I have a two month old forum with about 450 members, and over 7000 posts. One click on that forum gets me about 10 cents in AdSense. But I have this blog that I made about 3 weeks ago, and two AdSense clicks got me $1.18! Should I give up on my forum and work more on my blog? I've been advertising/promoting my forum like 24/7, heh.
Usually traffics on board don't convert well. Is it your forum and blog on same domain? I mean sub domain?
It depends on the ad that was running on your blog at that particular time when it got clicked. You never know with google adsense. Sometimes, you get high-paying ads on a site and sometimes you don't. You might get some more paying ads on your forum at times. You never know.
Nope. They are not related to eachother in any way. My forum is self-hosted with it's own domain name, and my blog is just a free blogspot blog, lol.
I agree, forums are notoriously difficult to monetize with ppc advertisers like adsense, if its a popular forum you are better off selling banner space privately.
will it be fair to forum members if you shutdown forum? people on forums usualy develop blindnes for ads
That's what I plan to do, but I intend to advertise/promote my blog more now. Yes the forum is an SMF forum, but it's not L4DF if that's what you were thinking. I'm not shutting down the forum...when I said "should I give up on my forum" I meant "give up on trying to make money" from it.
Hey if your making more money from your blog then go with it and work on it a but more. But keep your forum there and let the members mingle among themselves. To let your forum sit without you logging into will require you to have a couple good moderators.
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15288 Smf forum usually don't rank well due to session id. vBulletin is the best shot. Hope this help.
Well, then just switch your focus to developing your blog which in the end pays you more. I'm not suggesting that you should totally abandon the forum but it's just that you now know how to prioritize and divide your time.
Promote your blog on the forum, get more traffic and more clicks, thus making more money. This way you'll also find out if your forum traffic is more or less resistant to adsense ads?
The forum part of my site is about 2 years old, 2600 members and 100,000 posts. The forum accounts for 48 percent of my clicks but only 38 percent of my monthly earnings with AdSense. It is very imporant but the CTR it lower (about 1 percent) and the amount per click is also lower. They key for me is to keep the forum growing and continue to build other pages on the site with a higher CTR at a higher amount per click. I would do both. If you have a community forum try and start threads about things you know generate more per click. While my site is about relationships we also talk a lot about travel, phone cards, technology, and those threads display ads which pay better.
mechpoint, in make money with google adsense you should do many trial and error.that is my advice.continue your forum.may i see your forum?below is my forum amirulcyber forum