Well, I have been browsing these forums for well over 2 hours now, reading thread after thread after thread, so I decided I'd join up. I own just the one website, with another one currently being set up as we speak. As you can see by my username, its ExoticCarSite.com. My father was a panel beater, and repaired cars from early model Ferraris and Lamborghinis etc, right down to your average Taurus for a 35 year living. Not the way I have my life planned. However, it did have a huge influence on me, in terms of hobbies and interests. Cars. Ever since I was a youngster I'd get home from school, and help my dad repaid these cars by rubbing back guards, and stripping parts. For as long as I can remember [which is about 3 yrs old], cars have been a major thing for me. [So if there's anybody out there who runs a car website, I all to happy to exchange links etc]. Well, thats pretty much my bio so on with my website details. PS: Im 21 in a week, and I reside in Australia, about 10hrs drive north of Sydney, on the Gold Coast - home to the best beaches and girls around . ExoticCarSite.com To be completely honest, I don't know shit about websites, I just started the site out of the sheer annoyance / frustration of seeing hte same images, in poor sizes on all the other websites. So I started my own, without a clue in how to do anything [2 years on, I still don't really - lol, but thats another story - hence why I'm here] During those 2 years the site has peaked [according into Alexa] and has falled down again more times than I wish to re-call. I offer the best images, without watermarks, more variety, bigger size, in magazine print quality resolution, but for some reason, I just can't make the website more popular. I get between 2000-8000 visitors per day, but only earn ~$25US per day from the ads that are on the site [ FastClick / Ad Sense / Casalemedia] After reading these forums, and finding out for myself what some of you guys earn, with much less greater number of visitors per day, I find myself asking, how can I get to that sort of earning income. My Ad Sense only achieves 0.2 [please, do contain and hold back the laughter ] so when I read some people here getting up to $10+ per click on certain keywords it really makes me wonder what can I do to improve the website. So I'm hoping, with some of you guys help, I can achieve some nice 5 digit figures within a timeframe of about 12 or 18 months. I'm current in the process of setting up a similiar website, but in php, with subscriptions etc, in the hope to yield further income but it won't be set up for quite some time - but this time it does however have a good url name. Anyway, if anyone has some good pointers and tips on how I can improve my html website and reap some better revenue rewards, I am ALL ears. Cheers, Brad aka B-rad, stupid nickname i've been given thanks to the movie "Malibu's Most Wanted"
Well you have some good levels of traffic there buddy, thats the hard part done, monetising them is the fun bit
I notice you have a Countach in your avatar? I just updated my entire Lamborghini gallery today, some 400 new piccies, but none were Countach's. sorry. The problem I have is, considering i consistantly get over 4000 uniques a day, what exactly can I market and sell on a car desktop wallpaper website? Perhaps an affiliation with Photoshop, or posters [but copyright on 99% of my images forbids that] or car printed mouse mats [again, copyright on the images] so theres really not a lot one can market on a car wallpaper website. Majority of my viewers stay for under 2 minutes, download the new images, and are off, without clicking any ads or anything.
Aye, I had a peek. Well I hate all that casale crap, that just send me off but I know you need to monetise the traffic. Personally I'd like to see adsense blended and no fekin pop-ups. I dont really see adsense and its much more subtle than the irrelevant smilies shit, just my opinion. I would say your revenue is poor because its irrelevant to your viewers, I'd test swapping all the banners for adsense, also take a look (without clicking) at what adsense ads are shown, they should be relevant so may offer ideas to relevant markets that you can look at in an affiliate capacity. Keep the pages shorter, drop some banners and add some countach's to the wallpaper area
I think you should maybe be less concerned with stuff more ads on that site and more concerned with optimizing the ad placement and relevancy. Getting paid for clicks has more to do with the content around the ad blocks, thus your nich or ads being displayed may not be very competetive.
so what your basically saying is ditch the shitty fastclick ads that do nothing for site, but optimize the Ad Sense once so they are in a better positioning to be viewed and clicked? Editing 2300 pages though, just to place the AdSense codes else will absolutely suck. A lot of my competitor websites also run AdSense, as we all use the same press releases for each car, so essentially we are all getting the same AdSense ads... right? SO far this month I have already had 180,00 Ad Sense impressions but my clicks are only averaging 20-30 per day as everyone is just visiting for the pictures with the Detroit & LA Motorshows currently on. PS: the lamborghini countach wallpapers are in the "Car Archives" section, not the wallpaper section EDIT: The pop ups only appear for the first visit
The ads don't have to be in your face or annoying to get clicks. For example, look at Modded Mustangs. Notice the ad placement? ONLY adsense, and the ads are on the right out of the way and blended well. I do fine, have a descent CTR and good ad relevancy. Per page impressions alone I'd make 3x what your making from all your ads combined by just running adsense. Moral of the story? Build your site for your visitors. Honestly, I had to force myself to look through your site because all the advertisements are annoying. I certainly wouldn't be a repeat visitor. You would do much better by blending your ads into your content and having a clean looking site.
Welcome to the forums, ECS! You will make more money and your site will undoubtedly get better with the more time you spend here. It's quite a phenomenon. **You should check out our "Cars thread"!
Ok guys. I've spent the past 2 days editing, changing and everything else, to create a slightly tweaked new look website. For the people who saw the site before and commented about it, I'd really appreciate you feedback now. No more pop up ads MUCH less banner ads new car pages layout newly tweaked homepage layout for what I hope is a more professional look newer & wallpaper sizes And a bigger focus on AdSense advertising. ANy feedback would be much appreciated. Any updates I may have missed, I have included in the homepage update. Comments anyone?
I suppose it looks better but it's still overwhelming. There's still a lot of unnecessary stuff going on. The main part of the site doesn't even start until halfway down the page. You should get up to ten posts and then post your site in the reviews forum here.
hmmm bugga I set it out like that as so that the view will read the details about the car prior to clicking the wallpaper images. So I was thinking, more reading stuff = better chance of reading ads beside the cars details etc, if that makes sense? And yes, once I whore up 5 more posts or so, I'll put it in the review section and ask people to critise the hell out of the site.
I like it much more, although it still lacks some streamlining. The left navigation for example looks like it's run together, maybe but some spacing between the categories. Ditch that very top ad above your header, and put it somewhere else. I do like it much better though.
Streamlining? Excuse my retardness, but what is streamlining? And what do you mean by the navigation menu being run together with what? SOrry for the questions, but I really do wish to improve my sites profitability. 8000 visitors/day this week, so traffic isn't the problem, but getting visitors to click the ads, however is. My AdSense impressions have quadrupled with these new layouts, but my CTR is still at a miserable 0.2% If I could just get it to ~5% that would be absolutely awesome. SO you think I should ditch the 460x68 fastclick banner ad at the top altogether, cuz well, theres nowhere else to put it haha. I can't wait til ~6 months time when I pay someone to do a complete overhaul of my site.