Lots of impressions, no clicks

[Niche]

Hi Grooveman,
If your banners are not related to the content on your pages then you have to do a few things

1. Put the banners where they are most visible. If you look at the Yahoo home page, they put an advertising banner just under the most viewed part of the page ie where you click to access your mail.

2. Try and make your content so that your visitors stay on your page longer. The longer they are there, the greater the chances that they will at least look at your banner

3. Don't clutter the page with banners. I go for one or at most two banners on any one page

4. Text links convert better than banners or so we are told. Apparently web users have developed banner blindness,but then you could argue that big sites like Yahoo, again , still use banners

With regards to presell I mean talking the product up without making a sales pitch.
For example if you are promoting a certain pair of nike shoes, then your page may be about the benefiits of jogging everyday or how great it is to jog till you work up a sweat or the post exercise adrenaline rush, sorry i am getting carried away. But it sounds like this is not applicable with your site

[Linda Buquet]

I think one of the the issues is that you have some sites in very general and competitive areas, that cover a wide variety of stuff without enough focus and then adding probably adding banners for fairly generic products that would appeal to a wide range of people.

Entertainment sites like arcade and a music/song lyrics sites are terrible hard to monetize even for pros. Those people are looking for entertainment, not looking for products to buy and there are lots of sites like that so it's very competitive.

When Niche talks about preselling, that's very important, but ideally you want a very tightly focused niche site, targeting a specific type of person, with exactly the type of product they would be looking to buy - THEN you presell it. Instead of just putting up a banner you talk about how people with XYZ problem find relief or save money or are more productive or whatever, with XYZ product. Give some testimonials, add text links to the product within the article etc.

I really think you should read some of our newbie stickies and then niche marketing stickies about picking the right niche. Find something you know about, or are passionate about or want to learn about that's a true niche. It could even be a niche that would fit on an existing site you have. Like a certain health problem. You could add a subdomain onto your health site that's all about XYZ health problem, write unique content but all about that one problem - a topic that's not too terribly competitive, for starters.

[grooveman]

Ok, I see what you are saying.. The lyrics site and article directories sites are probably not going to generate much income due to the type of site it is and the reason people are visiting it. On the health site I have, I could probably integrate some text links into some of the health related articles within the content itself.. I think I will try that. Thanks