celebrity site with ad google

[goneinthesun]

i am thinking of doing some celebrity sites with ad google.

but i heard those ads are very low.

anyone with experience?

[mzanzig]

Might get you into legal trouble as well. You can't build a celeb site without pictures (well, usually, that is), and I doubt that user generated content of celebs is readily available for free. Thus, webmasters and community members typically use "3rd party image content" to beef up the pages. However, these are typically copyright protected. The picture agencies might be after you, quickly.

Ah, and using copyright protected photos on an Adsense site might get you banned from Adsense, too.

[Essex_boy]

But dont let that put you off ;)

[oneredpanther]

I've had adsense on my celebrity site for years now.
Google have almost certainly human-reviewed my site on a number of occasions after I've emailed them about certain things - my site remains "in good standing" as they say over there.

In fact, look at just about any celebrity site (or indeed any celebrity hosting network) and you'll see they're littered with Adsense banners, even the enormous ones. Google doesn't seem to acknowledge (at least not in a bannable-offence sort of way) the copyright issues with celebrity images at the moment. Of course that could change.

The earnings are relatively low in this niche compared to (probably) a majority of other topics. My site dishes out around 2,000,000 page impressions per month and the eCPM hovers around $0.19 for the picture pages (about 85% of total traffic) but a reasonable $3.83 for the content pages (articles, mainly) although they receive as little as 5,000 impressions per month. Average click-through rate is about half a percent.

Unless you're in the top 3 on google for that celebrity's name search (and they're at least oscar-nominated calibre) then you're going to struggle to earn the $100 month for a regular cheque.

Another word of warning - whatever celebrity you dedicate your website to, YOUR INTEREST WILL FADE as the years go by. They are only celebrities and your tastes will change, you might even grow up or get married. Consider how your wife will feel about your tireless dedication to, say, a Britney Spears (god forbid) fansite and whether you can seriously continue to put the effort it month after month for a person you no longer have on your bedroom wall - all for a small cheque.

But do what you love, the money will follow. In life if not in Adsense.

:)

[goneinthesun]

thanks everyone for the great input.

[Leva]

Depending on the celebrity, you may be able to get 'safe' photos etc. from them. Many are very nice to their fans, but it does depend on a number of factors.

Ad value is weird. Very popular topics seem to pay very little, particularly those with limited merchandise associated with them (a certain wildly popular boy wizard comes to mind). This probably has to do with ad space availability -- how many publishers have articles and sites on the popular topic vs. how many people are trying to sell merchandise on that topic.

Entertainment keywords with lots of merchandise associated with that keyword DEFINITELY pay better.

Leva