Adsense on Forums?

[HostingDirectory]

I am considering buying a website that is well established. It currently has 5000 forum members, over 10,000 threads and over 60,000 posts.

The website is a webmaster resource centre but currently is 98% forums ( the other part needs some work ). So it basically i am buying a established webmaster forum.

Currently they have no form of advertising in place. I am thinking of placing adsense of the forums. The forums are vbulletin.

Anyone have any idea of what i might make from adsense on such a established forum.
Does anyone have a forum of around the same size that uses adsense?

Just looking for an idea of what it might make.
As its webmaster related i should imagine the clicks would generate a fairly decent amount of money but apart from that i have no idea if the forum is worth the investment needed to purchase it.

[alika]

Our experience with forums is that it gets extremely low clickthrough rates. Members of the forum are regulars and are more focused on the discussions and are not interested in the ads. We never see CTR higher than 0.05% for our forums.

Of course, you can always try and see how it goes. But as your initial instinct tells you, it may be best if you also develop other content types in your site where your potential to earn from Adsense may be higher.

[Jenstar]

Here are some recent threads on this:

[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

There are mixed reports on how well AdSense does on forums, so be sure to set up a channel just for your message boards so you can track how well it does.

[HostingDirectory]

I have read the other threads on this. But what i am looking at is if a webmaster related forum which has that many members, threads and posts would do?

Anyone with a similar type of forum of the same size give me a rough idea of what it might make?

Would $1000 per month be unreachable?

The forums recieve over 30,000 uniques per month.

[alika]

you may find it hard for people to actually give you their revenue numbers :o)

why don't you try some number crunching:

ASSUMPTION: Low click through rate @0.50cents/click
250,000 monthly impressions x 0.5% CTR X $0.50 = $625/month

ASSUMPTION: Fairly high CTR @0.50 cents/click
250,000 monthly impressions x 5% CTR x $0.50 = $6,250

The figures could reaaaally go anywhere, depending on your CTR, impressions, and EPC. You'll really never going to know how YOUR own audience would react to the ads.

[loanuniverse]

I still see a lot of defaults {psa} in forums. No matter how well the forum software is setup, I still see them in Vbulletin, Phpbb and Invision.

Something to take into account.

[ChrisKud5]

30,000 uniques is a very very small ammount of traffic. Could the site traffic be improved a lot with some new linking methods?

I would look into improving traffic A LOT before paying too much for this site.

Get that 30,000 uniques into the 100,000 range as quick as possible and you will be looking at some more luxurious numbers.

It does not appear to be that activ eof a forum if their are 10,000 users and only 60,000 posts? Maybe like 500 actual active forum participants?

I would look into some linking techniques to try to boost that traffic as much as possible. Quantity is king. A low CTR can be managed with a ton of impressions.

[ChrisKud5]

Could the name of the site in question possibly be your username?

[Jenstar]

FWIW, I rarely see PSAs on any of my forums. Many PSA issues are caused by the forum software serving up session IDs on the URLs. This causes the mediabot to index each URL with each individual visitor's session ID - it won't take into account the base URL without the session ID for targeting ads.

I have seen extremely targeted AdSense on forums.

[HostingDirectory]

ChrisKud5, its 10,000 threads not 10,000 users.

I dont think 30,000 uniques is a very low amount of traffic. Its a great base to build on and i am confident i can double the traffic with some optimization but i don't expect to get any more than 60,000 uniques in the first year.

60,000 uniques per month is a fairly decent amount of traffic and i would expect to be able to make around $2000 per month from google adsense for a webmaster forum in this range.

Is this unreasonable? Anyone comment?

[uncle_bob]

The figures you are wanting ($1000 from 30,000 uniques pcm) seems a little high. I find the click through rate from regulars is very low, and its visitors passing through from search engines who tend to click on any ads.

Also a low ctr often attracts low epc ads, so you could get as low as 30000 x 0.5% ctr x $0.1 epc = $15 pcm, though your target area usually pays better, the best way to increase revenue is to increase traffic. Of course ymmv

[blue_eagle]

I guess the thing is webmasters dont usually click on google ads since they want advertisers to stay in google adwords and make profit for them in their own site ;)

[Snow]

We have a much smaller, although quite active, vBulletin forum on our site. There are some problems with using adsense on vBulletin forums, you should check out the official vbulletin support forum for info from other vB admins. We had adsense on a phpBB forum before June and that was very very succesful. adsense on our modified vB forum is not doing too bad but we still have problems.

I don't think $2000 for 60000 uniques is an unreasonable expectation but from our experience with adsense on a vB forum, that's probably the max you can expect. It really does depend on your visitors, our visitors are looking for good value hosting and cheap domain names so they'll click on ads that say domain names for $1.99. If your forum visitors are more busy discussing the latest webmaster news then they probably won't even notice the ads.

[Galtego]

One reason that webmasters may be less likely to click on AdSense ads is because they have trained themselves to be restrained on their own sites, a restraint that is likely to carry over elsewhere. It does in my case.

[edited by: Galtego at 12:58 pm (utc) on Aug. 18, 2004]

[loanuniverse]

I think that the self-restraint is common. I rarely click on adsense or even adwords. Even for my shopping using ecommerce, I prefer to write the url down and go there in another browser window rather than clicking on an adsense/adwords ad. I also buy stuff over the internet once to twice a month so I am like the dream user.

[Snow]

I prefer to write the url down and go there in another browser window rather than clicking on an adsense/adwords ad.

But why? Wouldn't it be easier to just click on the ad?

[TonysDesigns]

We also run a customized database driven Beauty website with a connected fully modified version of vBulletin 3 on our forums that has 20,000+ posts/threads and is fairly active. We've run adsense on this forum now for one year. We have tweaked and tweaked vB and have placed adsense all over the place but was being sure the only place ONE session of adsense on pages. Now, my humble opinion is that 2 months ago, I beleive that G had modified the code for displaying adsense. I beleive this due to pretty much ZERO PSAs being displayed on deeper sections of the board(it still never shows PSAs on the forum index). BUT now, since some sort of change they did, we see more and more PSAs in deeper sections of the board (thread display/forum display/member search etc). The EPC for our topic (women's beauty product reviews/discussions) are relatively low anyhow, but the click thru rate is around 4-5%. All in all, I think adsense is OK on vBulletin, but you better read up on how to tweak vB for adsense placement.

HTH

Tony

[rogerd]

A couple of other threads on this topic: The Financial Side of Running a Forum [webmasterworld.com] and Forum Profits [webmasterworld.com].

If you do this deal, HD, be sure to stop by the Community Building [webmasterworld.com] forum and share your experiences. Good luck!

[Snow]

That is exactly the same problem we've been having. Because we switched to vB in June we thought it was because of vB not because of google changing the code, it never occured to us. However, the problem is getting worst, everyday I see more and more PSAs. I have spent ages trying to figure it out. Do you have any idea why this is happening?

[blue_eagle]

it is strange to know there are other people like me about writing the url instead of clickin on it :))

[Galtego]

I either right click, copy shortcut, paste into text editor, copy URL, paste into address of new window, hit enter - or - right click on page, select Google AdSense Preview Tool, and directly click from there. The reason is caution.

[HostingDirectory]

I have offered $5000 for the site which he has accepted and has given me a few months to get the money.

I am just looking to make that money back within a year and then to make around $5000 per year from running the site.

As far as tweaking is concerned i can tweak a forum in ways most people would never even imagine.
I already have a forum which is web hosting related that i have tweaked and i never get any psa's at all.
The problem is that the forum is fairly new and only has around 500 members.
Also i have not yet set up a channel for the forums and get a lot of traffic through other parts of my web hosting directory.
So its really hard for me to try to work out the revenue potential from my current site - especially since the google ads have not been placed well ( the site is not finished yet ) and that hosting brings a large amount for just a few clicks.

Do you think i would make back the $5000 within a year since i am an expert at tweaking a forum? Bear in mind the forum is mainly webmaster, html, javascript, php related.

[Snow]

If your forum users are anything like our forum users, and you increase your traffic, then it's likely you would get your $5000 back. If it's a forum where only professional webmasters hang out, maybe not. What are the members on the forum like? Are they the type of people that would want to click on ads?

[Galtego]

For the well-established 5000 member forum site that you are preparing to buy, the one with 10,000 threads and over 60,000 posts -- with your ability to tweak, $5000 was a good deal. If you can check out the current raw logs and see the big bots coming by and crawling well, you should move forward. You'll be paying in full way before a year is up.

[HostingDirectory]

Snow, i don't suppose you could sticky mail me your forum url can you?

Id just like to see what type of forum it is.. that way i can work out a bit more the chances i have in making some profit from this site i am considering buying?

Please...?

[Snow]

No prob :D Check your mail.

[oldskool79]

Busy forums can be very lucrative websites *if* you know how to profit from them.

In my experience, Adsense doesn't do that well on a forum for several reasons.

1: People on a forum are usually looking for (free) information. Most Adsense ads are selling products or services, so visitors are not likely to click the ads.

2: Many forums are unable to be properly indexed by the search engines. It would be a wise investment to convert your forum page to static URLs. So instead of www.domain.com/page.php?id=123 the url is www.domain.com/page123.htm. This will ensure your pages get indexed and adsense ads can be shown properly. Some forums already have these features, or you can have it custom programmed for your forum. I think the proper term for this type of thing is "search engine friendly urls" or "static urls".

3: Most webmaster's don't integrate their ads into the content of their pages very well. If you just throw Adsense on to the right or left hand column of your forum, you will have very few click throughs. People will simply ignore the ads. However, if you were to place the ads 'inline' with the content, and make them match the rest of the page exactly you will see a huge jump in your click through rate

Also, this forum seems to have a lot of traffic and there are many other ways to make money from it. Some ideas are:

1. "Member's only forum" similar to WebmasterWorld where you must pay to get access to a specific area of the site.

2. Affiliate programs. There are thousands of webmaster related ebooks,software,etc. that you can promote on the site and by emailing your members

3. Make an archive of all the best threads on the site and sell it as a simple downloadble PDF

4. Charge for advanced searching of past threads.

Good luck!

[Snow]

2: Many forums are unable to be properly indexed by the search engines. It would be a wise investment to convert your forum page to static URLs. So instead of www.domain.com/page.php?id=123 the url is www.domain.com/page123.htm. This will ensure your pages get indexed and adsense ads can be shown properly. Some forums already have these features, or you can have it custom programmed for your forum. I think the proper term for this type of thing is "search engine friendly urls" or "static urls".

We did have problems at first with getting our forum indexed properly and yes part of the problem was the session ID. However, we also have a search engine friendly archive, which isn't really an archive as new posts immediately appear there. I think this is a feature that you'll find with most popular forum software like vBulletin and invision, so getting indexed isn't too much of a problem anymore.

[ChrisKud5]

60,000 uniques per month is a fairly decent amount of traffic and i would expect to be able to make around $2000 per month from google adsense for a webmaster forum in this range.

Is this unreasonable? Anyone comment?

Yes, that is totaly not resonable.

A site i have been working on for about 3 months now has about 45,000 uniques a month and it is a regular site, no forums or regular users yet, and it is not in the $1,000 range a month.

Now knock that CTR down to a forum like CTR (.5%) and you will have a couple hundred at best.

Sure, 60,000 uniques is a lot of traffic, compared to sites with less traffic.........

500,000 uniques a month is good traffic, that will get you some good return, even from forum sites.

I am skeptical 60,000 uniques will get you $2k a month on a forum site.

For $5,000, you will come out very well.

Get that traffic up as best as possible and you should make your money back in half a year. For that price even with a low forum CTR, you should make out nicely. Good luck.

[wehberf]

Hostdirectory,

I own a phpbb forum that has roughly identical stats as what you are discribing.

I am running 3 ads per page that is blended in to the point that it looks just like content.

Please note: I average between 30,000 and 60,000 unique visitors a month... roughly 1,000 to 2,000 people a day visit the site.

A normal month I get about 250,000 page views.

The site has been growing nearly 30% a month because of the Elections (it's a political forum).

I thank god each day that I built alot of content sites... because the 1-2 dollars a day I make from my forum hardly covers hosting.. and that is off an average of 60,000 people a month.... this month I might break 100,000..

Adsense doesn't work for forums..

I placed the ads all over the place.... I finally settled on putting them in viewtopic.php ... so there is an ad with their posts.

Someone put the hammer right on the nail with that one... people come to forums to read content / posts not click on ads.

Forums suffer from what everyone fears with the PPC model... the content is far more compelling than the ad...

you can PM me if you want to see how I placed my ads.