Forum Moderators: martinibuster
After less than 1 month my daily return is 1/3 of what it was when I started despite the fact my CTR is about the same (a couple hundred/day). What are reasonable CTR and CPC numbers? My average CPC is less than a nickel.
Why is it advertisers can set bids and daily limits but publishers have no control over what they can charge? There is a cost to publish, the cost is the labor to organize and maintain the ads plus the users lost due to annoying advertising. Publishers should be able to set the minimum price for showing an ad. If someone is only willing to pay 5 cents for a click, I don't want to show their ad. I'd rather show nothing.
This system heavily favors publishers. If Yahoo wants a tip on a competive edge in the Adsense space, offer a true auction for pricing between both advertisers and publishers.
What are others seeing?
This isn't really a good scenario to make high profits with Adsense.
I think it's better that you join a CPM based program such as FastClick, Burst Media, Casale Media, ...
This allows you to generate a certain amount of revenue for every 1000 pageviews. Lets say that the program pays you $0.50CPM : (3 000 000 pageviews a month / 1000) * $0.5CPM = $1500
I don't know how long you have followed the discussion here, but generally speaking, sites that used to get relatively high CPM and PPC have seen it drop like a rock in the past 2 months. Sites that have see lower PPC seem to be doing fine.
There are many theories, but the bottom line is that the PPC is getting pushed downward to the $.05 floor by a variety of factors.
I also see a lot of variation - like 5:1 swing in earnings - with steady traffic.
Diversification seems like the right approach.
I just signed with Burst, but was taken aback by the large number of default (i.e. non-paying ads). Still, I made twice as much on Burst than Adsense without even trying.
But still I think these numbers are low. Is $1500/month a reasonable expectation for this site? That's 5 times what Adsense is paying.
thanks
A site with 100,000 impressions but only a few thousand visitors probably should be looking at selling subscriptions, signing members, charging for archive views or otherwise trying to get readers to pay for the content.
Unfortunately, PPC has been falling steadily for many content sites and is now in the single digits in many cases. It's a tough situation. Many of us will have to start letting people go if this continues.
A site with 100,000 impressions but only a few thousand visitors probably should be looking at selling subscriptions, signing members, charging for archive views or otherwise trying to get readers to pay for the content.
Sponsorships can work, too, in certain cases. I know a guy who runs a very active community site about a [widget-related] hobby, and last I heard, he was selling small flat-rate sponsor ads to widget manufacturers for several hundred dollars per month each. In a situation like that, the toughest sale may be to the first advertiser, because once company #1 is on board, the others may not want to be left out.
In fact, that's normally how it works, like in the real advertising world. I am planning to start selling space on my site to likely prospects. I expect that the work selling and setting up the ads will be less than what I have put into adsense.
The one good thing I have learned from adsense is that I can generate good traffic and leverage my site. In the long run, I probably have little need for a "middle man" which is all Google really is.
I'm sure they'll cry real tears when I am gone.
