OK, before this sounds too much like bragging, I made about $90 from January 16, 2004 until 10/30/2004. Averaging a little less than a click a day, posting the ads only on my "links page". Well, the biz that I ran on the website closed down in August. I still get several hundred visitors a day, so I figure along with the "we're closed" notice, I'd put adwords up on all the pages. Crazy, my click-throughs are at 6.6 percent and so far this month, I've made $55! I'm astounded at how successful this is. Seems to me that it took me about 5 months to get the site as a top search result in google and inktomi. (not very competitive), so maybe making money off of ads isn't something to expect early on. Just thought I'd share my success story. No fedex club member, but looks like I'm going to get a nice christmas check that I never really expected to get. (at .03-.50/day, you wonder if it's worth even having the ads).
Yeah 6.6% is a good rate. I have gotten 9.1% some days, but they are rare (usually on a sunday). With enough traffic, adsense can pull an excellent income. I love it cuz its all bottom line, no COGS or anything to deal with.
I see around 4.4% CTR currently with an all time average of around 2.2%. This is with the Adsense Ad's. The site does quite well traffic wise, so we see a check every month. It did a heck of a lot more revenue before Google dropped ad pricing, but it is still making money. On the other hand the Adsense Search we are doing 14.9% all time average CTR!!! I see high 20's and low 30's percent wise regularly.. Oddly enough Sept 2nd we had a 200% CTR which has to be a mistake in Google land.. Only down side is that the search really does not pay out much :-( I really wish I could get the ads up to 14.9% on average.. I could pay the mortgage, taxes, not only on my house, but my building as well Anyway..
6.6 CTR is above average. I range from 2.0% to 2.4% before, that was way back when Im using single block ads. Since I added another block the CTR drops but revenue increase so I might leave it that way.
I do ok with Adsense. I think it's the fact that I have my ads on the bottom of the page which really looses possible imcome, I just don't know a good way to incorporate them toward the header of my site while still keeping the site looking pro.
We just found a simple skinny tower on the right side seemed to work best for us. An example can be found at: http://www.mccoypottery.com As for the "bottom", if you keep the pages really simple and small, say viewed at 800 X 600 at the very least you can get them to work well.. Here is another example: http://www.mccoypottery.com/email In our forums we have them at the bottom and have recently moved them to the left side: http://forums.mccoypottery.com All in all I think they work well. One of the keys to getting them to work well with the flow of your site, or look and feel is to simply adjust the font type/style and color schemes in your AdSense code such that it mirrors your site.. Then things do not look so "out of place", even if it is
But anyone can change the color scheme such that the look and feel of the AdSense banners look as though they are part of the site. You do not need to be a premium publisher to do that.
Yeah, my adsense ads actually look pretty good on the site - all in the same color theme. If I couldn't do that, I probably never even would have put them up. I think my CTR is good because my would be competitors aren't ranked very highly, and since the visitors to my site find that I'm closed, they click on the competitor's ads hoping they might be local.
well... I haven't been very keen on giving out the site at the risk of one of you SEO pros out there building a site to take away my traffic, but there are plenty of better projects out there that could make more money with a higher traffic/better keyword related theme. And besides, I think a lot of the traffic these days comes from referrals - when we were in business we made sure every client had the best experience. Anyhow, without further adieu: www.ovenbuns.com I'm actually considering migrating this to a site that is focused on childcare/child safety/maternity issues.
Thank you. It is actually a hobby of my dad's.. His passion anyway. When he say the adsense ads on the site one day he freaked, and was worried it would drive people out of the site. I convinced him to keep the adsense stuff there and when he saw a $300 check the first month he never complained again
Wow. $300! You know, after spending some time on that site, i'm impressed with what it has grown to out of a hobby. I mean, the top two adsense ads were for finding McCoy Pottery on e-bay LOL
Yeah, it is just insane.. Makes now sense.. Anyway, we have 1100+ users on our mailing lists, just started the forums and it is close to 140 now, and have introduced an online auction site (ebay style) at http://auction.mccoypottery.com The original site was started in 97, and it keeps growing. We have a long way to go in getting every McCoy Pottery image up on the site however... Between scanning, croping, cleaning up, and then entering into the sql db, it is a daunting task. That said I only work on it when I have useless time.. Lately though (this year) I have been trying to make it a priority to get it done. Given it actually generates revenue now that is...
I put up 4 KW specific articles on my software site (that had nothing to do with software). They get around 10-15% CTR and make $2-3 per day. Trouble is I cannot for the life of me think of any more terms to write articles about.
Use the keyword suggestion tool to see if it can't come up with some good ones for you. Otherwise, check out the high paying words list at toppayingkeywords.com and maybe that will help you out. It's like $250 I think. I saw it and I'm probably eventually going to buy it, but I have a network of sites that I'm building for that as part of a future project.