Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What's the average click thru rate for adsense running on a forum.
The answers may vary a lot, I'm not sure. If you have a forum, please let us know the CTR.
:)
That said, low CTR does not always equal low earnings, especially on something that can log massive numbers of impressions. CTR isn't really the issue as much as what your total earnings are. Someone with forums which have a 0.1% CTR can still make extremely good money if there are enough visitors and/or if the ads are worth enough per click.
good points all
:)
Someone with forums which have a 0.1% CTR can still make extremely good money if there are enough visitors and/or if the ads are worth enough per click.
Good point. To use a hypothetical example, it's easy to imagine a medical or health-related forum being a good venue for ads. Take dieting: The forum regular who gives up on Atkins might be ready to try Weight Watchers or something else, at which point he or she will be ready to look at (and click on) ads that were ignored in the past.
Here is a simple way to see if it is worth. So, open an adwords acount, and check the CPC for your keywords and (probably) cut that in half. If you know the impression of your site:
monthly expected income = impressions of the site x 50% (for PSA and non-adsense page) x 0.5% (or 0.1% or 1% -guestimation:have whatever you like) x 1st ranked CPC at Adwords x 50% (average for 2-4th ranked CPC) x 50%(guestimation of publisher's share)
If your objective is to cover your hosting, even $30 earning a month will do it. If you like to make lunch money, you'd better have $100 or more a month. If you are serious about making money. uh..I would say adsense on forum iste may not be your choice.
just my two cents
<ADDED>this estimation is for forum only. Other sites may have MUCH better CTR. And publisher's share may be lower than 50%. Oh, BTW, I think publisher's share on forum sites (generally speaking) is lower than other sites due to smart pricing.</ADDED>
I already do very very well with Adsense, I just never tried a forum.
On the downside, is the low click thru rates and the difficulty to get started (gain threads and activity)
On the plus side I know a few comunities (forums) yhat have grown quite large bt word of mouth referals ... that is they didn't spend a dime on marketing (or very very little)
I'm still undecided, i'll have to think on it :)
I have a computer/internet/networks related forum and I just removed Adsense yesterday because I hardly made any money with it compared to my article pages.
In my case my forum attracts huge traffic in Google, that's what it's good for. If you use PHPBB sticky me. Perhaps I have some useful scripts and tips for you.
Worth noting though, that this is a hobby site - I don't need to make a huge amount to be happy with it.
Also, I don't display the ads to members - they are hidden from anyone logged in - as mentioned above, they'll ignore them, or worse, start discussing them and get the folks at Google emailing you.
There's an article I wrote on the basics of getting Adsense into phpbb on phpbb.com >
[phpbb.com...]
Probably way too basic for most people on here, unless you really are new to both Adsense and phpBB.
My view on Adsense with phpBB is that sure, CTR is terrible - but it's a forum, the content is free, hosting costs are tiny - it's pretty much pure profit, and if you reduce any hit to credibility by hiding the ads from regulars (who are the only people I'm worried about keeping happy) then I see no reason to NOT have the ads on. I can see it might be different if you were selling something, but I'm not . . .
Roddy
Roddy
If that content does well in the SERPS, it will attract SE referall traffic.
The SE referall traffic is the traffic that clicks on ads.
The regulars never do.
TJ
