I am having an extremely difficult time monetizing my site www.gatorenvy.com I am looking for opinions on how I can make more money from it. I have no problem getting traffic to it, I just cant convert it to money. Current details: PR3 20,000 uniques/month Currently run adsense Currently has a "Shop" link in navbar Currently has a StubHub ticket affiliate on homepage left sidebar With all of this I make $30/month from Adsense, $20/month from Stubhub, and maybe $10/month from the Shop. With 20,000 uniques/month I should be making A LOT more. I just don't know what to do. I am open to suggestions. Should I seek out private advertisers? Dump Adsense for something else? Add a side column to the main forum pages? Change ad colors? I just can't seem to monetize this site properly. Please help me!
There are plenty of ways to monetize your site but it all depends on where the traffic is coming from. For instance, if most of your traffic comes from search engines then you could potentially add affiliate programs on there. You could also sign up for a company that pays you for CPM and that way you'd be getting paid simply from impressions to your site. So, if you're getting thousands and thousands of impressions monthly, you should get a decent chunk of change from that. I also wrote a post on how to monetize in different aspects if you want to check it out. Let me know if you need further help.
I'm not aware of any CPM companies that let you run their ads on forums. If you know of one, please tell. And yes, almost all my traffic comes from search engines.
lithman..... First of all, Nice looking site! You only seem to have just 1 horizontal adsense unit? Have you tried putting adsense in between your content on your pages? You can also add some vertical skyscraper units, along with the small link units. Just be sure to keep the integrity of your nice website. That should up your CTR..
I do display 728x90 adsense units after the 1st post on a thread. It is only visible to guests and regular forum members (people with less then 200 posts). I could add a side column on the forum...
With that kind of traffic your earnings from CPC ads sounds ok. You may have to use other ways like selling links yourself, sell some service and such to increase earnings more.
According to the ad(s), less than 3% of the visitors click on ads, so that $30 isn't that far off wrong. Those top Google ads are small, typical, and, boring. They do not stand out. Nowadays, with so many Google ads, many of us pass right over them without really seeing them. You don't have much of a selection for your visitors to buy from. Also put in pictures, and better sell words. Those Google ads you have up now, think about sending those advertisers an e-mail asking if they would like to put an ad in your site for the same price they are paying now, and he can get a bigger ad, along with a picture. You will get more money this way. No splitting it with Google. How long do your visitors stay? If it is less than, say, two minutes... That's another problem with overrated search engine traffic. You say most of that traffic is from search engines? So we are talking over 500 daily? You sure about that? You may want to double-check that. I took a look see, and you are not getting that kind of search-engine traffic, which means that $30 sounds about right. I didn't see any ads on and or near the bottom of the page. That is where they click on them the most, since that is where their eyes top.
When I look at your site there is too much going on for people to even notice that there are advertisements, everything blends in to the point where I don't know how to navigate let alone buy things from that singular StubHub link.
your traffic is nice, i you don't make much money then you want to optimize your ads. And also you can try cpm ads. I am using adsdaq which pays more. i got nearly $90 within 10 days.