4 million a month from adsense?

[markus007]

About.com sure seems to earn a lot of money. 3.8 million in ad revenues per month. I would bet 80% of that or more is from adsense, I can't see those fastclick ads making them much money.

[corporate-ir.net...]

I wonder how long it will take me to get to 4 million a month. lol

[Dantol]

oh markus, I would be happy if I could make a million in the next 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years.

[ownerrim]

That's amazing. About.com's pages are a bunch of spammy crap, at least the ones I've come across. I really hate that little bar that follows you down the page, so much that anytime I find one of their pages on a search I immediately hit the back button.

[dmorison]

I prefer sleeping at night.

[abbeyvet]

anytime I find one of their pages on a search I immediately hit the back button

I couldn't agree more. I also usually swear out loud, as I will have only clicked it accidently having failed to notice the URL. It is one the great repositories of rubbish on the web.

[mack]

About used to actualy be ok. recently it has became a mess from a user point of view. Like was said that bar that follows you down the page is of no value. I also hit the back buttom if ever I end up on an About.com page.

Fact is they are making some real money, just imagine how well they could do if they improved the site and make is somehwere people would actualy want to surf.

Mack.

[arran]

I really hate that little bar that follows you down the page

I'm glad it isn't just me.

Also, it's annoying they seem to rank for everything (even when the target page consists of a few links and nothing else).

[bjseiler]

This may sound silly, but I think sometimes having a site that is hard to use or "rubbish" or is close to, but definitely not what most users are looking for actually ends up with a higher click through rate because people immediately want to get the heck out of there and go to another site. It does not help with getting users to come back, but....

[baldlygo]

But then again, those clicks don't worth much because of low conversion rate...

[Sweet Cognac]

I can remember years ago, I could go to about.com for any information I needed and find what I was looking for. Nowadays, I can't find what I'm looking for, I'm continually having to follow links to more pages, and if I happen across the information, it's generic and only a couple of paragraghs. Then they say "Click here for more information."

The reason they are doing well may be because of their "user submit" They have millions of additional pages because of this and they send you exploring each page looking for the information.

If they are using Fastclick then I would bet that this continual flipping through pages is where the income is, not Adsense.

About.com has taught me to "read the URLS" in the serps before I click, because like you... I hit the Back button.

(But maybe I should be studying their pages instead.)

[ken_b]

(But maybe I should be studying their pages instead.)

Yeah, a little studying doesn't hurt, and often helps.

Especially when you are looking at a site that annoys you but ranks well enough to get in your way.

[Dantol]

about.com is in my opinion one of the worst professionally developed multimilion portals on the internet. I not only hate their bar, but also pop-up ads and thousands of crappy links leading to other website's articles.

[beggers]

About.com is nothing more than a manually-operated scraper site. Or maybe I'm being naive and the entire thing really is automated. I don't know but I've never found it useful for anything.

[Arkanoid1984]

the jewelry section of about.com has 5100 pages in google SERP, the Paranormal 19,100 pages ....This is keyword saturation by page numbers.

[suzyvirtual]

Yeah, about used to be really nifty. At one time they seemed set up with infrastructure that could probably make them way more than 4 million in a month applied to today's marketplace. They have gotten really spammy though, and are using a "milk it for all it's worth" model rather than a more stable long term one.