Staywealthy.com

[PipSqueak]

How's my site?
http://www.staywealthy.com

[Preston55]

You were kind enough to take a look at my sight, I wanted to return the favor.

First, my complements for getting your site up and running.

My first reaction as a marketer is that the Adsense at the top of the page takes away from the impact of your page copy (the page looks like it has too much adsense) and your headings are minimized because adsense detracts from them.

I presume your focus is on adsense revenue.

I think you could promote some wealth games and make affiliate profits - I wasn't sure what you were promoting.

I like your niche. Seems competitive, but a very hungry market.

Thats my quick feedback as someone with 20 years in marketing, but very little experience in affiliate marketing.

good luck!

[Liz]

Hi Pipsqueak

If, as Preston assumes, your focus is to get Adsense revenue from a content site, then it's quite in order to make your ads the 'main event'

The current thinking is to have your ads above the 'fold' for maximum impact and you have it right in the size and format, the lack of border etc - but what makes it hard for me to read personally, is the way you have the wide ad format in a table.

From what I've read (and it's been extensive ) you have the correct format at the top of your page, but your copy needs to start below it - it's too hard to read a word or two down the side of the ads - if you're going to put the ads in a table so that they look like part of the copy, then the skyscraper format is the best - the copy then flows more naturally round the ads.

You need to make the url the same colour as the font of the text in the ad and no border - that way your ads look like part of the copy inviting people to click for more information.

I found all this out at a forum that I belong to and it works - I had built a lot of pages before I found out and so am going back through them putting in my new adsense codes that comply with the above.

Hope this helps and please believe me, it's not a critique, I'm not holding myself up as an 'expert' but just passing on what I've learned, what works for me and that I find it difficult to read what you're saying in one or two words a line - however, that could have the benefit that people think 'what the heck' and click on a googlead

Regards

Liz

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi Pipsqueak,

First of all, I like the overall look and feel of your site. I especially like your approach with post titles. They're very interesting, intriguing and therefore 'clickable'.

However, I agree with Preston about the Adsense at the top of your page. I'm using IE 6.02 and it overlaps your left navigation column, so that looks a little unprofessional.

I think the focus should be placed on your content, and that's really hard to do with the ads taking precedence.

I noticed too that the second set of ads took a LONG time to load. Knew there was supposed to be something there because the formatting seemed a little lopsided, but then finally saw the ads come up on the fourth page that I looked at.

All in all, I think you're taking a very interesting approach that will attract and keep your visitors on your site, which is just where you want them to be.

Cheers,
Ros

[PipSqueak]

Hi all!

Thanks for the feedback! I removed the 336x280 ad from the articles since it's causing so many problems (now it seems I have loads of free space). Also cleaned up the leaderboard ad so that it doesn't seem to overlap my side navigation.

My site is a bit personal... it's suppose to be like a journal of what I'm doing to build my own paycheque. It still has a long way to go...

Just curious, what are screen resolution are you using? 800x600? or bigger?

[Rosalind Gardner]

Hi Pipsqueak and all,

The screen resolutions on each of my monitiors, including the crazy pint-sized Vaio is 1280 x 768.

Hope that helps!

Cheers,
Ros