Normal growth?

slowly increasing...

[wkpride]

Started putting ads on a small site last year. At first I earned maybe $ .10/day. Maybe. Many zero days.
I continued to add pages over the past year. I'm now up to 600 pages and getting just under $2/day, with a peak of $125/month. I haven't really tweaked ads, I just keep adding info and pages. I'm a regional specific site, so MANY ads are the same.
Traffic is slowly increasing.
April '06 had 14k page impressions, 1.74% CTR & $ 59.00
April '05 had 40,000 hits
April '06 had 109,000 hits

I guess I'm wondering if the site has potential (financially). Has anyone started with numbers like this and made it.

Thanks!
KP

[dibbern2]

That's a really low CTR for many topics; it could be 6 to 10 times what you are getting. This depends on your niche, however, and you didn't describe that at all.

Can you give a little info without posting the url?

[revan]

I think there are 3 steps for having better revenues in Adsense.

1) Getting traffic.
2) Improving your current content.
3) Improving your ad performance.

You may say that why getting traffic is the first step.

In my experience, I could get targeted with some keywords with no so great content at all. Still #1. But when your pages are not well done, then you can have ad performance problems.
(Also, I do not recommend on concentrating in content at the beginning, without having traffic. I found myself, one time, working for a month for some keywords that were suppossed to have a terrific traffic, but it was bogus info).

Step #2: Improve your content. Google likes updated content (old content + fresh addition). I noticed that when my pages changed in design and content structure, better keywords appeared.

If your site is a regional site, with little content, then you are in trouble. Content, content, content (and varied content) is the key.

Step3: Ad placement.
Please notice the following. There are 2 defining aspects of Ad placement: Google side and User side.

Per instance, I noticed that Google likes having their ads placed in the middle of the page. In the Help page of Google Adsense, there is a section about "Optimization tips". There shows you a map where ad placement is preferred by Google. I tell you, it works!

Another, usual trick (totally approved by Google) is to have the adsense box with "no border" and the background color the same as your website. That is, the ad almost blends with your site. For me, that is kinda cheating, but since Google approves (and puts that technique in their help guides...

Also, please keep in mind the structure/design of your website. You must think where your ads could look more attractive for your users.

Anything else that could help you improve your site?

[sven1977]

I just checked out your site and it seems from a first glance that it's a picture site. Those usually perform terribly. I'm sorry, but you really need lots and lots of traffic to probably break the $10/day.