I’ve been noticing lots of people on the eHow forums lately asking why they aren’t making any money despite having dozens, or even 100 or more published articles.

Well, I recently began searching the web trying to find information on the psychology behind the click.  The consensus is there are five factors that make people click an ad.

• Trust
• Curiosity
• Honestly want the product/information
• Boredom/Excitement
• Frame of mind

Let’s talk about these, and try to apply these principles to our articles.

In part 1 we’ll talk about trust.  This simply means that the visitor trusts your site and opinion and has no problem clicking an ad.

We all trust sites like CNN, Amazon etc..  These sites get clicks because people trust the site.

But how do you build trust on a one page eHow article that the user will more than likely only visit once, and only stay a minute or so?

In my writing I often put a phrase like  “but I wouldn’t personally recommend this as it’s a waste of money”  not much, but there isn’t much more we can do, and some people will be swayed by this.  A phrase like this shows you care about the reader and you aren’t out to get their money.

Remember, there’s a large cynical group out there that automatically believes that any lesser known site has one goal, to get their money.

Another way to get trust is by keeping the reader on your page as long as possible, studies have shown that the longer a person is on a site, the more likely they are to click something.  One way to do this is by having a long article, I’m not saying a novel, but make it wordy, but not full of fluff.  Provide useful, relevant content that the reader can honestly use.  Use bulleted lists and format your articles nicely, again, this shows you care.

Make sure the content is relative to the keyword and article title that you’re using.  We’ve all clicked on links, believing the site has what we’re looking for, only to end up on a useless fluff site full of more ads than the sunday paper.  Needless to say we can’t hit the back button quick enough.

Another way is to have pictures, the more the better.  A site with pictures sends two messages; the writer cares, and the writer wants to provide help to the reader.  In addition, looking at pictures takes time, and the more time the reader is there, the more likely a click.

I can’t say enough about the visual impact of your article page.  Most of us can tell within a second of landing on a web page whether it’s a quality site, or fly by night money grubbing scam site.  Format well, add pictures and make it look pretty.

So to summarize, build their trust by providing useful, long content.  Show your not out to get their money by making a statement that shows you care about them.  Add some good photos to your articles.  Make your page visually appealing and give the impression you put some time into it.

Part 2 will talk about curiosity.  Ever click an ad because you wondered what it led to?

Possibly Related Posts:

• December Earnings Updated
• A New Keyword Tool | Detecting Commercial Intention
• What Makes People Click? – Why are they there
• What Makes People Click? – The Easy Way Out
• What Makes People Click? – I found it!!