Forum Moderators: martinibuster
There are so many variables that it's hard to say with any certainty.
Part of it depends on if you have enough descriptive text on the photo pages for the adsense bot to target ads with.
Basically blank pages with just the photo probably would not work well, even if they were accepted by Google.
It doesn't take all that much descriptive text, but it does take some.
The other thing is how much money you think would make the effort "worth doing". Only you can anser that. Some folks are fine if they recoup their hosting costs, other want to live in luxury. I wouldn't expect the latter.
[added] And welcome to WW and the Adsense forum!
[edited by: ken_b at 7:45 pm (utc) on Aug. 13, 2004]
1) You probably won't get accepted. Most of your photos have minimal captions (just titles, really), so ad targeting isn't likely to work very well. (A title like "Bethlehem Steel Mill" might yield ads for steel or steel mills, and a title like "Eastern State Pen" might yield ads for ballpoint pens since there's no body text for the Mediapartnerbot to analyze.)
2) Your visitors are likely to be more interested in your photos than in other goods and services that may be advertised by Google.
If I were you, I'd emphasize print sales more heavily and try offering lower-quality prints or posters at lower prices. For example, your $50-and-up prints could be signed photographic "collector's" prints, while you could offer cheaper inkjet prints or posters for students and other people who don't have much money but would love to have a nice picture of a steam locomotive or Mt. Everest to hang up on the wall.
You could also try an affiliate program like AllPosters.com, which might appeal to the kind of people who browse through photo galleries.
Finally, it wouldn't hurt to include text captions where you can; that way, your pages would do better in Google Search, and you'd get more traffic as a result.
I did apply to adsense earlier in the year and was accepted, but never got to changing my pages to add the ads.
If I do go with Adsense I will probably do some work to my pages at the same time to make them more likely to be targeted correctly, currently, as europeforvisitors mentions, there are many pages with no text, just photos and titles, that clearly will not work for adsense, but if I add descriptive information and location information and perhaps a running story about the location, that may help and make it pay off.
And thanks for the suggestions about the print sales, selling cheaper versions of prints is a good idea and one I may go with.
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No Google ad may be placed on any non-content-based pages. This includes error, login, registration, "thank you" or welcome pages.
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If there's just a photo (and maybe a caption) on a page, you're running pretty close to "no content" as far as AdSense is concerned, since there's no basis for them to serve relevant context based ads. "Content" means something that they can analyze to serve relevant ads, i.e. a significant block of text
i would describe the pictures a little more, and maybe go into camera/lens/filters and all that fun stuff on each picture.
You could without too much work get equipment ads showing on your site, which would be targeted and decent.
why not, go for it.
That issue aside I don't think I would put adsense on a 100% photo site - it seems a likely venue for "invalid clicks".
be prepared however for a dreadful CTR, for some reason people click on the pictures and not the ads!
Google has already approved you site and has seen the "content" on it. I say try it.
I have a site that's mostly pictures (~100) with some descriptions of a country I've visited. I have placed Adsense ads on this site about half a year ago. So far Google did not complain. I don't know how much I've made from this site because I never thought of making a lot of money from a personal site. But I will say that the ads are very targeted.
It should'nt take you too long to add Adsense code to your pages. My site uses a template coded with SSI so adding the Adsense code was quick and painless.
using find and replace (I have dreamweaver, not homesite)to add the adsense code to the page, what would I be replacing in order to insert the code?
That depends on where you want the ads to appear on the page. For example, if you wanted to use a 468x60 banner at the very top of your pages you could search for your opening <Body....> tag and replace it with the same tag followed by the adsense code.
If you wanted it at the bottom of the page you might search for your copyright code and insert the adsense code before the copyright notice when doing the "replace".
If you are using Dreamweaver to do this, I'd strongly suggest making a back up of your pages first.
[added] I'd also suggest doing one folder first to try it out. Depending on how large your site is you might want to do the whole thing folder by folder. That would allow you to use individual channels for at least some folders to see which perform best.
I think the idea is they want to know what you actually say on the page, not what you say you say via meta tags!
Google has already approved you site and has seen the "content" on it. I say try it.
Thats what I thought, but someone else on this board claimed that it was against the TOS to have a photo gallery. Of course I can't find the thread now. Anyway I had a travel site, with highly annotated pictures, but to all intents and purposes it was a photo gallery. I though that was the reason I got kicked out. Perhaps I was wrong and I was guilty of something else.
The trick is to use every form of alternative text that html will allow. Specify img/alt, a/title, metadata. For every photo write a short text explaining details about the photo: Where it was taken, what equipment was used etc. etc.
30.000 visitors pr. month is ok for starters but don't expect too much.
Good luck.
So I can expect to get canned from the adsense program at any time for my content. I read the agreement, the only thing I saw related to photos was the no pornographic content, so I'm unclear that as to why they would exclude a travel related site with many pictures, especially is there is a lot of discriptive explainations of the photographs. Anyway I've started adding the ads to my pages, starting with my travelogues first, since most of those do have stories that go along with them, hopefully the lightning bolt from the gods at adsense doesn't strike me.
So I can expect to get canned from the adsense program at any time for my content.
Hey, its me that is the pessimist. We need strict demarcation to keep to our jobs :-}
In the end it is of course your decision, just don't rely on google making you a millionaire. Good luck though whatever you decide, all I know is that google had free advertising on my site for two months as I never receieved a dime from them for my "gallery" site.
And what europeforvisitors said: i'd concentrate on selling prints and licenses and further add descriptions to the caption only pages to make the most of AdSense.
You are going to get very different ads and there is no way that your site is going to be able to pull off a "theme", but the number of PSAs should be manageable.
By the way I also went to Costa Rica on my honeymoon in 1994, October. Then went back in 1998.
Good luck with your site.
Where does one find the Adsense preview tool? I looked on the adsense page and didn't see one.
