Doing something wrong with Adsense?

8000 visitors..hardly 4$ a day

[Rick42]

Hello there everyone.

I have been lurking about this section for quite some time but haven't managed to find an answer that will resolve my Adsense problem.

Here is the situation: I have a site that targets a relatively young crowd (demographics show that the majority are between 13-28) and I get a steady 7000-8000 unique visits a day, with about 1.3 million pages viewed per month.

My problem? I average 4.03$ in Adsense per day! Now, I am wondering if anyone else has these kind of statistics? Because from what I see...its very feasible to be making...20...50 maybe even 100$ every day with this kind of traffic.

I try to put the most relevant ads on my site (blue widget ads for blue widget section...red widget ads for red widgets section, etc.) and I keep the ads as high on the page as possible..but still...it does not seem to be doing the job for me.

Can anyone care to lay out the basics and not-so-basic key points to successful Adsense campaign running?

Thanks to all in advance.

[hunderdown]

You didn't mention your CTR or site's subject area. I assume the CTR is fairly low? That may be due to your demographics. Teenagers and young adults aren't shopping/spending money online. And if the subject area of the site attracts low-value ads, then that could be a factor too....

One option might be to do some research--you could even poll your visitors--to find out what they DO shop for online. Create a section of the site where you review those products, and you can not only put AdSense on those pages, but affiliate program links to buy the items.

And there may not be a way to fix this, as some sites work better with AdSense than with others.

[Opera14]

Have you experimented further with your ad placements rather than just sticking them as high up as you can on the page?

[Tearabite]

I have ONE page on my site that caters to 14-25 year olds. My site is new, and i dont get much traffic, but THIS page gets around 500-1000 uniques per day.
My CTR on this page is way below .05% .
CTR on my other pages is around 9%-25% (but much lower traffic).

My guess is that the people (kiddies) that come to this page are
1) looking for FREE information
2) dont have money to buy anything anyway
3) dont have the attention-span of a knat, and quikly vanish or get distracted by something else bright and shiny on the internet

i've pretty much given up on this 'kiddy' page and try to focus on getting traffic to my higher paying pages, which has a completly different audiance than this one page.

[crick]

Tearabite, Thats interesting. I thonght many younger users were addicted to clicking. Some people suggested they were the biggest clickers, but I guess not.

[Tearabite]

certainly not in my case..

however, my page has a particular type of information that the kids are coming to get.. they get the info (copy & paste it) then move along.

[Heartlander]

Rick-are you utilizing a forum?
If so, your earnings are on par with many thousands of other forum webmasters.

[Rick42]

You didn't mention your CTR or site's subject area. I assume the CTR is fairly low? That may be due to your demographics. Teenagers and young adults aren't shopping/spending money online. And if the subject area of the site attracts low-value ads, then that could be a factor too...

Yes. It is roughly 0.4%. But i have another website, that targets a very young aged audience, but still seeing a steady 2.0%.

Have you experimented further with your ad placements rather than just sticking them as high up as you can on the page?

Well.....if you mean different locations, then yes. I've placed them pretty much on all sides of the pages.

Rick-are you utilizing a forum?
If so, your earnings are on par with many thousands of other forum webmasters.

nope.

[Andrew Bassett]

Rick, it sounds like you should look into CPM advertising rather than Google's CPC advertising. I think you'll find that CPM is much more suited to your site and will actually make you a lot more money.

[cg6453]

Andrew,

I am in the same boat and now a victim of smart pricing, how do u find out more about Google's CPM advertising, and do you know roughly what an average payout is per 1000 for CPM ads? Thanx a lot

[JollyK]

For what it's worth, I get about the same traffic (7 - 8000 a day) on one of my sites, and a little over half my visitors are under 18. (Actually, I should say half of "registered users" which is more accurate, since I don't know the ages of all visitors who don't register.)

It is definitely not the most lucrative site, but after fiddling around with ad placement including link units and so forth, I've managed to get that site up to about $10.00 a day.

I would definitely recommend checking the Google "heat map" and seeing if you can place ads in the "hot" areas. Also, blending in link units has worked really well for me, as well as blending all the ads into the site in general. I've tried ads that stick way out as well as blending, and I have to say that blending has worked the best for me.

It also depends on the kind of site and the topic, too, but if you're only making $4 a day, you can probably make $1.00 CPM and have $8 dollars a day with a CPM network.

JK

[Andrew Bassett]

Andrew,

I am in the same boat and now a victim of smart pricing, how do u find out more about Google's CPM advertising, and do you know roughly what an average payout is per 1000 for CPM ads? Thanx a lot

Unfortunately, Google has a fairly difficult CPM system. You have to get advertisers to sign up for your site directly, and good luck recruiting them without demographic statistics.

I'm also looking for a CPM solution (MUCH better for repeat traffic / entertainment sites) but the options are few.

[ronburk]

but THIS page gets around 500-1000 uniques per day.

Then why won't Google give you more money? Where does Google get that money anyway? Oh, looks like they get it from advertisers. Why did the advertisers give Google that money? Good grief -- they're actually selling products! They must be hoping that those ads are actually going to get people to buy their products!

Well, there's nothing you can do about that, is there? I mean, you're a PUBLISHER, and we all know that publishers don't pay any attention to their advertisers. I mean, newspapers don't run auto reviews on Friday/Saturday to go with all the weekend car shopping ads, and women's magazines don't write articles about cosmetics just because of all those billions of dollars of cosmetics advertising dollars, so surely you shouldn't be expected to analyze the advertising market and use that knowledge to better monetize your readers, right?

• Know, measure, or guesstimate the demographics of the people visiting that page (knowing what info they're trying to get is usually a big clue).
  
• Try to find products/services that are not trivially cheap that are marketed to that audience and that exhibit appreciable AdSense inventory.
  
• Build one or more pages whose editorial content is useful and attracts the ads identified in the previous step.
  
• Replace some or all of the AdSense ads on the high-traffic page with "house ads" that entice qualified visitors over the other page(s) you've just created.
  
• Note the word "qualified". SmartPricing means it's just as important for the house ad copy to discourage visitors who aren't likely to buy those products/services as it is encourage those who are.
  
• Sometimes the better money is in branding instead of products/services; be prepared to make the appropriate copy and accept CPM ads.
  
• Many advertisers avoid AdSense like the plague. If you happen to represent a really good match for one of those advertisers, be prepared to find a polite way to bring that fact to their attention. One way to do that is to just give them a free hotlink yourself temporarily; if you can really deliver an appreciable stream of qualified traffic that converts for them, and if they are savvy spending their ad dollars and analyzing ROI, that can be enough for them to notice you in their weblogs and say "hey, how come that guy pulled that useful hot link? Maybe we should advertise on his site."
  
• Since you control the quantity and content of the "house ads", you can repeat these steps for multiple advertising targets. Obviously, the traffic arriving at those "next step" pages will be less than what arrived at the initial high-volume page, but just as obviously, they will be better qualified to purchase those products/services.
  

Any high traffic page with low returns is an opportunity to sell -- if you can build content and visitaton paths to match up the qualified buyers in that traffic stream with the appropriate advertisers.

[marlin]

Put ads as high as you can? When i put the adsense below the article, my earns doubled. Why? People goes to your site to see your content, not ads. They read your article and when theres nothing else to do... clicks on your ads!

[Andrew Bassett]

Put ads as high as you can? When i put the adsense below the article, my earns doubled. Why? People goes to your site to see your content, not ads. They read your article and when theres nothing else to do... clicks on your ads!

Exactly. It's all about psychology. If you're pushy with your ads, you'll simply push your visitors away from your ads.

[fredw]

Yes. The 468x60 ad units at the bottoms of my article pages do very well.

[bbcarter]

I have ONE page on my site that caters to 14-25 year olds. My site is new, and i dont get much traffic, but THIS page gets around 500-1000 uniques per day. My CTR on this page is way below .05% .
CTR on my other pages is around 9%-25% (but much lower traffic).

Guys, it's against AS TOS to disclose your CTR without Google's specific permission.

As for the earnings- even with maximizing ad position and palette, some niches don't get much clicking or don't have high bids- e.g. I found that sports and celebrities were horrible topics for earning money via AdSense.

[Demaestro]

Guys, it's against AS TOS to disclose your CTR without Google's specific permission.

I think that only applies when you do it along with your domain.

[FrostyMug]

i agree with bottom ad placement. I once tried (on advice of this forum) to remove all ads and just leave one ad block on the top of the page, before the article, and my earnings and clickthroughs dropped. as soon as I restored the old layout, it all returned to normal.

banners on the bottom are very important.

[joaquin112]

shopping/spending money online

Tell that to me... I've spent well over 2k online this last year alone.

[billcale]

In general, you need to know WHY visitors come to the pages of your website (if they come as the result of a search, then you have clues in your page title, headings and throughout your body copy). If the ads on your page satisfy the *why*, then expect clicks to be forthcoming. If not, don't expect too many clicks.

As an example, if your visitors come to purchase something, you need to determine if that something is available in the ads on your page. If they are determined as NOT coming to purchase something, generally expect a very low CTR.

A good example is Google's own often cited "image pages". These are generally very poorly converting pages - sometimes no matter how much associated text is on the page - because the pages are reached as a result of searches for images. In this case, a great deal of traffic may be generated but visitors may just want to look at the images, not necessarily buy and you'll get very few clicks.