What is a good amount of traffic needed to get decent returns from adsense?

First off, here is my site:

http://quotevoid.sitesled.com

Can anyone tell me what I need to work on? Better ad placement? Better layout? More content? Anything wrong with my code? Do I need better "meta tags", I think thats the terminology?

Anyways, I get about 200-300 hits a day sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Most of it all comes from "quote of the day" topics I make on various message boards that I go to. Only about 10-20 hits actually come from search engine traffic.

I have only made about $13 from adsense in about five months time. Is that about right for the amount of traffic I am getting, or am I doing something wrong?

I am totally lost here, I really have no idea where to even start with improving my site, other than adding more content, I'm just not sure what I should be doing/worrying about. I would really appreciate if someone could just tell me what to start with and then I guess I'll come back when I have more questions.

Thanks for any information. I've been reading a few topics and this board seems very helpful and nice! Its rare to find a board like this lol.

 

Perhaps try moving you Adsense down towards the center of the page. Have look at Googles Adsense heatmap it works.

 

alright, I might try that and see how it looks. I was thinking of putting it right above the search box, I don't know why I didn't, might try that.

Thanks!

So, still alot of questions unanswered =P, but I guess thats bound to happen when I ask like 50 questions in one post. Any more information is appreciated Thanks everyone!

 

make unique content
most of it looks like copy and paste

 

Well it is a quote site . . .theres not much original content to be made. Unless you were talking about making some other kind of content. I'm not sure what I could add. I would like to be able to do something daily though, other than the quote of the day at the bottom of the page, something to make my visitors want to come back every day instead of just when they are looking for a certain quote. I'm not sure what I could do daily though, I guess I'll have to think about that.

Thanks for the input =)

Any other suggestions?

 

Why not implement a Google Adsense for searh box?

 

Put pictures next to your adds and like usedmac said have a look at the google heat map. Your ads should be in your content not around it in my opinion.

 

I find 2000 and up gets decent returns.

At 2000 you can expect at least 15 dollars a day with good ad placement, relevant ads, and a high CTR (5-6%)

 

just my 2c worth..

you get people going to the site to look for quotes, the ads i saw were in no way related to what i wanted so there was no reason for me to click an ad.

 

I just posted a message that might help, rather than copy the text here, you can see it at http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=107251

(sorry, I cant post live links yet)

 

Alright, well thanks to all the responses, I think they will help out.

Usedmac, I already have a search box from google adsense? Did you not see it? Or do you mean I should add it to every page, or a different part of the page? I was hesitant to add it though, because I don't think google has indexed all my pages, so when someone searches for something, it isn't necessarely going to be found but it might still be on my sight. I submitted a sitemap yesterday but I don't know how long it takes for google to recognize all my pages


Munna, I think I will try to move my ads to better places, atleast on the homepage. On the quote pages I wasn't sure where to put them sense its such a large amount of text, I wasn't sure if I should have a horizontal link bar every like 30 quotes or so, or a vertical bar, or if I should do one of their affiliate programs, like the "join firefox" or "join adsense" so I ended up adding some of those in there. I'm not sure what kind of pictures I should add next to the ads, but I will give it a try I guess.

Joss, well right now like I said I'm only getting about 200-300 hits a day on a good day and my ctr is always like .35 or something crazy low like that, I don't think its ever been over 1%, but 2000 hits is a reasonable goal, and $15 a day would be GREAT.

Tommo, how exactly should I go about doing that? I think google bases what is in the ad bars by the content on that page right? Well I tried adding a lot of "quotes" and "quotations" in the first two paragraphs of the page in hopes that I would get a better selection of ads, but that obviously didn't work. How would you suggest I fix that?

AllYearFootball, nice site, I agree it looks better with the animated gifs. But that isn't part of google adsense is it? Where would I go about getting some ads like that?? Also, did you select those ads yourself, or is it kind of like adsense where google just picks the links for you?

Thanks again guys, please keep the suggestions coming, this seems like valuable information lol. It looks like my main focus right now should be changing my layout a bit to try and make everything fit better, I would just like to have an idea of what needs to be implemented into the layout before I kill myself trying to make one and then having ot change it the next day.

Any more help is appreciated =)

 

baillabong7329, you totally ignore the most important reply of this thread:

You have to add content. What you have now is 5 tutorials? Not only poorly written, but also poorly presented and no exciting subjects. How do you ever expect to make $25 a day with this or have 3,000-5,000 visitors daily?

Did you try to submit them to good-tutorials or other related sites? A descent tutorial at Good-Tutorials will send you 10,000visitors a month, that is if you're clever about the timing and it's a good tutorial, with a popular subject and cool looking tumbnail.
Content, content, buddy, I can't say it enough. Stop wasting time fine tuning your site when you have to little traffic to get a clear picture as how your changes actually affect your site. Be honest to yourself; you know already (but you're not willing to take action) that if you would have 100 descent tutorials on your site, well presented and tested and submitted to 25 tutorial sites that you can afford a brand new computer in no time.

 

ahhh, when he said new content I automatically thought about the quotes. I didn't even think about the tutorials. Yes, I only have like 5 or 6 tutorials, and they are all, or atleast most, submitted to good-tutorials and pixel2life. The problem is most of them were submitted along time ago from a different site. The admin ended up deleting his site so I moved them to mine and I think I probably lost alot of would be visitors from the time when he deleted the forum to when I posted them on my site.

I would like to get up to 100 tutorials lol that would be amazing. Its mostly suppose to be a quote site though, but some of the traffic does come from tutorials. I submitted the "electric eye" tut to pixel2life and good-tutorials about a week ago and it just got added to pixel2life, however good-tutorials turned it down, not sure why, guess it isn't good enough. I already have about 380 hits today, mostly from that I'm sure. Its hard to come up with original tutorials . .everything has been done lol, but your right I should work on that and getting more quotes as well.

I guess I'll work on my content and layout and make a new thread in a few weeks and post how things are working out. Thanks everyone, anything else?

Also, John, you said I have no exciting subjects for my tutorials. What in your opinion would be some good tutorials to make? I know how to do lots of things in photoshop . .I just never think of things people would like to know. I'll work on it though, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

 

Your ads are nearly impossible to see. Move them down below the google search but above the categories. That's where people are clicking on things. People are generally looking at the middle of their screen. Not the top. You want the ads located so that when the page first loads they're in their line of sight.

 

I just moved the ads around a bit and it definitley looks better IMO. I still think I'm going to create a new layout so I have more to work with. I'll post back again if I change something.

 

If you are looking for just traffic to your site, look at web1000traffic.com. They provide pretty good results and can target to your niche.

 

I would imagine cpc would be prewtty low on quote sites. I think the ad placement on the quotes is good. It should get a lot of click through.

 

Don't pay for traffic. form those kind of sites. The traffic is worthless.

 

It's not always about traffic quantity in my opinion. I think it's more important to have QUALITY TRAFFIC.

Traffic, visitors INTERESTED IN YOUR SITE!!