Need advice: 4 year old site getting 2,000+ unique visitors daily, but only making $1

First of all change your website design... thats the main thing for not getting ad banners etc..
and than make your forum more productive.. things will develop themselves.. good luck

 

LOL. What stupid advice.

 

The problem can be the level of pageviews of the site, that result in highest views of the ads and makes your CTR low...

 

Hey, I'm going to try turning off the autoplay with the video on the frontpage and see if that helps.

I'll also turn off the autoplay for the video on the "What is the cwalk?" page to see if that helps.

I'll give it a week or so, and see if the autoplay is affecting the adsense earnings.

Yep! Of course I remember you. How have you been? It's been a looong time. Hope all is well.

 

I hope this advice could help you.

1. Try to filter some garbage ads in your displayed adsense. Most of these sites are MFA (Made for Adsense) and this kind of ads will pay you a very low (~$0.25 may be). This could take time but you should let only quality ads being shown on your site. You would get much more by done all this. $1-$2 daily by 2,000 unique visitors per day is too low. You should get around $5 daily, even in your niche.

2. Pop-up can make you some peanuts but believe me it's not worth it. If you want to maintain the visitor based and make them growth, the pop-up kinds is something you have to avoid.

3. You can also make money by being affiliated with CJ / Shareasale / Clickbank and other networks like other mentioned. I would suggest you to find if your niche could have some "digital product" which could be sold online. The most of tangible products including LCD TV, Blu-Ray and anything people can find them on shelf or offline market would not convert much, except your visitors are "really targeted". The digital product kind may be "Subscription / Membership", "Ebook". Do review about that product and stick them on your first page / forums thread.

I wish your best and I have to push you up - Don't give up! I was pretty bad at online marketing and "make money" things in five years ago. I was trying everything but 95% of them were failed. I were trying adsense and hope someone clicked on it. Someday I got $0.35 and many days I got $0.00. I had got $10 - $15 monthly and that pretty bad if looking from these day. But..do you believe? I was so excited when the first Adsense check was arrived at my home, 8 months waited for $101 adsense check.

That was an epic lesson for me. I have tried many and many and failed and failed..but I can make it these day after 3 years passed. As long as you don't give up - You won't lose

P.S. Is it possible to find ways to avoid using VPS host and use just shared hosting instead? $75 monthly is too much cost for you. I know the forums type site is a hog resource consumed. I would recommend to build another type of site such as Wordpress blog / Joomla CMS which are not consumed too much resources and can keep them in shared host in the beginning.

 

If I were you I'd add adsense links under the "Learn how to C Walk Featured on TV! What is the C Walk? Forum" links
I'd also try different color scheme for adsense blocks try something that will attract the eye

 

Go with text-link-ads.com because u dont get paid for clicks instead for selling ad space.will work for u r site.good luck
Regards
]=[@$€£b

 

Hi! As someone said, perhaps there aren't enough ads on the subject. However, since you are getting a trickle of revenue from Adsense you could improve the visibility of your ads by placing them above the fold (the box seems to work best - I have seen my own revenue quadrupled after applying these tips). You could also advertise accessories, such as shoes and music - a lot of people seem to be asking about footwear. Perhaps you could add an Amazon astore to your site, advertising it on the homepage. Hope this helps!

 

Hi! As someone said, perhaps there aren't enough ads on the subject. However, since you are getting a trickle of revenue from Adsense you could improve the visibility of your ads by placing them above the fold (the box seems to work best - I have seen my own revenue quadrupled after applying these tips). You could also advertise accessories, such as shoes and music - a lot of people seem to be asking about footwear. Perhaps you could add an Amazon astore to your site, advertising it on the homepage. Hope this helps!

 

What are the related equipments that customers will buy? You can check where the equipments are selling. YOu may want to send email to the manufacturers and invite them to put up banner in your website.

 

placement of ads is key, experiment and find out what works best.

 

crap man, you should sell some banner space!

 

Dunno why do u get so low revenue with 20x times traffic compare with my site!!!
My game site have around 100-150unique visitor/day but get average 0.50$/day
And I got 1 time 500$ advertisement from Poker website (link in only main page)

Just look a quick view on your site, I see your adsense put not in good places to get high click Rate.

change the color and font of your adsense code and put it inside the post like this digi forum.

when u increase your CT, your revenue will increase.

 

I use to C-walk and hang out with friends that were into c-walking and freestyling and I would have to say they really love their music. Sign up for a music affiliate program. I agree with reapr's post. you should try to find something they would go banana's over like a new "CD" have the graphic of the album right above learn how to c-walk @ about 400x400 and have the image rotate and link it to your hip-hop affiliate link that cells those cd's. I reckon you would get at least .5-1% conversion which would be 5-10 sales a day and probably like up to 1$ per record sold which is more than a dollar a day.

Also if your click rate is less than 20-40 clicks a day, which it probably is. You should strive to increase your CTR. Instead of placing an album there with an affiliate program you can place a 336x300 banner and probably tripple your CTR trippling your revenue.

 

I still say you should sell some adspace, although the above users do have some good points.

 

I have a generalist blog with similar age, traffic and revenue. Actually, even the placement is pretty much the same! The main difference being it's a generalist blog and there's no forum.

I've experimented with using more obtrusive ad placements (such as the big box), and it did seem as though it doubled or tripled the adsense revenue. But it also made the website look spammier... and I felt it negatively impacted traffic, so I went back to this kind of placement.

Anyway, with your website I think you could make some changes to improve ad revenue without making it look like a Made for Adsense website:

I'd rearrange the elements in the main page and make it shorter... I feel there's a lot of wasted screen real estate as I scroll down. Definitely cut down of the big image on the top graphic, or even take it away - it figures you're going for a logo branding thing, but why repeat the same picture twice?

Remember: Ads tend to get much better CTR when they're above the fold. If you remove the top graphic and add a square box next to the first video in the main page, so that visitors can see the video and the ads next to it without having to scroll down at all, you'll get a LOT more clicks! (-;

 

Don't just offer selling banner space, sell sticky posts. Also, if you are willing to do this, you could create Hip Hop CPA and Survey offers. You would need the back end in place to do so, but this can be very lucrative when done correctly.

 

Then find a cheaper host. You are spending at least twice as much as you should be.

Most charge no more than $25 a month.

That's all there is to it.

 

In my opinion you may want to know who your visitors are first (demographics)
Once you know what they like then offer other things that are of interest to them.
I would remove the adsense. From what I see you do not have anything to do with "Walk in freezers" or crutches, or Lacrosse. These were what was offered to me when I visited your site.
So all adsense ads are totally irrelevant and a waste of space.

As mentioned use your header area. Have a look at this video for an idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo_a2cfBUGc

If you search on youtube you can find some better videos on this.

You say you have over 30K registered users? Your mailing list is very valuable and gives you a captured audience.
This is perfect for a newsletter of some sort. In the newsletter have "sponsored" advertisement even if you are the lone sponsor pushing an affiliate product or service.
What you sponsor or try and push should be related to that newsletter.
If your newsletter has quality information people will look forward to them.

The best of luck!

 

If you're going to stay with AdSense, look at their Help pages. They consider the top of the pages as being more valuable. See if they have requirements, such as a Privacy Policy, to get a higher rating for ads, or advice such as defining meta keywords and descriptions.

If you want to use pay per view ads, consider AdsDAQ or AdBrite.

You could also try selling stuff with your site logo on it. CafePress is widely known, but search the forums here to find alternatives.