Do I have a chance with AdSense?

Hi guys, first post and I would just like to say thank you for providing a place with so much great information.

Anyway, on to my question…

I have a forum specifically dedicated to a single piece of computer hardware. (I’ll be diversifying as time goes on.) It is growing very nicely (at least %5 per day from what I have seen and the hardware in question is not even widespread quite yet.) As of right now I am up to about 1,800 unique visits per day, and on average about 15,000 page views. From what I can tell this forum is going to become the de facto standard for discussing anything related to this piece of hardware. There is only one other site out there and it is nothing compared to me in terms of usage/articles/users.

I am running Phpbb2 and I noticed there was a modification out there to allow you to insert AdSense advertisements directly in threads. From what I have read on this forum, there are mixed opinions about the effectiveness of such advertisements. If I were to implement such a thing, do you think I would generate any income? I mean, in all honestly I would be incredibly happy with $5 a day. Do you think this is possible?

Also, as of right now the page does not really have a ‘homepage’. When you go to the site you put directly in the forum, would it be wise of me to develop a homepage with some general information about the hardware and then have a link to the forum?

Also, I am a bit confused about how exactly AdSense works. From what I can tell there are two ways to make money, click through on ads, and impressions. I understand there are different payouts for different types of clicks, but my question regards impressions. Being in that this is a forum there are going to be lots of page impressions made by visitors. If there was one AdSense on every page of my forum, that would lead to over 15,000 AdSense impressions per day. I couldn’t image the pay out per 1000 to be less than $1, so would that mean that I would make $15 a day?

I think that is all the questions that I can come up with right now. Thanks for any information that you can provide.

 

You will only get CPM ads if someone targets your site, which I doubt since it is a forum.

I'd say $5 a day is a safe bet. You've got nothing to loose, why not give it a try? Want a referral link?

 

impressions are one thing. Geting them to click the links are another. Try both AdSense and Chitika. And if you ever get in, Yahoo.

 

I have a fourm site and I would say go for it! I am very happy with my AdSense ad revenue..

DEVELOP a homepage!! It's hard to get a good rank and spidered without a homepage. I wish I built one at first... I just added one 2 weeks ago and it made a big difference.

Serg

 

I've read on these forums of people with 4,000 uniques a day and they are making $500 + a day, what would seperate my site from theirs?

 

Do you have them intergrated in the posts, or something different?

 

It depends on the topic of your site. Some pay very high, and others pay extremely low.

Whats the URL of your boards?

 

http://www.g15forums.com

 

People who visit forums (who become regulars) and especially those interested in tech subjects (and spend lots of time on the net) tend to become completely ad-blind. These days, I rarely notice adsense ads on pages. that's the main difference you'll have with some other people on here.

BUT, it's pretty painless to set Adsense up and see how it does. might as well give it a try.

(also, to second the suggestion above, i've been reading good things about Chitika - especially from people with tech-heavy sites. depedning on how adsense works out, you might want to look into them as well.)

 

I have some on the front page and also on every forum page... I am trying the leaderboard now... not working out nearly as well as the 2 medium rectangles I had.. but you have to experiment and give it some time...

 

I think that's 4,000 hits. For 4,000 uniques, I think there would be a lot more posts than there are right now.

But for the age of the boards, that's a lot of posts!! How did you get the visitors there?! (Guessing AdWords)

 

Maybe it's just me, or my TFT monitor.. but those colors are hard on the eyes....

 

Right now I get 1,500 uniques, 15,000 pageviews per day. That is acording to 1and1 webstatistics. I have done 0 advertising, all the traffic you see on there is from word of mouth.

 

Talk about luck!! Google can't find any sites linking to you and you only got two URLs there indexed!!! Every one that makes a message board site would love to be that lucky!!!

 

I agree, but the question is, how do I exploit it? Hehe. That leads me to another question, how do I go about getting Google/Yahoo/MSN to index and rank my site? I'm sure there is a lot of information on this site about that, time to start reading... More work than I thought it would be.

 

Get other sites to link to you, once you got more poststhere . Add a link section and link to them first. That might increase the number of links you get.

 

I got it up and running and have made 9 cents so far! More than I ever thought I could make off a website, haha!

Please check out my site and tell me what you think of the ad placement...

http://www.g15forums.com

 

The reason it is not indexed is because you are using phpBB which by default does is not really indexable. You need to use one of the mods that set up an archive of your posts. Then link to the archive from your forum.

 

I don't know anything about phpBB or its inherent difficulties with indexing or Adsense but I'd say a static, plain-old-html homepage, seo'd with title and body text will help a lot. While you are at it, would your product lend itself to another couple of information pages? There is nothing to say your forum has to stand alone.

If the product is so new, you might also want to write up an article on it and send it out to some of the article sites, like YFS1's. Publish some articles on your own site with a disclaimer in the footnote saying that interested sites may republish as long as full credit and links to url and email are given to your site. Include the exact anchor text and description that you would have them use.

 

Oh boy, it's going to be a big day. I haven't made a website in about 2 years.