Why can't the ugly be rich?
I've found the recent discussions about ugly sites earning more with AdSense very amusing. Do our cultural biases towards “beautiful” extend out to the Web? Why can't an “ugly” site be a rich site? And who says a site is “ugly” anyhow?
The reason “ugly” sites make money is that they have near-perfect ad blending. The ads look like the rest of the page, so they attract more clicks. As to the theory that people immediately “click away” from an “ugly” site, I just don't buy it. For one thing, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder — if you pruned away all the ugly sites, you'd lose 85% of the Web. At least! Casual surfers are more used to ugliness — or at least average attractiveness — than you may think. (Kind of like real life — look around you, how many truly “beautiful” people do you see?) The usability of a site is more important than its attractiveness — I'll take a useful, usable site any day over a good-looking, unnavigable site.
The other reason why people don't click away from ugly sites is that those sites have useful content. People surf for content, a fact few outside the adult website industry seem to acknowledge. (You want targeted content? How about… nah, better not…) Visitors who are truly sensitive to the “ugliness” of a site are more likely to click their browser's “back” button, not an ad.
This is why my multi-stage AdSense case study started by building just such an “ugly” site. It made me money almost from the beginning. Maybe I should ditch the CSS and revert it back to its natural state and double my revenues!
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
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