3million pageivews, yet, barely reaching $100 in earnings..

what the HECK am I doing wrong? Help!

[skunker]

Okay, my site (historical photo gallery) is on target to hit 3 million pageviews this month (last year was 2.2 million) and yet, my fastclick is only earning me a measly $115 so far this month.

Is this wrong?! I think I can do better.....right? Or, do I have my hopes up too high?

Can someone point me in the right direction so I can stop wasting my time with Fastclick? I was rejected by Tribal Fusion for some reason.

Thanks for any information you can toss my way.

[FourDegreez]

Have you tried a network like cj.com and searched for potentially relevant advertisers that might match well with your audience? Have you applied to Google's AdSense?

[Zygoot]

Try applying for Burst Media or Casale Media.
Or try some affiliate programs such as Amazon - try promoting some books related to the photos.

[MovingOnUp]

Is there a reason you're not using AdSense instead of a banner network? Even if you just get a 0.1% CTR and $0.05 CPC (both of which are ridiculously low), you would do better than that.

From what I remember of your stats, you have a large number of page views per visitor. I's hard to monetize a large number of page views per visitor.

[skunker]

Yea, I am using adsense and it's doing pretty good. But I'm trying to milk the pages as much as possible:)

[ferraristi]

Sorry, I'm not sure where you are going wrong with Fastclick but between my sites Fastclick have delivered nearly 180,000 impressions so far this month I have just passed the $160 mark.

I did recently go through and weed out a lot of low paying ads which made a slight difference.

Are you only showing one banner type? My site uses four of their banners, the 768x90, pop-under, in-vue and skyscraper (but only as a default for when adsense has nothing for me)

[skunker]

Whoa, it's time for me to re-structure my banners and webpage layout.

Thanks for the reality check.

[zivkovicp]

dare I say it... promote adware / spyware... :o

I know that it's not the nicest thing to put onto your site but it doest pay good... I think the going rate is about $0.20 per US visitor and maybe $0.05 for non-US traffic.

All you do is require visitors to install the activeX in order to view your free content, and you get paid, plus you continue showing ads and pop-ups.

If you are willing to do a little work, I suggest trying to get people's email address via some sort of newsletter or Members Only area with better quality content... lot's of people will signup, then you have a way to offer content and affiliate products to them directly by mail, many will ignor it, some will welcome it... and buy products.

[skunker]

Heck ya, good points dude.

[GuitarZan]

Hey,

I would seriously reconsider the active x route/spyware route.

It is just plain sneaky, and you will lose visitors, and generally get a bad name. Don't promote this crap.

C.K.

[zivkovicp]

I can go both ways on this issue... it just depends on why you are promoting a particular website.

If you are doing it because you love the topic/website and DON'T care about making money, then don't do it becasue it's not nice and IF people found out, there exists the possibility that they will stop visiting.

If you are maintainging this site because you want to MAKE MONEY, and nothing else is as important as the cash, then I would consider milking each visitor for all he's worth. Chances are that 90% of your visitors are incabable of figuring out whats going on, and the rest will still come back for free content because they don't want to pay for it somewhere else.

Sometimes you have to look at this like a business, because it is (for some of us)... and put your pride or "ideals" off to the side for a while.

I don't want to suggest you do one or the other, I am just stating a fact that we all face... ugly as it may be sometimes.

[vik_c]

>>dare I say it... promote adware / spyware... :o

This is like shooting yourself in the foot if you're also an affiliate and promote affiliate programs through your site.

[MovingOnUp]

I agree. You'll be shooting yourself in the foot if you put up drive-by installation spyware.

If you ever decide to promote affiliate programs on your site, all of your visitors will be infested with spyware and the spyware will steal your commissions. Then, you'll be back here wondering why you're getting pathetic results from affiliate programs.

An even more important consideration is that your site has been built by word of mouth. People tell their friends about your site. If you infect everyone who comes to your site with spyware, that's going to stop. When was the last time you recommended a spyware-infested site to a friend?

You can make this work legitimately. Don't destroy your site for some short term gains.

[potato]

Hey Skunker!

That is awesome! I know 'of' someone who receives that many page views and makes $10 grand a month. The way he makes money is offering "memberships". He offers a premium service.

So that's where most of his money is. The other is he sales advertising space. He also sells link space.

The last thing he is doing to help generate money is buidling other websites and using his 2 big websites to promote them.

In your case he would try to sell memberships first.

I wish I was in the position you are in.

[skunker]

I wanted to thank everyone for answering some of my questions. I have dropped fastclick and now am doing fantastic with a much smaller banner ad network that is letting me achieve banner revenues of x,#*$!/month as compared to Fastclick's xxx/month.

You know who you are. Thanks!