Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Most of my traffic is generated through the forums I have on my site. According to the awstats for my website, I average about 2000 visits per day, and about 20000 pages served (per day), and about 120000 hits (which I assume is pages/images/css files etc). I dont remember the last time I saw less than 60 people currently browsing the forums at any one time.
I'm thinking about using a horizontal ad in the forum header, where there is already an empty space on my site.
Can someone please make a guess for me about how much the adsense would make for me each month?
My software is in the Home Theatre PC space, so lots of hardware sale sites ads would be well suited.
It is all about testing on your own space, what works for someone else may not work for you.
I have heard of some that have done well with forums and others who do not and sometimes get banned on the basis of what others post.
Personally I would put adsense on the content portion of the site and banner ads from others on the forums.
Lastly, no one can say how much you will or can earn...test, test, test, and then test some more.
I am sure all of us went into this business on a toe basis, you know, stick your big toe in and if the water is right you ease in a little more?Yeah, I thought that might be the answer. I'm just in the process of setting up AdSense, but was curious if anyone could give me an indication. I guess I'll just have to wait an see.
It is all about testing on your own space, what works for someone else may not work for you.
Personally I would put adsense on the content portion of the site and banner ads from others on the forums.The content portion of my website is pretty much the forums. I've got a got a front page with a brief overview of my software, a screenshots page, a download link, and a link to the forums. The forums are very active, but I'd guess the other few pages are rarely visited. Or am I missing your point?
But that is you so you have to do what you feel is right for your site :)
Good luck on your new ADventure.
joining the adsense program to help cover my web hosting costs
It is true that forum don't do too much out of AdSense, but with the figures that you are giving I think you will get way more that your hosting expenses (assuming a regular hosting account). As ann says, only testing will give you the answer, use the 'forums heatmap' (I could not find the URL, but there is a heatmap for forums), and let it run for a week or so, then you will find out; just do not forget to update us back ;-).
Some of the ads have been a bit bizarre and off-topic. Is there much you can do to influence the types of adds that show up?
Also, you may find that waiting helps--targeting sometimes improves as time goes by.
$15 isnt to bad for a start, I have adsence at the top of my forums and just had a look over the last 7 days is just over $120 (happy enough with that).
aso it works best if your pages are not members only pages, if people need to register in order to read the posts then this causes real headache for adsence (at least in my opinion).
after adsense settles down on your site and starts displaying better targeted ads you may see an increase on that $15 a day.
please do yourself a BIG favour and make sure you dont mention the ads on the forum, and keep an eye on your members posting about the google ads, some members think they are doing you a favour by making a post telling people to click the ads, thats a big no and you will fnd yourself booted from adsence.
good luck with adsence
