I've got what I think is a realtively busy web site, which is all centered around some software I develop and provide for free on my site. I've been running the website for about 18 months, and wondered about joining the adsense program to help cover my web hosting costs, but I'm having difficulting working out how much it'll be worth to me. Most of my traffic is generated through the forums I have on my site. According to the awstats for my website, I average about 2000 visits per day, and about 20000 pages served, and about 120000 hits (which I assume is pages/images/css files etc). I dont remember the last time I saw less than 60 people currently browsing the forums at any one time. I'm thinking about using a horizontal ad in the forum header, much like the one on this page, where there is already an empty space on my site. Can someone please make a guess for me about how much the adsense would make for me each month? My software is in the Home Theatre PC space, so lots of hardware sale sites ads would be well suited.
I would settle for an ad within the forum main. Because that get's you a better CTR... Estimate is hard to say, depends on your subject etc, but you should make something like $300 a month easily
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you mean, but I had intended to place the ad at the top of my main forum. I'm new to adsense, so I might be missing your point. Wow - and I was hoping for about $20 bucks to cover hosting. If that pans out, I'll be very happy... Thanks for the reply.
Take a look at forum.fok.nl, was the first I could find by searching forum... They have placed the banner under the menu, instead of above it. This will get the eyes of your visitor to cross the ads more often and therefor will get you more clicks...
In my opinion - running a forum that is pretty similar to yours in stats I personally wouldn't think that you'd make as much as $300 a month but you might expect to make $1xx.xx per month. That would be my best estimate - but it will largely depend on the value of the keywords you are served in your google ads and your click through rate. If they are good you may find yourself making a couple of hundred a month if they aren't so good then you might only make high $xx.xx a month, it all depends.
I have similar traffic to my board. My first month was still way over your hosting costs. I lease a server from a datacenter and it just covers my costs. I usually see $5/day.
Wow, that's nice for forums. I don't want to discourage you but most probably your income is going to fall down a little bit since your users will get used to the advertising. Don't take it wrong it's just a warning.
Yeah, I though that might be the case. I think it was the novelty factor of seeing the ads for the first time. Day two is looking like $10. bummer :-( Hopefully it'll stay above $5 on an average day.
I found the same thing with most of my established sites as well, but if you are earning $5+/ day off your forums you can be fairly happy - and that should more than cover hosting.
I was kicked out of adsense last year, and finally I was allowed back into the program. On my web page I have a lot of reciprocal links from different companies. I placed my adsense at the bottom of each page. The last time I did this I was clicking on the ads to make sure they work.. LOL my earnings for the first week was off the charts then they killed my account. I read ALL the guide lines and have redone my html on all my pages. I have made $0 in 5 days so far. Any pointers would be helpfull. please check out my site at http://MiamiCarpetCleaning.Com. I also own http://MiamiMailingList.Com and plan on placing it there too. Thank you for your help Michael Owner MiamiCarpetCleaning.Com