When trying to execute an idea.. can you even get near an estimate for a site? my site: www.vceforum.com is aimed at vce students in victoria australia. Annually, there is 40,000 students that take part. I think that our generation Y demographic will start to use online forums for education, but have no idea as to how much adsense revenue is to be made from this demographic. potentially the demographic might open up to prospective university students which might increase the target to 80,000. is such a small target audience just not profitable?
Forums dont always get you high earnings from Adsense. Usually, the CTR is very low and click through rate is also low since people are more interested in the topics and posts. About the traffic stats you gave.. 40,000 students a year, will they be regular visitors to the forum through out the year, or do you take an average 3,000 visitors per month? I'd agree with sezerb here.. there are too many variables to factor in.
Adsense estimate depends upon these factors: 1) SE ranking of your website for your main keyword/s 2) Quality of your website (content) 3) Ad placement 4) Age group of users visiting your website 5) Gender (Females click around more generally)
If users of your site get everything they want from the contents you provide on the site then they will not be tempted to click on the Adwords. I also agree that there are too many factors to estimate an Adsense revenue.
so if adsense doesnt seem to be working after a while, should i persue a different form of advertising?
Even if AdSense does appear to be working, I would look at different forms of advertising. You never know when you could be doing better unless you try.