150k impressions/mo, not enough revenue

http://forums.krazyletter.com/

I've been running a forum with around 150k impressions/month, but I take three months or more to accumulate the earnings needed by google to get a paycheck. My site is PR6, and has 40k+ pages in google; I've tried blending my ads, what is the problem?

 

Forums are simply not a good way to earn ad revenue. Forum users get ad-blind quickly. You could try fumbling around with ad placement. Your ad's don't seem to be targetted very well at first glance either - lot of blog type ads. I'm not sure why. I don't run ads in a forum, so I'm not sure what you should expect from those kind of pageviews. I would think more than $1/day, but maybe someone more experienced in this arena can comment.

 

I get less.

I know, but I talked to the owner of PCHelpForum.com, and he gets a few hundred dollars/month, with 350,000 page views/month. All from google.

He gets more uniques, should that be the reason?

 

You just need better Adsense placement. Read my article over at WebsitePublisher.net (not to be confused with my blog, I don't own this site)

http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/adsense-optimization/

Specifically, look at my case study for MyGroovyWedding.com

 

I just tried putting in a link unit under the first post in the forums...there are some problems with it not showing up randomly. Dunno why. Same thing if I put a leaderboard underneath the first post. Could you IM me or something? I'd like to talk with you, and if my CTR increases, of course I'd reward you.

 

thanks for the advise cutter. I like the first case study. This is like about.com, where the adsense blends into the text.

my adsense is not impressive as well. but one lesson i learn is that too many ads esp in the index page scares pple away.

 

Try to replace the ads for more exposure in the eyes of the members. Also, increase your publicity for the forum to attract more members to sign in.

 

If the google search box isn't converting for you i'd be inclined to remove it, in my experience it was just another way for a visitor to get out of the site without clicking an ad. (Although i can see it converting more than those blog & web hosting ads you seem to be getting).

You should definitely work on gettin more uniques though, CTR per visitor is more important than CTR per impression imo. Consider using an ad/link unit near the foot of your pages also.

 

It's also about the topic your forums are about. For instance, PCHelpForum.com would be technology/computing related, which have been shown to have higher paying keywords within their verticals, versus a general forum about anything and everything (i.e. 'The Random, Weird and Outrageous').

Also, instead of placing the Link unit underneath the first post, you might try integrating it as it's own post... see FatWallet.com/forums as an example integration.

Best of luck getting your page CPM up...

 

I'd say put coop or linkvault on your site. You can rent out that space, and with that page rank and pages indexed, you could get much more then $30/month!

 

How would I increase my publicity besides AdWords? I've seen forums (Daniweb) that have around 900 guests but only 10 members or so on. They've run many campaigns on adsense (I've seen them on my ads before). With a even less targeted forum, that won't work well.

Sometimes the link doesn't even appear! It only appears 1/2 of the time, if I put another leaderboard, it will only appear 1/2 of the time too! Another IPB forum guy had the same problem as me.

I sold some footer links on here, and that's about how much I make from them.

Also, search bar's not doing well, only a few querries a day, maybe I should remove it. Today, zer0 revenue from the forums, $0.01 on DP from a CPM ad. Maybe I'll get rich from posting on DP

 

Is there a conflict between adsense and link vault?

I found that I could definitely use link-vault on my site, but already have adsense.

 

No, because Link Vault ads aren't contextual (They don't change according to the content on the page.

The only conflict is you can't use the Coop and Link Vault at the same time.

 

Cutter and Nevets have advised you well, forums do not mean high money but higher traffic and that too, if you maintain well. Moreover adplacements can be improved. I think Google has issued some guidelines for ad placements on the forums, just have a look on them


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One problem I've been having is that sometimes, randomly, the second+ ad unit dissappears, and so then leaves an empty space in the page. I'm not sure what's causing this, yet.