Managing Website Ads

For many years, I wrestled with how to get clicks on ads. And how to stay on on top of it so I'd know which ads worked and which didn't.

I found that a major trick to getting clicks on ads is to have ads that people want to click on. But how do you know what the people want?

The answer is to try this and that until they start clicking. Have a way of tracking which ads are being clicked on the most and then publish those more often.

Another thing I found out is that ads can get stale. They work for a while, getting lots of clicks. Then suddenly they get less clicks or stop working altogether. Later, they might work again, but for a period their click numbers are way down.

Keeping continuous track of which ads worked and which didn't was time-consuming. I had to keep trying new ads and removing ones that quit working or just didn't work at all. It was so burdensome that I tended to slack off on that part of website maintenance.

Sometimes I felt like it wasn't even worth messing with.

However, it didn't have to be that way.

I built software to log clicks, several different ways, and to read the logs and report numbers and create graphs. The software kept getting tweaked and tweaked for better logging and reporting.

But publication frequency remained an issue. Every ad got the same number of exposures because they all got published the same number of times. It meant I had to consistently stay on top of the logs to keep only ads that had the best click-through rates.

But I didn't do what I had to do, I didn't stay on top of the logs. It was too much work, took too much time. There were other things to be done in the business, like creating software for sale and delivering custom software projects. And building other websites for additional income streams.

Eventually, the publication frequency was somewhat solved by putting ads in a rotation with the better ads in each rotation more than once. As an example, if I had 3 ads, one performing really well and the other two performing only mediocre, the rotation would have two instances of the top ad and one instance each of the other two.

But it wasn't enough. I still had to find the time and inclination to remove dead ads and try new ads. And to stay on top of the logs so I could quickly respond to click-through rate changes and adjust what was in the rotation.

What was needed was a more thorough approach, something more automated, something that would respond to click-through rate changes like it was a live thing always watching the logs. It had to be easy to add and remove ads. It had to publish the better performing ads more often so the people saw more of the ads they wanted to click on.

It needed to publish the better performing ads more often so the ads would get more clicks and I would leave less money on the table.

I started from scratch and built a preliminary version of what I envisioned. As I used the software, it was tweaked here and there to improve performance and automation. After a year or so, I finally had what I envisioned.

I still have to load it with ads and delete deadbeats. Yet it works without my constant attention for immediate response to an ad performance change. I can put it off! The software keeps track of ad clicks and adjusts how often the ads is published — so the ones people click on the most also get published more often.

In other words, the ads people want to click on are published more often so they have more opportunities to click on them.

As an example, ads with a click-through rate of 2% are published perhaps twice as often as ads with a click-through rate of 1%. (How often an ad is published depends on percentages related to all ads in the rotation.)

The software knows what people want to click on because it knows what they do click on.

It does everything I envisioned, including automatically adjusting individual ad publication frequency.

No more leaving money on the table.

Yes, the software is available for purchase. It's name is Carefree Ad Manager.

It can be implement on any type of website, including WordPress.

For WordPress sites, download this PDF ebook with step-by-step instructions for putting ads in your (i) posts, (ii) pages, (iii) sidebar, and (iv) footer. Click this direct download link.

For all other sites, the manual accessible from within the Carefree Ad Manager control panel contains instructions for putting the ads on your website.

If you have traffic, presenting ads people want to click on gives you ads that work.

Will Bontrager