Why so bad earnings for forums?

Discussion in 'AdSense' started by Alokito Manush, Mar 12, 2007.

  1. #1
    I have a bangla community forum. And I must say, adsense pays me very bad for it. Any tips guys?
     
    Alokito Manush, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  2. Dubz

    Dubz Peon

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    #2
    Depends on the type of forum man. Also how accurate the ads are. Make sure you add more content to the page if you want certain ads to appear. Like I said earlier all depends on type of forum. If you get lots of traffic try selling sponsor spots instead.

    Hope this helps,
    Rob
     
    Dubz, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  3. ruby

    ruby Well-Known Member

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    #3
    Yes its not the forum its the content... I have ads on a particular forum and i often see $1+ clicks.
     
    ruby, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  4. MatthewN

    MatthewN Well-Known Member

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    #4
    Try optimising your ad positions, colours etc... also you might want to move the ads around from time to time to prevent people just ignoring them.
     
    MatthewN, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  5. ninjashoes

    ninjashoes Well-Known Member

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    #5
    make sure you have your ads at the top near all the navigation, forums are notorious for having a low ctr
     
    ninjashoes, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  6. Computerized

    Computerized Well-Known Member

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    #6
    Forums are known for their bad CTR. There's only so much that you can with a forum to blend ads. The best forums get around 1% CTR.
     
    Computerized, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  7. Pierce

    Pierce Active Member

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    #7
    With forums what you want is have an audience that writes content that brings in more uniques.

    Thats the best and most ideal situation. Then have spin offs from that.

    Pierce
     
    Pierce, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  8. oxxy

    oxxy Well-Known Member

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    #8
    hi
    they pay less the words in its contents,you must search the words that they pay more each click

    regards.
     
    oxxy, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  9. Swordfish

    Swordfish Active Member

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    #9
    people are there to chat, not to click on ads... but if you are lucky and get your traffic from an se to a specific topic.. you're ctr could increase.

    I recommend add-ons liek VBSEO for VB and such to help get indexed.
     
    Swordfish, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  10. trichnosis

    trichnosis Prominent Member

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    #10
    that depents on your forum category . for example if you have health forum , i think you will earn more from your forum . this was the first reason .

    on the other side , forums has continues visitors. they realise the ads .

    i think adding more ads unit will help you
     
    trichnosis, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  11. Burta

    Burta Well-Known Member

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    #11
    The thing about forums is people think that the CTR is terrible - but it's not all that bad. I mean it all depends on how you look at it.

    I run a forum that gets around 1200 uniques a day, and earns around $20/day from about 160ish clicks. The thing is those 1200 uniques often turn into around 15,000 to 20,000 impressions a day because many of the members will browse up wards of 50 pages in a visit, which completely blows out the CTR when you are basing it on impressions - not to mention most members are ad blind.

    So if you divide 160 clicks by 20,000 impression your CTR is 0.8% which most people would consider pretty bad.

    Now if you were to divide 160 by 1,200 visitors your CTR per visitor is 13.3% which is actually quite good.

    So it is all about how you look at it.

    Now so how can you go about improving your earnings from a forum. Well you firstly need to start targeting your guests - after all they aren't ad blind like your members and there is an outside chance that they have no intention of joining your forum anyway and if they are going to leave your site they may as well leave your site by clicking on one of your ads.

    So what I actually do on my forums is I put up A LOT more ads for guest but underneath each ad block I have a little button that says "Join the forums to remove the ads and be able to post" that way not only are you showing more ads therefore increasing your chances of getting clicks on them you are also giving guests a very good reason to register on your forums which is ideally what you want.

    Hopefully if guests do become active members it will result in more threads being created, which will result in more pages indexed in search engines, which will result in more results in search engine rankings, which will results to more visitors to your site which will result to more click son your ads and more members joining your forums...

    Plus the added benefit of putting up more ads for guests and earning your revenue that way is that you don't annoy the people that are most valuable to your forums - your members.
     
    Burta, Mar 12, 2007 IP
    kevinn likes this.
  12. 8everything

    8everything Peon

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    #12
    Some people have these autoposters who post adsense ads on the threads.. I don't know how effective they are though. You can give it a shot.
     
    8everything, Mar 12, 2007 IP
  13. Burta

    Burta Well-Known Member

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    #13
    Did you even read my post? Or were you just spamming your URL?

    Forums aren't bad for AdSense people just think that because they get 10 times more impressions per visitor than your average site that they should return 10 times the earnings - which would require each visitor to click 10 times more ads - which I'm quietly confident Google wouldn't even count as a result of it being the same person.
     
    Burta, Mar 13, 2007 IP
  14. PHIL BADER

    PHIL BADER Guest

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    #14
    PHIL BADER, Mar 13, 2007 IP
  15. sgsmorgan

    sgsmorgan Banned

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    #15
    Like all things it depends upon the content and whereabouts in the code you have your smart tags to tell adsense which text to follow etc. I have a couple of fourms that are awfulmfor adsense but that is not why there are there and I have some that the adsense is OK.
     
    sgsmorgan, Mar 13, 2007 IP
  16. "firelady"

    "firelady" Peon

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    #16
    really just depends on the type of forum that you have and the visitors that come regularly in your site.

    you should also employ as many promotion to your forum site because traffic is everything and you can only get the traffic and visitors that you want if you promote you site well.

    your target keywords i believe is very much important in getting the relevant ads that you want for high payout and you can only get relevant ads if you have good and quality content.

    you can also use other forums to promote you forum site in their announcement and solicitations area. try visit as many forums as you can to promote your site, this way you can have at least some other source of traffic share that other forums have. ;)
     
    "firelady", Mar 13, 2007 IP
  17. pandigi

    pandigi Peon

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    #17
    Burta - is good
     
    pandigi, Mar 13, 2007 IP
  18. Burta

    Burta Well-Known Member

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    #18
    LOL thanks... you're making me blush...

    :p


    [QUOTE="firelady";2528855]you should also employ as many promotion to your forum site because traffic is everything and you can only get the traffic and visitors that you want if you promote you site well.[/QUOTE]That was another thing I forgot to mention in my post above - traffic - and more importantly traffic source.

    If you have 1000 visitors a day and the majority of them are already members of your forums you will find that you will get vastly more impressions and less earnings than someone who gets 1000 visitors a day but the majority is traffic from search engines. Why?

    because your members are likely not to click your ads in the first place and because the impressions you will be getting will be when they are logged in and if they are logged in chances are they won't be many ads shown and their primary focus when logged in is to read the threads and post.

    Now when a forum receives lots of guest visits they generally have less impression, because the guest is probably less likely to browse around when they are unable to post and if you have your forum setup like where I do and have more ads shown to guests than members you are more likely to get a higher CTR because of the increased number of ads shown in addition to the fact that the guests aren't yet ad blind.

    So where is the best place to receive guests from? In my opinion, there is no better place to receive good quality, clicking guests than search engines like Google. So one of the most important things about forums, like any site, is trying to make sure they rank well in search engines.
     
    Burta, Mar 13, 2007 IP
  19. viperlogic

    viperlogic Peon

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    #19
    i just started using adsense a few days ago on my car modifing forum.

    getting avg of 20k impressions and around 7 clicks a day. the low click rate for me is due to placement as i dont want to annoy my members, so have have the ads in the footer. but im happy enough as it covers my server costs. I use openads for my main advertisers
     
    viperlogic, Mar 14, 2007 IP
  20. viperlogic

    viperlogic Peon

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    #20
    what are smart tags?
     
    viperlogic, Mar 14, 2007 IP