Me too and most other's also. I think 2% is good. 5% can be achieved by tricking people (blending ads, stuffing them everywhere). MFA sites easily can get 50%. However those will all get smartpriced, since the people weren't even that much interested. I know that I am trading visitors for clicks because I don't even WANT more than 2% (=exit rate from my site). I want people to stay, to read and to bookmark the page and come back later. Potentially they will click many times over if they visit again and again. So yeah, in terms of traffic growth I am limiting my adsense exposure a bit.
5% can also be achieved via clever placement. 5% is what I personally aim for with any site, and the sites I make certainly are not MFA's or tricking people to click. As for the questions, it depends on your niche, quality of traffic, pageviews/visitor, ad placement. After I thoroughly research a niche, and begin a site that attracts 1000 visitors, I usually earn about $15 to $25 with that kind of traffic. I have new sites sitting with 100 visitors daily, making more than a site that avergaes 4000 daily. The 100 visitors pulls in $3/day.
According to my calculations: You should make exactly $15.73 If you are not making this much PM me and I'll tell you where you can send me $97 for an e-book to tell you how to make this much. If you're making more than that you're making too much and must refund the difference to google.
O.K. I admit I was a little bit too harsh. I think its a question of philosophy. Are you willing to squeeze your site for money or not. In the last months I have seen some tremendous growth in visitors and I personally believe that too many ads would have slowed the growth. Also a natural link will be obtained far easier if the page isn't plastered with ads. I am sure about.com makes a killing with Adsense, but they have a very conservative placement. If they had plastered their sites with ads, I am sure people would have gone elsewhere. The other extreme is wikipedia. I am sure they would loose a large percentage of their userbase if they started advertising. So basically, I am set up for growth, not for money making and for that I think 2% is a very decent CTR. I have a very high rate of return visitors and according to AWStats an extremely high rate of people bookmarking the site. Naturally a return visitor is less likely to click an add every time they visit, so 2% is pretty good in my eyes. I also get a ton of referrals from email, although I never sent out any email myself. This confirms that people think the site is useful and email each other the url. Also those referrals (the email ones) usually look at a LOT of pages and I think this is a sign that I have just won another member of my community.
Exactly. It's a trade-off on many accounts. More money or more return visitors. Like you, on my own biggest site, I am not too bothered about making a killing with it. I'm focused on providing great content and a good quality service. This site generates, like you, a 2% CTR which is fine with me. But then I have other sites which I develop as 'money spinners' and try to eek out as much financially as possible, but every single one of my sites is providing quality content. I don't think I could create a MFA as I take far too much pride in my work to adopt such a strategy.
i can really relate to that, its the same for me 3 big community sites whith daily content, reviews, editorials etc and some money spinners... i guess thats a pretty good way to compare the different marketing strategies
Hm. So far my "Money Spinners" make way less then my good sites. Probably because thats where my efforts go (maintaining a community is much more work than I thought it would be )
That's probably due to private advertisers who are more willing to pay good money for a well kept web site. I hope my 'money-spinner' term goes global
i make 2$ daily on my celeb blog which has 650 uniques though its increasing conistently.Celeb sites have lowest earnings. so i guess with 1000 uniques u shud be making atleastt 3$ - 5$ on celeb and definetely 5$ on other sites if u have gud placement and targeted ads