Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I know it's a weird question, but I want to get more serious with adsense, and wondering if I have to make full blown sites with multiple pages, or a quick 1-2 page MFA type of site.
Right now I currently have a full blown site with forums, and 20k+ pages listed on google (many of the pages are threads, and member profiles), but don't make a lot of money on it yet because I have like 2 pages with adsense on it. (for now, re-designing with more ads put in - not too much though)
It's a ton of work to run that site though. Am I doing the right thing, or should I start banging out a bunch of MFA sites as well and just SEO them and hope I get a few hits here and there?
Thanks!
So having an MFA might work if you can manipulate adwords and are prepared to put in the effort to crank them out and promote them on a regular basis. That sounds harder work and less profitable than the long term goal of implementing adsense into your existing site.
I don't think you need many pages to do well with adsense. My site has a couple of thousand pages overall, but I only have ads on a handful of the top pages. People come to my site for the information on it, not to have a wall of ads on every page. the low key approach works for me. So if you had a site with 10 quality pages that people wanted to read it would probably do well.
But as you have a well visited site already, I'd be inclined to take a while to implement adsense on it. I think that would pay off better and be less effort in the long term.
i tell you what: number of sites means absolutely nothing! my understanding is: website = unique domain.
you could have hundreds of domains, each of them with a few web pages. or you could have one domain with hundred thousands of dynamic web pages. the variety is unlimited.
so, one could narrow the aspect of website to: unique domain with unique distinct content of a reasonable size.
don't get blended by the amount of sites someone claims to have. it doesn't say anything about the developing time, not to mention site quality.
quite the opposite: if you hear of webmasters managing tens or hundreds of sites by themselves, you could almost certainly proceed on the assumption that these are low quality or even mfa sites.
none of your plans might be successful. in terms of adsense earnings, forums are difficult. but mfas are even worse, because you don't want to go black hat. you want to stay clean and work to the best of your ability on a unique and useful website for persistent earnings. look for a topic you are dedicated in and include your forum in this project. have a failure plan to get money elsewhere, since competition gets hard and adsense is suitable not for everyone.
Certainly there is the concept of a unified "site" which logically covers a particular subject matter and uses a specific and recognizable design throughout and has a logical system for its file names and/or database. It would have a default entry page/portal and a unified navigation system.
But search engines index pages rather than sites, and while they recognize the "site" concept as being pages unified by a single domain, particularly with the "site:" operator and the organization of their SERPS, however, when a page on a particular "site" differs in content from the other pages it will be treated as a unique destination and accessed directly from search without referring the entry page. This in some respects nullifies the site's own navigation and the page becomes a part of the group of URLs accessed from the search page and not any of the site's own navigation. Which is why, to retain its identity every page should duplicate a significant part of the navigation.
But there is also the matter of ranking. If a person has multiple domains should they organize their pages logically beneath them or should they organize them to benefit the greatest from the existing search engine ranking systems.
This is the dilemma which I am faced with. One domain is quite old and ranks well. Many subject matters are organized beneath it. I have purchased other domains which more logically reflect the subject matter and have begun sites with the new domains. But I keep the bulk of the older pages under the first domain because they rank well and are getting significant traffic. I experimentally move one page at a time with a 301 redirect to see how well it does under the new domain--so far not well. Thus I have several "sites" straddling several domains that really have some unified identity and navigation and still could be considered one "site."
Having a lot of sites can make sense if each is on a distinct topic and there's no common theme uniting them. But there are disadvantages, too, such as the difficulty of achieving search rankings and the risk of getting into trouble with the SEs if you crosslink domains too agressively.
In my opinion, the zillions-of-domains apprach is best left to the MFA bottom feeders; I'd rather develop a brand and a reputation in my niche (which opens up other revenue opportunities).
I think it possible, and perhaps advantageous to oranize many sites (domains) under a single brand identity, somewhat the way about.com does with sub-domains. The only thing that keeps me from doing this is the prospect of losing significant traffic by breaking off segments with a 301 redirect.
In one case, the pages that I move maintain their former PR but the traffic disappears--confirming that PR and traffic don't correspond in any meaningful way, at least in this instance. The "new" domain has been a site for well over six months but remains in the sandbox. (whatever that may really be...)
I think it possible, and perhaps advantageous to oranize many sites (domains) under a single brand identity, somewhat the way about.com does with sub-domains. The only thing that keeps me from doing this is the prospect of losing significant traffic by breaking off segments with a 301 redirect.
I use a compromise between the "all in one site" approach and the About.com subdomain approach. I have a number of sites within the site, each dealing with a major subtopic, but instead of using subdomains such as:
widgetville.elbonia.com
I use directories such as:
elbonia.com/widgetville/
I then have so-called "vanity domains" that point to the directories. In other words, widgetville.com has a 301 redirect to elbonia.com/widgetville/. This makes it easy for a newspaper columnist, guidebook author, etc. to provide readers with a URL for the Widgetville section of my site.
This approach has worked well for me, and I've never had a loss of traffic from 301 redirects (even when I've moved whole sections of my site to new directories).
As far as making money with forums, I agree, it is very tough. My site isn't *just* a forum, but it's close enough where i'm probably going to be similar results as those who run 100% forums do. I mean the other things to do on my site are browse profiles of members, and pretty much just comment on their photos. I'm going to add some more things to profiles to make that page more attractive than the forums, hopefully members will promote their page.
I'm still trying to think of ideas for another full site, but I come up with more of MFA type of sites than anything. 1-2 pages of info thrown together to hopefully generate a few clicks here and there.
I can see running a full site as better simply for the traffic reasons alone. How do you get clicks to a MFA site other than being a SEO or PPC expert? With a full site, you can do link trades with related sites, and word of mouth spreads as well. I'm going to try to think of something i'm good at or interested in and see if I can build a site on it. Thanks again for the advice :)
This approach has worked well for me...
It was then I began taking the advice of those who counseled "not all your eggs in one basket!" That advice has proven useless so far. Worse than useless, I've spent a lot of money on domains, hosting, etc...
But should my domain be banned again I do have other established sites. So it was another thread that asked, "why have more than one." That's my answer.
Being banned was very, very expensive and traumatic for me which is why I'll NEVER let the issue go.
How do you get clicks to a MFA site other than being a SEO or PPC expert?
I suspect that most MFA's get very little traffic and very few clicks and they make up for it by churning out huge numbers of new sites--which is one reason why they are so hated among real websites.
if you hear of webmasters managing tens or hundreds of sites by themselves, you could almost certainly proceed on the assumption that these are low quality or even mfa sites.
It is a very dangerous presumption to make an assumption when you do not know the reality of the situation.
You do not know therefore you cannot know, that is not an assumption, it is a statment of fact of one's knowledge and experience versus your postulation.
And the same applies to this:
I suspect that most MFA's get very little traffic and very few clicks
The MFA builders will not respond to such a post simply because they do not want you to know just how successful their sites may be.
It is a very dangerous presumption to make an assumption when you do not know the reality of the situation.You do not know therefore you cannot know, that is not an assumption, it is a statment of fact of one's knowledge and experience versus your postulation.
It's not dangerous to assume that the incredible is unlikely. In fact it is safer to demand true credibility and to assume the worst without it.
My link is in my profile if any experts have any tips of my placement, color, etc. I think over the next few days i'm going to try and remove some MFA's.
I have a few ways I think i'll be able to pick up some more traffic, so as long as I can optimize the traffic I get, i'll be happy. Right now according to analytics, I receive an avg of 250-300 uniques a day, and 650-700 visits (many repeats), and around 15k page views per day.
Obviously I have some forum traffic, and repeat visitors which probably both work against me, but I do think with a few more additions to the site, I may be able to make my money back and then some.
Thanks for reading :)
I suspect that most MFA's get very little traffic and very few clicksThe MFA builders will not respond to such a post simply because they do not want you to know just how successful their sites may be.
To the first point:- They certainly get enough to make it worthwhile. Whilst I would ditch the ads from my site if they made only a small margin, your average MFA is probably happy with low profit sites, but lots of them.
Before I started blocking MFA's last July, the ctr of the site was high. The moment they were dropped, the ctr dropped to about a third, but much greater EPC. So I'd suggest that they do get good traffic - albeit low profit.
The MFA ads very ofen have very well written copy that works. On one of my campaigns I tried to write sexy copy myself, and it did indeed get more clicks than some of my previous campaigns did.
To point 2:- They certainly wouldn't put their head above the parapet in this forum :)
May sound like nothing to the big timers, but i'm thrilled by it. It's a good thing to see considering before my re-design, I would max out at $1 per day and take 3 months to see a check. Sadly, i'm at 0.70 today, but I have a feeling i'll get a few good clicks tonight to bring me near or above my goal of $3/day (enough to pay for my server basically)
Thanks again, i'll keep people updated if you guys want :)
