Help me make some real money

Hello there. Without sounds like I'm desperate, I really need your help. I own a website, and I've been using Adsence on for it for some months now. However since I've started using Adsence, and knowing very little about it, my profits have hardly changed.

I've literally been messing with them every week in some way, trying to find out which ad's earn the most money. However I am struggling and I thought the best way is to ask you guys for a review of where to place ad's on my website

I currently have on average, 8000 unique visitors each day (although the last month that has gone to around 10,000). My website uses a two column layout and the content is either news posts or content Messenger users may like to use. I'm only earning around $2-5 a day, usually $2 or $3, making me just under $20 on average each week. I believe I can make a lot more.

I simply want your help here, anyone willing to help will receive a big thank you, as I've reached the point when, whatever I do, my profits never increase. Thanks again

Here is my website: http://www.msgstuff.com

I ideally want to boost my profits to $8 a day. What do you think I should aim for?

 

If you are getting 8000 uniques a day, I think you can get much more than $2/day

 

Try having ads in the middle content inside the blue table layout and mix it with the content a bit. Remember to read Google's guidelines about deceiving ad placement first tho. don't wanna get banned!

 

Great . I thought I might as well say, my current CTR is 0.56%.

 

I like the look of your site a lot! Are you using a CMS for it? If so, which one is it?

I know ad placement is hard when you are trying to keep a nice site from getting too junky looking... I think some link ads wouldn't look too bad on it though... (not that I'm any kind of expert! hehe)

 

You should not post specific information on CTR and stuff like that. It's against the TOS.
Your CTR is abysmal, and with 8000 visitors a day you should be making more than $2,- a day. This being a relatively technical site (though for a very general crowd), a CTR of at least 1% should still be feasible, I think.

Since your normal links are blue / black I would start testing with blue links (the precise color you also use in your menu) and black ones. Get a specific channel per color-scheme, so you can see (after a 1000 impressions or so) which gets the best CTR.

Your current design has the affiliate links prominent and adsense often on the bottom of the page. Depending on how serious the money is you make off those, you may want to consider changing that. Something else is that you could put a links-element (the smallest horizontal one) below your header, in the center - above the navigation you sometimes have there.

You should consider adding some adsense in the forum as well. That's not going to get you a high CTR either, but it could still make you some.

 

well as a start change the links that are in red to blue because some reports showed that people might click more on the blue color links than any other color anyway good site GRATS

 

Considering the amount of visitors you get daily, the earnings are very poor. You must either have a very, very poor CTR or CPC. My guess is that you should be making at least $10, if not more.

 

Thanks for your replies so far guys, keep them coming

My website is entirely coded by myself, the news, everything, it came from learning PHP over the past few months, and it has turned out well.

I'm going to change the colours of my ad's, and may be add some larger units about 3 posts down on the main page. I have a lot of people subscribed to my RSS feed, and so many people visit the post pages themselves, what do you recommend I do with these pages? Surly these, using the right techniques can make some more money

True, I've come to the point where I must be missing something obvious.

 

I think you should aim for $30-$50 at least if not more. You are doing something wrong.

 

Use a large cube add on the top of the page instead of that 468x60. Make the links standard link blue, not the colors you are using. That 468x60 on the bottom is wasted ad code. Remove that and add a vertical add to your right or left column. If I were you, I would add a half sky to your left column in the middle of your navigation, not under it.

 

Well, you need to do the actual testing and redesigning of your site. The ad-sizes you currently use are also not the ones that generally convert best. Google has some info on that in their help pages.
The pictures on top of some of the ads are probably not going to help you much - as you already have pictures on many pages. So the pictures just move the ads further down - and the ads should be above the fold (visible without scrolling) as much as possible (without annoying your visitors: it's a fine balance).

 

where are you visitors came from ? are they reading your content ? are they interested in your website ? or they just enter your website by mistake ?

probably is because the ads shown up are not related to your content, people from your website will never click on "free spam filter" ad.

 

Thats a good question because if people are entering by mistake they will probably leave as quickly as they enter it and therefore won't stick around to click on an ad. We need more details about your traffic paths and such.

 

With 8k uniques a day you should be hitting homeruns as far as the level of scratch your looking to attain on a daily basis.Rework the layouts and ad placement content integration and such will help you alot.

 

My website has two sets of users. Those who have reached the website via a search engine, usually after emoticons and display pictures for Messenger, and those who have come to catch up on some Messenger news.

Either way, they tend to spent a decent amount of time on the website. I believe they totally miss the ad's out of their view.

There is also the Messenger skinning tutorial, which teaches you how to fully skin MSN and Windows Live Messenger. People spent hours with the website open because of this. I think the majority of my clicks come from the banner on the top of my home page.

 

Very nice website

Try putting a horizontal link unit at the top of the page (above all of the content, below the header), make sure you blend it so it just looks like a bunch of links. Then try adding another section to the left navigation called Adverts (put it wherever, but I wouldn't put it right at the top because I always think it makes a site look cheap) then try putting a 120 x 240 ad unit there, again blending it so it looks like part of the website. You should get quite a few clicks with this method without agressively placing adverts and making your website look cheap.

I would suggest also having a play about with the advertising on offer from commision junction (CJ.com I think) as you may find a few well paying advertisers on there which fit nicely into your website.

 

Is this a coincidence? I NEVER use Windows Messenger and have not had it open in over a year... but today after visiting your site I now have the Windows Messenger icon on my task bar... unfortunately, I cannot even close it, I get an error message saying "Other applications are currently using features provided by Windows Messenger".

Sorry, but this is creeping me out big time...

 

Why don't you make the colour of ad text orange like your titles? This will make it look more blended in. The ads do seems to be relevant though.

 

Thanks for your help guys. I'm going to start implementing them now. Of course testing on localhost is useless, so I'm uploading my progress so you can see the changes I make as a go along. I'll post when I'm done, ready for any further suggestions, thanks again

lol, I never use Windows Messenger either, and it popped up randomly the other day, very odd