I am just curious about forums + adsense. I know DP makes a butt load of money from adsense but thats not "typical" results. Just wondering what the average forum webmaster is dealing with in terms of clicks, etc. I don't need exact stats or anything...just a general idea of whether or not its worth it?
I haven't had any experience with forums personally, but from what others are saying forums convert poorly.
I have a couple that convert pretty well, on the whole though, yeah, people seem pretty down on them. I think it's how you implement within forums. For people that use prebuilt forum scripts and have little programming knowledge, they are limited on how they can implement, whereas myself, I've built my own forum and have full control over how and where I put the ads...that could be much of the reason for better performance.
forums can convert very well. however, you must keep one thing in mind.....first time users are much more likely to click ads than repeat visitors. if you have a steady traffic from the search engines, you will do well with a forum.
It's the same for any site whether its a forum or not, you need traffic. I have a forum with Adsense on it and because it gets so little traffic at the moment I barely make anything from it.
If your ads are relevant to a specific niche that your visitors are into, you'll get clicks. For example, I run a forum that's targeted towards gamers who make money online playing 2 specific "skill gaming" sites -- the only 2 on the net that have hit somewhat mainstream -- imagine how eager they are to find additional sites to play on. My forum is still brand new with only 150-200 uniques coming in, but just yesterday my CPM was literally $23.00. So yeah, if you decide to use Adsense for your forums, pay attention to what type of ads are being used and try your best to tweak them so that your users will see a benefit to checking the sites out.
Forums can make money if you have good search engine traffic. New users tends to click on the ads. I mean if you have a forum with lot of guest visitors adsense text and link ads perform well. If you have a forum with majority repeated visitors then only CPC ads will give you money. Regular users wont click text ads. Try to place text ads in on the first fold, in between post or inside the post itself.
If forums only rely on their members then the earnings will be very very low . But if they receive constant traffic from search engines then the earnings can grow well.
Forums are a bigger challenge that other types of sites. Placement of ads is always a challenge. Getting repeat visitors to click ads is a challenge - regular forum visitors become "ad blind.". Getting ads to relate to the forum's topic or topics is a challenge. Getting new visitors, who are more likely to click ads, is a challenge.