Hi all, I am looking for some advice. I currently run a gaming blog, with solid traffic after launching a few months back (around 250,000 uniques per month and growing). Most of my traffic is US-based (around 60%) but I have a good spread across Australia, UK and Canada as well. I have tried a number of different ad networks, and am waiting for that 500,000k benchmark before I try my luck with the "big boys". In the mean time, I have settled on Adsense because it's the "cleanest" and most efficient. The problem is that the CTR rate is very low (0.17% average for the past week), and my Page RPM fluctuates between $2 and $1. The most I'll make in a day is around $14. Now I interpret this as okay, but far from great. I've tried really hard to optimise my site for ads, and fit them into those "hot" areas as much as I can without ruining the user experience. I guess my question is, what sort of alternatives are available to me to best monetise this traffic? Are my results good, or could they be better (I'm sure they can be)? And what networks (if any) should I look into to sell ad space on the site directly? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Are you focused on a particular niche in gaming? Online FB types, online WOW types, or PC off/on line types, etc... Think of the tangents to the games themselves, for the hardcore gamers of WOW types think about having a computer section through a drop shipper, if items can be created and imported to the game see about getting some made and selling them, etc... I am not in to gaming, but, from what I have read, heard, and seen, these are a couple things that come to mind from my thimble full of knowledge. Always think around the edges of your main niche and see what else you can provide your visitors, and, how to get them to interact with the site.
Thanks for the response. My blog is fairly broadly: the primary audience (based on marked research) is "hardcore" gamer with a high purchase intent, interests across predominately console (Xbox and PlayStation), and mobile games. I am trying different affiliates -- Amazon, Play-Asia -- seeing decent results but not much. Interaction around the site is quite good...it's just the monetization aspect I am struggling with.
Have you tried g2a program or something similar? I think that would have a bit of success. Especially if you're writing targeted articles about a game, you can leave the link there with where they can buy it at a cheap price. Be sure that the link you put there has your affiliate id. You can also try and monetize the mobile traffic with CPA ads.
There are many different things which play big role in your site revenue. 1. Your site need to get most % of visitor from Search Engine to get high revenue from AdSense. 2. You need to play with Theme if you are getting lots of visitor from Search Engine. 3. You need to find highest Clicked area on your site & you need try different type of ads unit for week over week.
Hi there, Gtburst.com is an adnetwork with a large portfolio of gaming publishers. The network does up to 100K clicks/ day. You can target by gaming niche, country and more. Rates depend on country, varying from 0.02 to .55 cents per click. We have a variety of standard banner sizes (100x100, 468x60, 336x280, 160x600, 120x600, 300x250, 728x90). PM or Skype/email me at for more info. Thanks!