I have a New forum(phpbb). I am having right now 3000 impressions/day. I have placed only 1 banner in the top. Iam averaging around 2 clicks/Day and getting around 0.1$/Day maximum. Help
Show Adsense only to guests. Forum members use to read the posts and they don't click the banners. Use some CPM network ads (Tribalfusion, etc.) for them.
That's interesting, alephito. You suggest not showing ads to members? But, aren't they your target audience? They're obviously interested in your forum...
There's also a really good chance of some well-meaning members clicking the hell out of your ads and getting you booted.
I would avoid having different layouts for guests and members. The best thing to do is make certain you are well indexed by Google and trusting that guests will click. May I suggest that you place one banner between the first comment on any page and the second and a leaderboard at the bottom of every page. Further integrate the ad link units into the menu system. See above where it says "Digital Point Forums > Search Engines > Google > AdSense > Placement Help / Reviews > How to Increase CTR", place the ad link units directly above this.
Like Eric Giguere said, members are used to ads and ignore them lowering sharply the CTR. If you show CPM ads, you don't have to worry about CTR (and click fraud). Regarding the fact that members are the target audience, you have to think that the ocassional visitor is valuable audience too. My forum receives over 3,000 daily visitors through Google, and they are more likely to click an ad if they finish reading what they found.
But members usually complain if you fill the board with ads. And if they won't click, why would you still bother them? I would prefer to have them happy and let them create the content that will be found in search engines. Additionally, you have to take into account that small forums use to be the kind of sites that suffer more click fraud and, consequently, account cancellation. This is another reason to serve Adsense only to guests.
uhm went to the page and I saw : in an announcement posted by admin. This is a nono dude. I would take this off immediately if you don't want to get banned by G.