Hello, I run a news / political blog, not posting the link, as peoples political opinion is so different, I don't want anyone click spamming me or anything. anyhoo. im getting around 4K visits per day for quite a while now, my alexa rank has now dropped by 10's of millions to just over 1 million naturally, its not one that I set up to monetize, its my passion. around 75% / 80% per day are unique, and most of my traffic comes from social media, i have a facebook page with thousands of followers, and when i share an article, it tends to get many reshares and my 3 articles for the day will get around 3 to 5k views. Im only making around $10 (£7) per day (70 ad clicks), with adsense, and think based on the traffic i get im probably missing out somewhere on how to monetize my website properly. any idea's, thanks
Just try to use Native ads on your site. As I know Native Advertising earn more money then Banner on a site which have huge amount of Social visitor
Study what ads are appearing on your site by adsense. Can you find similar products, services etc you can advertise? How about some CPA offers that would match the current ads showing? And as stated above, work in native ads to your site. They work fantastic. What problems does your typical visitor have? Can you find something that can solve those problems? Can you create and sell something that solves one of the typical problems your visitors have?
Pro Tip: You're going to need to keep track of your data in detail. Start with AdSense (they are the king) and track CPM and actual RPM (which factors in fill rate as well). Then branch out to other networks that will take you (at 4K a day, you'll have a selection) and replace or add one unit at a time and see what works. Slow and steady makes the money. The people who change stuff every day never spend the time to optimize.
Be sure to have your ads properly placed on your site. Having ads placed in view-able and unique areas can cause advertisers to place higher bids for a particular space. (Each ad should have it's "own" space) Don't place two of the same ad sizes next to each other, and don't stack ads on top of one another. I'd highly recommend having no more than 3 ads to a page - regardless of whether they are banner, native, video etc. One above the fold, one below the fold, and one in the center of your content is a great setup to have. Stick with primarily CPM or CPV networks for now. Once your site reaches between 10-25k daily impressions, then start looking to add CPC networks into the mix.
You can use native ad networks like Taboola, Outbrain, Revcontent etc. All of them are work good with news sites.
Also consider selling ad space. With unique traffic like that you could charge a pretty decent monthly price.
What about geo stats on your website? I would try to look for ad networks from visitors countries or something universal like Google Adsense.
With 4k visitors a day, have you considered a membership / subscription spin-off / add-on to the site. You could offer additional more in-depth content, or other digital products such as ebooks, or reference material on the subject matter - maybe even a weekly / monthly e-publication similar to the mainstream. Still keep your main site free. If you had this upsell with a monthly subscription of $20 and 10% of your readers subscribed - well, you do the math ;-)
For the moment I work with Ad Maven on my websites and I recommend them. Their pop ads generate me very high revenues.
Jay - I think you need to know a lot more about your traffic. I mean a huge amount more. I have sites that get around 100 - 500 visitors/day and they have Alexa ranks of less than 50,000 (yes 50K). On 4,000 unique visitors per day, you should be knocking on the door of Alexa 10,000 or even much less! The only way a traffic of 4K/day gives you an Alexa of a million is if you have a massive bounce rate of 95%. May I suggest you install 'Open Web Analytics' it is free and it gives you better analytics than Google Analytics - the last time I compared the two. You will soon see your bounce rate, traffic sources and more. Next, work on reducing the bounce rate ... that is the easiest way of increasing your income ... the hard work is already done, the visitors are there but something or probably things on your site are spooking them as fast as they get there (assuming your bounce rate is anything higher than 40%). By taking a few simple actions on your own site, totally under your own control, it follows that if you halve your bounce rate you will double your income. The other easy task is this: figure out your top 5 traffic sources by volume or from your analytics. Now figure out which one is giving the most clicks, i.e. which is the most profitable. Focus on getting more of that traffic. Look, when you know a traffic source, it is not hard to get more of it, is it! I highly recommend you also survey your audience - especially the one from the productive traffic source(s) with a popover. Find out what brought them over and what they expect/want. Once you master your traffic and which part is really working, only then you ought to devote energy to increasing the income per click or visitor. Otherwise, you are just shooting in the dark. Some action will work some of the time without you knowing why and you cannot massively increasing your income. And you can always come back with traffic details and get accurate help for increasing income. I hope this helps