Shouldn't I be earning more than this?

My eCPM rate seems pretty bad to me.

[cabbagehead]

I have a community + content website. I decided to start trying to monetize with with advertising. I've started with Google AdSense since its so easy to setup.
After about 1 week of tracking, my eCPM rate (cost per 1000 impressions) is $1.73. Frankly I'm stunned at how BAD that is. Am I expecting too much or something?

Can you guys lend me some context so I know better what I should be expecting? Is this as bad as I think it is, or par for the course? What can I do to improve it? Other ad networks? Ad positioning? Other?

Thanks.

[ineedmoney]

View this post I made here yesterday

[webmasterworld.com...]

[danimal]

cabbagehead, first split up the numbers in terms of community vs. content... it's generally assumed that content will always pay better than forums and the like.

once you have two different sets of stats to track, you can optimize each one of 'em a lot better.

use channels and such to differentiate between the two.

[TheDonster]

You should also check out this thread:

[webmasterworld.com...]

The summer season has started and many sites are at the beginning of an ad slowdown cycle. Not to say this is the problem on your site for sure but it is a tough time to launch new sites. Also one week is not that much time to get a feel for the potential. After about a month's stats you should see a clearer picture.

[MediaSpree]

Where on your pages are the ads placed?

[cabbagehead]

Yeah, perhaps I'll try splitting up the channels - I was already thinking that may prove interesting.

At the moment however I have to say that I have maybe 500 uniques a day and I'm making maybe $3.50 per day. Its terrible. Not even worth my time to have installed it, frankly. If that's all I can make from ad sense off this thing, then why risk exposing my current memberbase to ads from my competitors? Even if/when my traffic scales up 10x ... the $$$ still wouldn't make it worthwhile.

Thanks for the link ... I'll check it out.

[garyr_h]

$1.70 for 1000 impressions? Hm... I would LOVE to have that much. Right now I hover around $0.90-$1, eCPM. Frankly, it depends on many different things. Ad placement, ad colors, types of visitors, type of content, etc. etc. Also, forums/members sections would get less since it would have a large amount of returning visitors.

[europeforvisitors]

After about 1 week of tracking, my eCPM rate (cost per 1000 impressions) is $1.73. Frankly I'm stunned at how BAD that is. Am I expecting too much or something?

Possibly. Don't forget that the $1.73 is your net share of the eCPM, not gross revenue. Also, when you say that your eCPM is bad, do you mean bad compared to other numbers that you've heard bandied about here, or bad compared to other sources of revenue on your site? For some topics or types of content, an eCPM of $1.73 may not be bad at all.

Another thing to consider is why users are visiting your site. Are they researching ways to spend their money, are they looking for community, or...? (I'll bet that, if Brett were to use AdSense on Webmaster World, for example, the eCPM wouldn't be very exciting, simply because most of us aren't looking to buy anything and would quickly become "ad blind" as we browsed the forums.)

Ultimately, eCPM is important mainly as a way to compare revenue from different sources. What really matters is whether the bottom-line revenues are worthwhile. For a site with a significant amount of traffic, an eCPM of $1.73 could mean a lot more money than a $10 or $20 eCPM on a more targeted site with relatively little traffic.