I personally don’t want to go to a website and the only thing visible above the fold is a huge advert right in the middle of the page. Google may say that this is the most effective location, I’d say that logically its a high % error click through than genuine click through.

I’m all for people making money, but when it comes at the expense of usable and asthetically pleasing website, I’d say priorities have become mangled.

Now there’s nothing wrong with him putting in a good word for you, but the way it was written made it sound like some little new nugget of information would be disclosed or shown in a meaningful manner.

I believe that’s why there’s a few negative comments on this entry. We clicked through, spent time reading it and ended up saying “WTF? There’s nothing here but self promotion and a few vague ‘hints’ that are already known.”

That being said, I do think I offer some advice in my post. If you go back and re-read the 3 points listed under “How did this happen?”, you’ll find the core of what I believe made such an impact for the CTR.

The goal of Flaschner’s post, it seems to me, was to prompt other probloggers to call him and contract for magic redesigns of their own. It sounds as though you’ve done so … which is fine.

But the post kinda winds up being about pro blogging insiders sharing their knowledge with one another, with readers left wondering about the details of all the magic.

I think Peter admits above that it’s him selling himself – but why wouldn’t he if he’s designed blogs in ways that help people make their money back from the design work in a short time.

I find it interesting because, as I mentioned, there are theories going around some discussion forums that ugly is good – this is a little glimmer of hope that beautiful can be good for CTR too.

“If you redesign your site and incorporate ads nicely you can see your clickthrough rate increase. I can do this for you… for a fee”.

With no examples — or any real advice — Peter’s post was absolutely worthless. I know he may be protecting his interests by not showing them, but why even post about it at all then?

I originally just added adsense ads in convenient (for me) locations, but ctr was appalling.

A thoughtout redesign, ensuring that layout was written with specific adsense ad sizes in mind, at logical places on the site, meant that CTR increased and the layout doesn’t look overly random, with adverts sitting in uneconomical spaces.

If you use a piece of paper to sketch out your design, its easy to see how to fit in your particular choice of ad size in key locations on the site. I’ve always turned to pencil before marking up any code as it saves time and stops you having to move things around halfway through a redesign.

A blended in advert that sits well on a page will, imho, return a higher CTR than an advert placed randomly. The trick is, in effect, to not trick the user into clicking on a advert by mistake, whilst blending the advert to not stand too much. Its a fine line and can end with dissatisified visitors if you are not careful.

I found my earnings went up on two blogs that I redesigned into quite a common design, so I’m happy about that. I do believe it helps to specifically design in your ads rather than just sticking them anywhere – that’s what seems to work for me anyway.

If I’ve learned anything from working with probloggers it’s this: they have more than one site! If I help them make more money with one site, I’m probably going to get their business for their others. So it doesn’t do me any good to sell it if it’s just snake oil. I’m in it for the long haul.

Good luck with yours.