I don't understand much about how you get paid with adsense. I am thinking about creating a niche social networking site like a myspace and wondered if they convert pretty well using adsense. Also, how are forums? I love this site!
Try reading these from the Google Adsense Help Center... How much will I earn through this program? https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=9902 How do I generate earnings? https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=35872 What forms of payment are available to me? https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=15818 Sounds like a good idea to me. Most niche sites and forums seem to work well with Adsense.
Forums almost always feature very low CTR, due the the natural ad blindness which affects return visitors. Theoretically speaking, social networking sites should also have very poor CTR's. However, I have not personally operated one, so that's just theory for me.
THanks for the links. So with the CTR, I just thought it was a guage to see how my campaigns were doing and not affecting the actual amount of money i was making. Am I wrong?
CTR is Click Through Ratio. CTR is a percentage derived by dividing the number of impressions by the number of clicks. More clicks equals (roughly) more money. Therefore, in a manner of speaking, a higher CTR will lead to you making more money. You won't make more money per click with a higher CTR, but you will (roughly) make more money overall * "roughly" means that we haven't really touched on CPC in this thread.
i think cpm ads perform better on such sites, but it's hard to find a program which shows good ads which is relevant to your site.
PlentyOfFish.com, while not a social networking site, is a free dating site. (kind of like social networking I guess...) He's apparently doing $1 million every three months or so in AdSense revenue. Of course, he has a billion pageviews and millions of visitors. Pretty sure his CTR is low it's just that Dating is such a hot niche. You'd probably want to combine AdSense with another banner system or affiliate links to maximize your revenue, of course.
online dating websites always make the visitor come back, (if they are interested, but 50%++ of the time they are) but they don't read ads, online dating sites are about pictures 90% of the time..they just see the picture and start talkin with somebody.. in better case they decide after the personal info, but in the most case they decide after other's picture.. it's pure human mind.. insanse
Same experience, have niche financial site and after seeding a couple of high volume forums with teasers, revenue goes up significantly. The trick is to make them repeat visitors...
Any feed back on which script is better? http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=95332 Buddyzone/Handshakes/PHPfox