Why the ugliest wordpress themes have better Adsense results

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blogginginc

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This thread contains both questions and rants on why really ugly-looking themes have better adsense results.

I'm tired of making themes look nice and clean, spending countless hours and even money, just to see how adsense clicks are almost zero. On the other hand I have an old network of blogspot and wordpress blogs that really suck, but even with a sixth part of the traffic of any of my "nice looking" wordpress themes, makes 3 times more.....

For me it's over, from now on, each time I set up a new niche blog, it's gonna have the ugliest wordpress theme available and see how my adsense income skyrockets......
 


There was a thread somewhere, maybe here, about some A/B pic testing and hands down the ugliest, most horrible pic you think wouldnt convert, ALWAYS converted better than the hot college co-ed babe. Go figure ....
 
perhaps when people land on ugly themes they think, "oh shit this is bad, get me out of here" and the closest interesting way out is a strategically placed adsense ad...
 
Once heard about a Pakistani corner-shop owner who was banking quite hard, and decided to reinvest some of it in his shop. He had the concrete floor redone in a nice wood at considerable cost.

His revenue took a nose dive because people's perception of it being a cheap shop changed - it became too plush and upmarket for the area, even though the prices and products were exactly the same as before. He had to rip out that nice wooden floor to get his business back.
 
> So the moral of the story is, keep your site ugly-looking if you want adsense monies

Not exactly. The moral of that particular story was supposed to be something like: 'get to know your demographic well, and try to make as few assumptions as possible about what they want.'
 
I have written for a site that was very well designed and was an incredible resource for any user looking for information in that particular niche. After the niche dropped in potential for bricks and mortar business the client decided to ad Adsense. Terrible click through rates.... why? Because why would a customer leave his site for another? It was a great, well designed, informative site.

Maybe it is not the ugly site, but that there is more relevant information being pushed in front of them in the form of an AdSense ad.

Or, like eZine advocates - leave a nugget of information out. Something that the ads on the site will cater to. Therefore the customer gets some information but is left unfilled and then clicks an ad that has a title catering to the unmet desire.

With today's theories that bounce rate, Google "likes", and their "delete this page from search results" will have a direct impact on SERP results - I would say it is better to keep the good looking sites. Assuming you are going for Organic and not some type of arbitrage.
 
It depends on the niche, but I think some people have made good points so far in this thread. It depends on the demographic, and it depends on the niche. Many times though, it is true that the ugly sites have better click through rate due to the fact that it drives people to get off your site and somewhere else.

If you want to make money off of adsense, then split test it and find out what's making you the most money. I don't see why it would make you upset that you have found out that one thing make you more money than the other. You should be excited about it and start using that knowledge to make more money.
 
It's always been like this. Webmasters and clients always put way too much emphasis on making their site look "professional". When someone visits your site, they don't give a rats ass what it looks like. All they care about is that it's clear and easy to navigate. There's a reason why Facebook and Reddit look the way they do.
 
I can vouch for this one. Spent a good 2 hours tweaking a wordpress theme on one of my newer sites only to see my adsense ctr fall to around .1%... Lesson learned, keep them themes as ugly as possible.
 
This exactly like the question: How can people buy from shi**y CB landing pages?

I never understood that, but these kind of landing pages WORK.
 
I can vouch for this too. I have some pretty ugly looking adsense sites that convert much better than ones I put a little more time and effort into.

I also notice an increase in revenue on one of my sites that had an error on my html code next to an adsense 336x280 block. I never closed the <p> tag correctly which meant I had a large white space to the right of the block with only /p> showing.
 
It´s the boredom factor kicking in that makes people click the ads when not distracted by shiny awesome pictures and such.

Ever heard of the xfactor or clickbump method? They specifically design their templates to meet the "ugly" criteria and thus to achieve a higher click through rate.
 
I experienced similar thing with my sales pages couple years back. When the site was pimped out, conversion fell. I think one reason is that good looking sites activate trap censor. When the site looks shitty visitor feels you are not trying to trap him with fancy looking stuff and the sale happens.
I now even use handwriting fonts and other messy images on my site. Believe it or not it increases trust and conversion.
 
yes... i prefer you do some split testings. Get to know your market first then tweak it bit by bit.

It could be some old grandpa/grandma who access your web2.0 style site that have old fashioned style thinking. cmiiw. Definitely they prefer old format/style
 
@OP

Well, it's like all the domain parking sites. They look lame as hell but, have high CTR...

Use logic:

The goal is to make people click not read your content. When using made for adsense sites you don't want to actually care if people like your website you just want to make your $3CPC from AdSense :P keep that in mind.

I have some horrible looking sites that have a 94% CTR no joke!
 
I think it's a matter of when the most attractive/least convoluted portion of your site is the adsense block, that's where their eyes and eventually their cursor will go.
 
maybe because it is so ugly, they are likely to believe you more..cause it is so unprofessional so it cant be that you are really advertising here something..:)
 
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