Hello, I have been reading this board for many weeks and decided today to create an account and post my thoughts. I see posts everyday of site owners making thousands/month and when a link to their sites is posted I find it kinda hard to beleive in some cases. I own a gaming site that I custom made from about 50,000 lines of PHP. It fills a very popular niche on the internet that has yet to be exploited. I opened it up almost one year ago and I'm current receiving an average of 100,000 page views/day with no advertising. I use adsense as my sole advertising income along with a subscription fee to receive more features on the gaming site. My adsense income has slowely increased over the past year to around 20/day. 90% of the adsense ads displayed on the site fit the site content perfectly. I dont have dramatic swings in my click thru rates and continue to have a linear increase in clicks and income each month. However, this wasnt always the case. I spent many sleepless nights during the infancy of the site arranging the ads to increase their performance. One idea I had that had some interesting results has worked better than any suggestions I have seen so far is as follows. I have a user profile page on my site includes a photo or custom graphic that represents the member. If they dont upload an image it defaulted to a no photo image. Just playing around one night I modified the script to include an adsense square box ad in place of the default no photo image if the user has no photo uploaded. The result was a dramatic increase in the click thru rate. The user images cant be clicked so the adsense ads were not being clicked from habit, I beleive what is happening is when a member clicks on a members profile link to take them to the profile page the first place their eye goes is to the photo. If the photo is not there then they unwillingly read the adsense ad title. Since my adsense ads fit my content almost perfectly the users are then clicking on the ads as creditable click thru out of interest and not thru any tricks or schemes. I have deployed this theory on other parts of the site with the same results. I just found this to be very interesting and maybe helpful to some of you. Now back to my original comment on this thread. I think its great so many people are finding adsense an exremely succesful path to riches but I just find it hard to believe in some of the cases posted. Some of the sites mentioned have poor alexa results and to achieve the amount of income being posted must have unobtainable CTR's. I would think that is someone is making 8,000 month thru adsens they wouldnt have time to post lengthy comments on hear about how much they are making. You would think they would be using this time marketing, diversifying, etc. My website has not been a success story and I know I put in over 40 hours a week online managing my sites and answering email. Business 2.0 (Magazine) has a great article in the september 06 issue on page 64 about bloggers becoming millionares form ad placements. They give 4-5 real examples and stats of their site. Each of the sites mentinoed bring in about 1 mil/day page views and not one of them use adsense. They all receive $6-8 CPM and have acheived this by directly contacting companies to fill their adspace. Many started by giving away adspace for fee to and then selling the space once advertisers saw the real results. As a note they also mention that their sites receive less than 1% CTR's. One piece of advice mentioned on another post that is 100% accurate is if you begin making a decent amount from your website or idea your collegues dont want to hear about it. Their are two types of people in this world. You have the followers and the thinkers. Most people on this board are thinkers and fall asleep each night thinking of ways to expand their domain. Its all a game being run by the thinkers and played by the followers. You cant talk to a friend who is a follower about your success or ideas, they dont want to hear it. A follower is born a follower and you cant change it. I put in over 40 hours a week at my regular job and another 40 hours on my websites in the hopes of cracking the 9-5 mold. It may never happen but I'm creating a good foundation to try. Just my thoughts
Hey Redback, Welcome to the board! You have some great thoughts there, and as well, I'd like to ask questions/make comments, if I may First off, congrats on the successes of your site, finding a good niche, and successfully building and marketing based on that! 50k hand-coded PHP pages is definitely nothing to sneeze at. Nice job as well on maintaining that stability that so many people here seem to realize isn't an inherent guarentee upon putting Adsense on their site. You mentioned about some of the sites here having poor alexa ratings but claiming high traffic or earnings - The thing though is that alexa ratings can be manipulated in a variety of ways, and as well the alexa rating/ranking service isn't always accurate due to how they sample their data (people using the Alexa toolbar), so in some cases, it's easily possible for a site with an incredible amount of traffic or pageviews to be relatively obscure in Alexa. For example, a site I have that gets only around 30-50 uniques a day still ranks higher even after a few months than a site I have that gets 200-250 uniques a day. I agree as well that adsense may not be the easiest way to gain access to the millionaire club, despite it's seemingly attractive popularity and ease of use. While most people will probably make a few bucks here and there, the people who are making enough to quit their day job comfortably seem to be fewer and far between, though of course, I do know of several here at DP who have done/are doing that. I found your last piece of advice interesting though - I tend to disagree a bit on the followers - I actually think a lot of followers really do want to follow - but that's the problem, they want to follow, not become a thinker. They want to find out your success, see your URL, learn all your tactics that worked for you, and then try to replicate (or very closely) what you've done exactly on a site that's not much different. They won't step back, learn the general principles and mechanics, and then go and become a thinker and apply those creative dynamics to brand new sites or ideas of their own. Consequently, I believe, it's these people (and yes, at times I still feel like one of them ) who are most likely to become envious of high-earners or disappointed at their inability to be rich quickly and give up or badmouth others as a result. It takes work, and thinking outside the box to observe closely and realize the principles that hold in general, and then take what you've learned and work hard and diligently to apply them on your own. Then again, that's what life always has been. Cheers again, and enjoy your stay at DP!
$20/day for a 1 year old site with 100,000 PVs a day that you put 40 hours a week into? Wow, that's awful. You need to expand out of Adsense and start going into CPM. You should be making at least $200/day, if not more with that traffic. P.S. A lot of people here make more than $8k/month and still have time to post regularly on DP because this is their fun time, their downtime, their recess.
I got told I should be making at least 500 hits a day with my month old site, don't worry no one will offer any advice on how to do it they'll just tell you you should be doing it lol.
I don't mean no one offers advice, but as soon as you say you get 50 hits a day someone always posts you should be getting 5000 but never explains how
Well, possibly true that some people may encourage you that it's possible to go for more without explaining how, but certainly there are then at least others who do give you pointers on how to do so?
I wish it was that easy to make $200/day from 100,000 PV/day using a CPM network. I have tried fastclick and CJ on other sites in previous years with horrible results. The Adsense $20/day is the best I have been able to do. I recently have been approved by casalemedia.com but have not tried placing it on my site yet. Is it flawed to base a value on a site by its PV's? When it comes down to it a majopr factor is your return customer base and page views per user. Can you then roll the number of PV's into a value. Just wondering how you came up with $200/day. In response to the Alexa comment. I agree that Alexa can be manipulated and may not always be accurate; however, even though it may be flawed that is the first indicator among others I look at when viewing sites for sale and other research. As you stated I believe the majority of the alexa weighting is based on the number of surfers who have an Alexa toolbar that visit your site.
You cannot judge how much someone SHOULD make, especially knowing so little about the site. If its main function is a forum, it probably has a small CTR. Not too many regulars at forums click ads. Look at your stats, excluding the forums, and you will see a much better CTR. My advice: See if you can attract new users to the non-forum portion of your site. New users are more click happy than your regulars in the forums. How you do that...I have no clue!
To really make good money with adsense with one site you absolutly need these three elements otherwise your better off making more than one site . - lots of traffic and pageviews - good ctr 2 to 5% - and a good click through income .. i figure at least .15 and higher . some of my blogs have lots of traffic , good ctr but pathetic click through income ... thats when you have to decide whether to start a new site or weave affiliates in your articles or posts and hope for the best .
Redback, it sounds to me like your site is a major success; you just haven't figured out the best way to monetize it. It can be really tricky to find the right strategy, but with 100,000 pageviews/day there absolutely has to be a better way to make money than AdSense. As a comparison, my main site gets 100x less traffic than yours (1,000 pv/day) and I make an average of just over $20 on it. I don't trick anyone into clicking, and there's nothing fishy about my site, but the type of traffic I get is looking for more info, and hence ready to click on ads. That said, AdSense is actually my lowest earner – I make about 5x more with Chitika than with AdSense, and also make a decent amount directly selling ad-space via AdBrite. I like to be able to set my own prices, and AdBrite is pretty easy to use. I'm also playing with Text Link Ads now, but so far don't have any buyers. Of course, the other problem is that some niches just lend themselves to more clicks, but that's one big reason that I'd suggest you try something other than CPC – how about selling direct ad space via Text Link Ads or AdBrite? You can make a lot of money this way if your traffic is high.... Good Luck!
I currently get an average of 1 click per every 15 unique visitors to my sites... with that much traffic, you really could be making a butt load more. Please im me your link, and let me take a look at your ad placement. Maybe I can help you optimize for a better click thru rate.
If you want to know how you can make $200/day with 100K PVs a day using a combination CPM and Adsense, I'll be happy to tell you how, and it won't take more than a single PM from me. But if you are insistent that this isn't possible, and it can't be done, and you simply won't believe it, then I'm not going to waste my time and yours. If you are happy with $20/day off 100K PVs, more power to ya. P.S. If all you, and all the snarky little noobs who have commented in this thread so far wants is superfluous positive affirmations, here, let me give it: You're doing great! Keep at it! Yeah for you! You're my hero! You're doing everything right, just keep plugging away! I wish I could be like you! Etc etc.
Thanks for the input Dead Elvis. I have opened an account with adbrite and will probably be giving it a try this weekend. Thats awesome your making about 20/day off 1000 pv's. As you stated when a user is coming to your site looking for information it seems you would get a higher CTR on your ads. jackburton2006 I'm not at all insistant that it cant be done, up until recently my focus was on increasing pv's and return visitors. My fault was that I focused all my effors on traffic thinking ad revenue would follow. And I still beleive this is true if you understand the fundamentals behind ad types and placement. It's a learnig curve on my part and I'm soaking in all advice from the posts on this site. As far as your comment about affirmation, i believe that is the last thing most of the posts are looking for here.
well, i read all of this and took it in, so here: It all depends on what type of site you have which will determine the amount made. I've seen so many people say what thier adsense epcm, ctr and dollar per day amounts were and it all seems low, maybe cause they went a lil too niche, even with a ton of traffic. but could also be due to too many ads, ugly ads (unblended), ect, ect. i don't get much traffic (average 69 vistis per day), but have earned 24 dollars this month (1 month old site) and I'm that new to adsense. what do ya think will happen when i do get unsandboxed so it's not all about traffic that you'll profit from when it comes to adsense, but the consumer base behind the information you provide, which in turns effcts THE CLICKABILITY OF THE ADS. example, lots of people visit entertainment sites, but i can assure that they won't make as much as a travel or gagdets site, because people are always buying travel related items and buying cell phones, computers and the likes. but celebrity information is free and most ads won't interest a visitor. that's not to say they won't make any revenue, just not as much as you might think. well, as far as the followers goes I think that are more of those than thinkers, at least that's what Ive seen throughout my life. i do find that people will try to lean in on me and my friend's conversations when they hear search engines and money in the same sentence. they want a way out of their job, but have no way of doin it themselves or goin out and actively seeking the info needed to fulfil their dreams and needs. kinda like bottom feeders. we just pretend we're talkin about nothing at all most do wanna to try to duplicate exactly what you do so they can profit also. that's how u know they're followers - don't wanna take the time (lazy) to come up with their own ideas so you can help them further. most people are scared to think outside the box cause their affraid of the critisism they may encounter, which means they need more mental strenght to be a thinker/leader. If they didn't want to help themselves before, then why should you try to help them? do for you before anyone else tries to do for you is what i go buy.
Just to back up Jack on how he managed to get the $200 a day figure: Assume an ad with a low CPM of $0.20. That means you get 20 cents for 1000 impressions. You say you got 100,000 daily page views. If you place just one ad with the above CPM, you are looking at $200 daily . That's from *one* CPM ad. Depending on your site layout, you can easily put 3 CPM ads on the one page without annoying the hell out of your visitors. The point is: don't over rely on Adsense. It's great but you can supplement it with other forms of income and CPM is one of them.
I agree with Elvis here. You need to find better way to monetize. Apart from CPC and CPM there is are enough CPOrder and CPLead based models. Depending on your topic this might very well be worth checking out. For every AdSense dollar I make I make three CPO dollars. This is obviously totally dependant on your niche, but at least Amazon should work for most any topic. If there are related digital or packaged products involved there are probably also opportunities to be found with other affiliate advertisers.