Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I have a pure content site on PC/Mac hardware, and I get around $9.5 effective CPM for first 8 days of May. My April average was $8.5 CPM. Comparatively, my TribalFusion yields effective CPM of $1.6 (net). So, for me, AdSense makes sense.
This number takes my page impressions and revenue into account. I think evaluating Adsense with effective CPM would be better since CTR, CPC aren't useful in telling the whole story. Only comparing effective CPM with your other programs will tell whether or not you should continue to run AdSense.
I've never tried anything other than google, but I'm actually surprised I'm making even this much.
Previous discussions indicated some people have a PER-CLICK earnings about the same as the CPM quoted by irock.
would be my [total earnings] divided by my [impressions / 1000]
we've never made more than 10$ a day (average) with any advertising service, adsense included.
If I were making $8 per thousand on the impressions I give Google... I'd be a very happy fellow indeed *and* they'd probably hand deliver my checks.
Makes me think pure content and selling advertising of any kind is not a very profitable proposition. How can anyone afford to get traffic with a visitor value of less than a penny? You'd have to have a million visitors a month to even come close to making a living.
MQ
Am I the only one who thinks these are ridiculously low? For eCommerce sites we typically have sales of at least $2,000 per thousand visitors ($2,000 CPM) with at least 35% margins, and for any site that is even remotely targeted I want CPM of $1,000.Makes me think pure content and selling advertising of any kind is not a very profitable proposition. How can anyone afford to get traffic with a visitor value of less than a penny? You'd have to have a million visitors a month to even come close to making a living.
MQ
Most sites aren't ecommerce sites. Of course ecommerce sites make more money - but they get targeted visitors. I think if you tried to get $1,000 CPM for advertising on a content site you would find it very, very difficult.
If you regularly get high traffic to a content site, then selling advertising is worth it to cover the hosting/ domain costs and pay you something as well. To most people running websites isn't a living - it's more of a hobby....
If you want to make a living from it - then sell the advertising yourself, run your own ecommerce site, or do web design for people....
However remember that what "isn't close to making a living" - may be a lot of money to foreigners outside the US (when the Adsense dollars are converted into local currency).
First of all, I think we have different game rules. Content sites are easier to start than those that are selling their own stuff, because of all the overhead & start up cost.
Second of all, content sites have a much easier way to generate traffic than e-commerce sites. But given your high sales value, I can see you can generate decent traffic via CPC ads.
Thirdly, ecommerce sites dont' necessarily mean more profitable since there are other risks for merchants.
I mean, if you got all the numbers figured out, selling your own stuff is much more secure and lucrative. Content sites need to do so much more like different partnerships to get decent income. So, we do our own number games to figure out what works for us.
The $8.5 CPM I got... is coming from AdSense. I have other partnerships that give me more than that for the same amount of traffic.
You'd have to have a million visitors a month to even come close to making a living.
Depends your definition of making a living. If I have a million visitors, I think my revenue would be at 10 times than what I get right now. And that's really good for me. I mean if you were in India, you could become a king... or if you live in Tokyo, good luck man... their cost of living is sky high there.
1,000,000 X $.01 = $10,000
I would be happy makin $9,000 net a month. It is more than what my real job pays me :)
If you regularly get high traffic to a content site, then selling advertising is worth it to cover the hosting/ domain costs and pay you something as well. To most people running websites isn't a living - it's more of a hobby....
So it seems, a hobby. Nothing wrong with that ofcourse and Adsense will cover hosting costs for most.
Or maybe one can afford to run a site at 1c/visitor, if he happens to live in a very low-cost country. Some will say "if i had a million visitors", yeah right ;-) It's not that simple. And a million visitors would probably not be a "focused audience".
Anyway, I'll be pausing Adsense for the moment. I would like to ask G to offer to content-sites the ability to specify a minimum EPC, so as to better reflect the supply-demand equation.
You guys may want to mosey on over to the adsense tos for a gander at article 7 where you agreed not to release "click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google"
<sigh> Discussions in violations of Adsense TOS keep coming up with tiresome frequency :(
It seems it's not a matter of what people agreed to... but what they can get away with under the cloak of annonymity :(
Am I the only one who thinks these are ridiculously low? For eCommerce sites we typically have sales of at least $2,000 per thousand visitors ($2,000 CPM) with at least 35% margins, and for any site that is even remotely targeted I want CPM of $1,000.
Some of the CPMs that have been quoted are extremely low, but why do you assume that such minuscule CPMs are universal?
BTW, comparing e-commerce sales to advertising revenues is like comparing apples and oranges. I don't think you'll find that THE NEW YORK TIMES, CONDE NAST TRAVELER, or SURVIVOR are earning CPMs of $2,000, and they're doing okay. :-)
Makes me think pure content and selling advertising of any kind is not a very profitable proposition.
If that were true, magazines, newspapers, TV networks, and radio stations wouldn't exist.
Advertising-supported content sites can be extremely profitable.
How can anyone afford to get traffic with a visitor value of less than a penny? You'd have to have a million visitors a month to even come close to making a living.
Not all content formats, topics, and sites are as profitable as others. A pirate radio station run out of somebody's attic may not make any profit, and a zine distributed in the local coffee house may not be very profitable, either. But that doesn't mean some people aren't making a good living from radio broadcasting or magazine publishing.
For eCommerce sites we typically have sales of at least $2,000 per thousand visitors ($2,000 CPM)For Adsense that would mean $2/click and a 100% CTR.
I would venture to say that there is no topic <Not even the famous lawsuit happy disease> that would bring $2,000 ECPM or even $1,000 ECPM.
I can see where there would be a few hovering around $100, but they would be very very few.
we typically have sales of at least $2,000 per thousand visitors
That doesn't really mean much other than as an indicator of your cash flow. As has been said, you are comparing apples and oranges. ROI is a more valid comparison. Content sites don't generally carry large inventories, don't need storage, no freight charges, no carrying charges on accounts, very few returns, no mark-downs for obsolete inventory, etc. The ramp up is quicker and the investment (usually) lower, so the risk is smaller.
You guys may want to mosey on over to the adsense tos for a gander at article 7 where you agreed not to release "click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google"<sigh> Discussions in violations of Adsense TOS keep coming up with tiresome frequency :(
It seems it's not a matter of what people agreed to... but what they can get away with under the cloak of annonymity :(
CPM is not a statistic "provided to You by Google" and therefore not covered by the TOS -- IMHO. Still, I tend to take the more conservative approach of not saying much about specific statistics so I don't risk getting the "you're outta here" email from Google because I may have crossed the line.
Others (in the aff forum) have commented that earnings/visitor of a Website are between 2c and 20c.
Others (in the aff forum) have commented that earnings/visitor of a Website are between 2c and 20c.
That seems reasonable as averages for me, which is why I am surprised to see nobody reporting more than 1c from their content sites running AdSense.
MQ
...which is why I am surprised to see nobody reporting more than 1c from their content sites running AdSense..People are using CPM, which is impressions instead of visitors. Assuming 4 pagevies per visitor, you have to multiply everyone's CPM by 4 to get the amount of money per visitor.
<I might be completely wrong about this>
Assuming 4 pagevies per visitor, you have to multiply everyone's CPM by 4 to get the amount of money per visitor.And with channels I discovered pages that got no clicks after thousands of visits. So now my adsense impressions completely different from my actual # visitors.
f
What services are you using besides AdSense? What is the topic of your content site?
