Yesterday, I posted a thread at our forums named Do Ugly Sites Earn More With AdSense? I wrote about a recent popular article named The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites. The article discusses how a site named Plenty of Fish, an ugly dating site, made over $10,000 from AdSense in one day. The logic as to why Plenty of Fish and other ugly sites (i.e. Craigs List and IMDB) make money, is because they are extremely functional, the author states. But, in my opinion, these sites are not all that functional.
Maybe Craigs List is a bad example, but consider the site that reportedly made $10,000 in one day from AdSense. Plenty of Fish is not functional, not easy to use and, in my humble opinion, hard to look at. The reason why it made so much money with AdSense is because it drives search traffic organically, people land on the site, and immediately want to click off. They find the nearest ad, and most attractive part of the page, which happens to be the AdSense ad, and clicks off. Phew, they are saved and they move on to a real dating site, that is both professional looking and functional.
Forum discussion on this topic at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.
