actions that you want them to take and if possible to have your website look like it was made by a human and not a big (bad) corporation 
To Your Success,
Mikael
9 Responses so far
Manshu
June 21st, 2009
3:46 pm
i really don’t agree with the premise of this article and someone in the business for the long run, who could get a book deal or other advertisers or affiliate sales should never get into this.
Adsense is one way of monetising and not the only way of monetising.
Here is a good article I found at problogger to monetise well with Adsense without going ugly!
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/20/simple-changes-doubled-my-adsense-revenue/
Mikael
June 21st, 2009
4:11 pm
Hi Manshu, you definitely do not have to agree. Not agreeing will only give room for learning and improving.
First let me just make sure that I understand what you don’t agree with. Is it my post or the article I am referring to?
Thanks,
Mikael
Bob@Website Design
June 26th, 2009
10:44 am
Hey I do agree with you! Don’t judge a book by its cover! So many times we have created great websites for bad companies, and some good companies don’t want fancy designs, yet do a killing.
Julian
July 7th, 2009
5:40 pm
I certainly agree that ugly websites can make more money than the well designed good looking sites. I started out with adsence on my unattractive sites and they still earn more money than my more recent designs.
jeromee@JTag Helpdesk
July 22nd, 2009
3:07 pm
may be not an ugly but a simple and well layed out web page may give more profit than a fancy and pushy websites.
Thanks for sharing!
Mikael
July 22nd, 2009
3:20 pm
Hi Jeromee,
The layout will definitely make or break a business. A good looking website without the right “funnel” thought into the design will definitely fail.
candy@Michigan Web Design
September 16th, 2009
6:31 pm
You can argue on both sides of the fence. It does make sense that if a website is full of fancy animation it may confuse a first time visitor, leading him to leave. And it is also possible to say that a dull and ugly website as you put it, will also drive away someone more aesthetically inclined.
bethany@san antonio makeup services
September 17th, 2009
11:34 pm
I think that is odd that an ugly website is supposed to do better in Adsense! I prefer websites that looks clean and professional, and if it is too overdone, then I will leave the website right away.
Jessica
July 2nd, 2010
4:25 pm
After 6 months of using Google Adsense to make some tiny money from my blog, I decided to remove all the ugly banners of Google Adsense to refresh the air(I will place them again, but in the future).
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