Anyone experiencing good earnings using Mambo/Joomla?

[fi5hbone]

I have this other site and I was thinking of bringing it to Mambo/Joomla. I handcoded this site but it was getting a bit too big for me and I also want to be closer to my visitors.

However I heard stories about how cms and adsense do not work together so I was wondering if anyone can shed some light onto this? Is anyone here earning well using Mambo or Joomla? What is the CTR like?

[icedowl]

Update: CTR continues to be low. Weirdly enough, number of ads served seems to have dropped as well. Sigh. I know there is supposed to be a drop, but surely not this big a drop right?

Keep in mind that it's still the weekend which could account for part of the drop. I've read here that some advertisers pause their ads on the weekend.

Aside from that, the mediabot most likely has to recrawl your pages to get the ads back on track. Also, are you following the heatmap? [google.com...]

[fi5hbone]

I did I did! Somehow, maybe it's the colours of the ads or the color of the new layout which makes the ad seems clicker friendly I guess? I'm not sure. This is surely depressing though.

[fi5hbone]

Update: I tweaked a bit of the ads. Hopefully, it could work now. Would anyone like to have a go at my site and like to tell me what's wrong?

I have this theory: My site layout is too predictable and very much like any other CMS. Thus users won't really click on it. What do you guys reckon?

[Kursk]

Didn't see anyone mention it, but with Joomla (and Mambo, but why would you stick w/mambo?) you have a few useful modules and mambots that you can utilize to place your ads.

When you use modules/bots, you don't have to mess with templates.

Moreover, it takes only seconds to change ad position, colors, format etc. on as many pages you'd like - one or one thousand. Create some channels and watch wich one works the best.

In addition to modules/bots I also put in adsense code right into static content.

Use all three: modules, mambots and manually inserted static content code and it works great.

I've been using Mambo (and now Joomla since it came out) for over two years. Been using Adsense since October last year, works fine with just a built-in default SEF. It's a bi-lingual site - Russian North Carolina community - Adsense peforms fine in combination with Joomfish.

[Kursk]

One more point, about SEF. In my personal experience, I'd rather stick to the built-in SEF (content/view/ etc.)
1. Someone already mentioned the issue with google indexing your site. Once it's done, it's better to keep links the way they are.
2. There is virtually no effect in terms of google ads when using other SEF (open-sef, etc.) at least on my site.
3. Open-SEF and other third party scripts do more sql queries and your load time will noticably increase. Your server loads will increase greatly.
4. Every time you update your Joomla core, you need to re-patch it, since other SEF scripts require core hacks. Also, some of them might not be readily available for the newest release.
5. Be prepared to deal with more bugs.
5. I've yet to see a working example of a third-party SEF that is compatible with bi-lingual sites.

[fi5hbone]

Did a few changes to my template. In the hope of seeing a better click through. But looks like nothing is improving. My friend said that my site looks too hmm ugly. LOL. but i actually thought that it was nice.

[fi5hbone]

Update:
For all those thinking of switching over to Joomla, I can say that having a site on a cms will not affect adsense earnings. It probably would for the first two days after you changed your layout, etc. but it should go back to normal.

But I guess if you written your own CMS then it's probably ok to just stick with it.