Forum Moderators: skibum
We have keyword-based Amazon ads on nearly every page (in the top-of-page banner spot), but the revenue has been miserable. We also have several pages of Amazon items listed with individual item links. We almost make more from Google in one day than from a whole month of Amazon. In fact, even with as many impressions as we have, we probably get only one or two sales/week on Amazon. Perhaps not totally unexpected for a kid site, I guess.
We also have a little revenue from popups (amounting to maybe 25% of what comes from Adsense), but it's really more of an experiment at this point, and it's certainly not the ideal direction we'd like to take.
We've tried CJ before, and had zero sales after many tens of thousands of impressions. FastClick and a few other similar ad sites turned us down. Also tried AllClicks and friends, but the revenue there has been only a few cents a day.
I would appreciate any suggestions people might have on other possible ad sales or affiliate programs that might work for us. Our audience is mostly boys, roughly age 8 to 16.
Thanks,
Rick
As an Amazon Affiliate, you may want to try their forum. I find that they often have more useful info about AdSense than they do about Amazon (ironically enough). Seems a lot of the webmasters over there find themselves in the same predicament. :)
And, btw. Welcome to WW
Yes, I've read a lot of the postings at the forum at Amazon, but I'm still reluctant to use it to ask for alternatives to being an Amazon affiliate.
I read another posting here at WW about offering free games mixed with for-fee games/casino and related CPC ads. Even though it's not something I could include on every page, that might work for my demographic. Does anyone know of a good affiliate who offers that kind of thing?
As far as Amazon goes, I think I'm going to try dumping them all together, and changing my Google ads from a tower to the big 4-across banner at the top of every page. I'm hoping that a bigger Google ad will earn more than the smaller ad plus Amazon. It wouldn't take much of an increase for that to work out.
On a related note, does anyone here have experience in seeing what happens to traffic with and without popups/popunders? I'm not running popups on any pages with Google ads (just on a few pages that aren't even indexed by Google), although I do run popunders on a bunch of them. Another test I'm planning soon is to get rid of the popunders and see if the Google ad revenue goes up enough to offset the loss.
I'm also considering appying again to a couple of the ad networks like FastClick. I've read good things on WW about tribalfusion. Does anyone know which of these companies might be a little more lenient in the sites they accept than the others? We were turned down by FastClick, but I understand they are fairly picky.
offering free games mixed with for-fee games/casino and related CPC ads.
Tread carefully before advertising gambling sites on a site targeting kids. First, kids cannot legally gamble. Second, many parents will NOT allow their kids on a site that has gambling related advertising. And third, many other kid/parenting sites will not link to any site that does promote gambling or other non-family-friendly advertising. This would work for a college student or sport fan site, but I would definitely rethink putting any sort of gambling ads on a site for kids.
When you say "kid" what age group are you referring to? Elementary school? High school seniors?
Many people to get turned off with pop-unders, especially if there are more than 1 per page. The market for pop-ups and unders as we have known them is rapidly declining.
Have you considered the possibility of offering in-house advertising? There could be small businesses that cannot afford CJ rates, but would be interested in advertising on an impression basis or per month. Some sites do very well with this kind of exposure.
Your point about casino/gambling games is well taken. I hadn't considered that aspect, which is obviously an important one.
I would love to do in-house advertising, but I have no idea how to effectively persue it. I can easily put a link on the site that says "advertise with us", but beyond that is there a central marketplace for this kind of thing? I checked eBay and found a few auctions for banner impressions; maybe that's one way to try.
I am aware of some who do quite well with the eBay route, others not so well. You need to have the stats to back it up, it seems.
Never underestimate the power of an "advertise with us" page, with detailed specs and online advertising ordering. Here is some more information on this: [webmasterworld.com...]
Thanks for the info on starting an in-house ad program. Lots of good ideas there.
There's sure a lot of banner inventory on eBay, but it looks like the majority of it is either through various link exchange programs, unexplained ad rotation schemes, or on sites that don't know anything about their demographics. So maybe's there's room for a site like mine out there. Could be worth a test anyway.
However, I'm still interested in good CPC programs that might appeal to my demographic. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know.
