2,000,000 impressions per month - but hard thing to optimize a forum...

Hi everybody!

I use AdSense since about three years on my site, which is one of Austria's largest discussion boards. Normally I have about 150,000 unique users and 4 million page impressions per month, my worldwide Alexa Rank is about 65,000, my Austrian rank is around 250.

So, everything's fine, exepct my AdSense revenues...

For example last 30 days:
Impressions: 1.929.620
Clicks: 260 (!!)
CTR: 0,01%
Income: 201,68 $

I have a skyscraper included on the right (you can see it on www.austriansoccerboard.at), my clicks are - as you can see - lousy. My community is quite sensitive, so I don't want to place too pushy ads.

But: My site publishes normally at least 2 million AdSense ads and I just get 200$ or even less (I think my best month was 350 $). How could that be ?? I believe that, although we talk about a forum, there's a great potential in my site - do you have any ideas what should be done to increase my income ?

Thanks in advance, looking forward to hear from you guys! =)

*cheers
Danny

 

your site layout is pretty busy and hard for users to notice the skyscraper adsense ad you have on the right sidebar. skyscraper adsense don't usually do well on forums. see how DP has adsense integrated and try to implement that way. one ad on the top right and one link unit after the last post works well on forums. with the kinda impressions you have, you should make lot more than what you are making now

 

Thats a pretty standard earning rate for adsense.


That is why adsense only makes up about 10% of my income.

 

That's clear - but I would love to push my AdSense account to 10% of my income. At the moment it's less than that...

Do I receive better CPMs if an AdSense banner can be better seen (i.e. would I earn more money by CPM if I'd add a banner like here on DP instead of the skyscraper I use on my forums ?)

 

thats pretty good. i get about 150 per month

 

Use cpm if you have that many impressions. Check the CPM program in my link it's rate $1.80/1000 impressions

 

There is also Adbrite for CPM. Payouts aren't great but the sign-up is easy, so you can try it out to see how it compares with your current Adsense.

With that many impressions, what about selling private ads (they'd probably look better as well as earning more)?

 

I do that also and it's quite successful, but I didn't want to ignore AdSense and its potential

 

You should definitely search for sponsored ads. They will earn you more revenue and look waaaay better. (Better CTR as well since the sponsors will probably be forum related)

 

By far your adsense earnings are way too low for 4 million PV. Contact me over PM, might help you.

 

try other modes of advertising? 2 millions impression can make u tons of money. contact me?

 

Forum is a portal where you get answers to your questions. If people come to your website, they get what they want and they never click on ads because adsense is not what they are looking for. It is always the same problem with forums.

 

@hillord: atm there are just ads placed for 2 mil. Overall I could offer at least 4 mil a month. Which way of making online money would you prefer or recommend ?

@ameran: In my case not really, because we are a well established board where loads of users spend 10 hours a day and more. The board is already kind of a cult in Austria and the user's relationship and loyalty to the board is very strong.

As I said - overall nearly best case. Only AdSense made me meditate

 

If people buy your ads on adbrite you can make even more

 

how many of your 150,000 users come from the search engines?

if you are getting the same 150,000 users every month, they are unlikely to click any ads.

 

Please read the TOS and see what you can (and can't) label your AdSense ads.

 

Why don't you try ads in navbar? Leaderboard or Rectangle ads, this will surely enhance your Clicks.

 

Let me just say that I misread this. I thought you were getting 150,000 impressions.


for 2,000,000 impressions you should be making THOUSANDS a month.

The problem is your clickthrough rate. Its very very low, and its because most of your visitors are repeat(so they don't click on ads).

 

totally agree.

random people everyday = clicks

same people everyday = no clicks

 

I would put up a leaderboard after every 1st posts, a horizontal link unit somewhere between the posts and take away the skyscraper.

In my opinion this skyscraper is too far away from the place of where the action takes place so nobody will click on it.