I have a picture site that gets between 35,000 and 55,000 unique visitors a day and around 400,000 page views daily. I have Adsense ads located on the (728x90) bottom of the page and directly next to or below the image (336x250) depending on how wide the image is (wider images push the ads below, skinnier images displays the ads to the right directly next to the image.) This means my Adsense ads are certainly right in the face of the visitor. There is no doubt they are seeing them, however I am enjoying a horrible CTR. I have many Adsense sites that get 1/10 the amount of traffic this one does, yet generate 10 times the revenue daily. I know what works on content driven sites, but apparently I have no idea how to milk an image gallery site for money. If anyone runs an image gallery or has any ideas on how to better target image gallery traffic, let me know. This site burns through 30GB of bandwidth a day and is not worth the server resources it requires for such small Adsense returns. Also, if you have revenue ideas that work for image galleries and celebrity image sites that don't involve Adsense, my ears are open.
You should branch out to articles about photography, and photography equipment. You should get some higher paying ads that way, and with your traffic, you're bound to have some visitors that are interested in photography that will click some ads.
Why don't you look for other ways to monetize your traffic? Maybe try TribalFusion or something similar.
Picture sites usually don't get accepted for CPM programs. I have tried to get my photography website (sig) into some without any luck, although I have tons of text on it. (They know it won't convert so they don't accept the site) I have gotten other sites (even with less traffic) into those programs without any sweat. (only those sites convert so no point in showing CPM) Secondly, picture sites are notoriously hard to monetize (usually everything is smartpriced - the famous photo equipment review vs. picture gallery site comparison). The route I would go with a site such as the one you describe: You should look into Adbrite lead generation (free ringtones and that sort of sh*** should do better on a site such as yours). Believe it or not, but on my Photo Site Amazon often outperforms Adsense. I have tried some CJ, but I have removed most of them over time (no conversion). If you want some more advice, PM me the url of the site and I will check it out. I have signed up for Auction ads and I am giving them a try but the targetting (via keywords) is pretty cool. Maybe they are better for your site, although I kinda doubt it (conversion rate of junk traffic). I am sure you are aware of this, but just in case: To cut down on traffic, check for hotlinkers and take appropriate action (.htaccess hotlink protection). You could also limit the amount of traffic a single user is allowed to see and ask them to sign up for a free account if they want to see more. Collect the emails and send them affiliate links disguised as nice tips. Or bounce them into my photo store and I share the profit with you 50/50
That gives me an idea. Assuming you don't really care for the amount of traffic (costs too much): You could detect if someone uses IE and block access unless they download firefox (from Google of course). Or a little less obnoxious: show a big frame on top of your page with the firefox download button.
I believe image sites can not make much money unless you are selling hosting. People who visit just want to view images and are not in a "buying mode".
I believe that this is the wrong attitude. Everyone likes to buy something. Some customers are just a little harder to convince.
I have an picture site with some decent traffic. Adsense CTR is usually between 1% and 1.5% and CPC is pretty low at 10 cents or less. I have to keep up with blocking MFA sites or the CPC starts dropping toward 5 cents. I've tried quite a few different placements, including placements similar to yours (token20) with very little change in CTR. I think Adsense will never amount to much on this site. I started using AuctionAds a couple months ago. Prominent placement next to the pictures. I customize the keywords to match the theme of the picture on each page (lots of work). The ads look nice and CTR is around 2% but very poor earnings, 1/10 of Adsense. So that doesn't seem like it will monetize the site well. Been running Kontera for a while. But this requires putting much more textual content on each picture page. Otherwise you get no InText ads at all. Again lots of work and much of the time there really isn't that much to say except "cool picture" without the text looking like nonsense. Earnings are better than AuctionAds but 1/4 of Adsense. Again, not much. I thought I could sell some advertising space through AdBrite. AdBrite shows my site's stats as 4 and a half stars on the ad sales page. Many months and no takers. Network ads generate pennies per day. I run some CPA offers from MaxBounty once in a while. But there aren't many that fit my niche. Visitor interest is pretty minimal. Earnings insignificant. Been running various affiliates from CJ for quite a while. I work in something when it fits a niche. Make a little now and then from that. Nothing signficant. I started thinking about BritePic from AdBrite. Seems like a good way to increase traffic but haven't come up with ideas on how I would directly monetize using that. Maybe I'll check out dougeetx's offer. Those are just my experiences. But they seem pretty consistent with what others have said about picture sites.
I checked out BritePic a while ago, but I am afraid it will interfere with Google Images, as the it puts the image inside javascript. Generally thats not a good idea, unless you start cloaking. Since this isn't really the bad kind of cloaking, you might get away with it, but its a lot of work. Oh, nevermind. I just checked their site again and it has proper noscript tags that load the image, so Google should be fine. Actually I'd love to hear some feedback on how much money is in this.
Maybe what you think is visitors to your site is actual bandwidth theft...(Others using your images, hosted on your site, but displaying them on theirs.)
Happens to me quite a bit. I turned on hotlink protection but had some issues. One of them is that AOL users can't see the pix. Not sure why but the AOL browser triggers the hotlink protection.
Hi What he was referring to is the fact that not everyone online is looking to buy anything any time soon. In fact a majority of the people online are not online to make a purchase. So when someone goes to look at pics they are there to look at pics.... You don't go to an art gallery to go buy a camera in real life, why would anyone online??? On a side note if you have nice Goog PR you could probably sell text link ads and make some extra revs
Traffic type is not right in this case. Your visitors are merely interested in your pics, which Adsense has no clue what they are about thus serving the wrong targeted ads.
Token you can try to put on some general computer stuff ads, like those promoting screensavers and more like that.
I am open to selling it. It generates an ungodly amount of traffic, but is slowing down all my other sites on the server. Since I can't seem to get any money out of it, its a complete waste of my time and resources. I would be willing to sell it to someone that promises to give it the server power it needs. If you have less then a dual core processor and 2GB of ram, it will eat your server for breakfast.