Traffic versus revenue

[LilyTousi]

I started puting Google adds in my websites one week ago so I don't have yet the feel of what revenue I will be able to generate with adsense program. I've been reading this forum for a while and know that some of you guys can make a living out of it (or almost).

I know it's virtually impossible to predict how much money I will make because it depends on so many factors (site content, traffic, type of visitors, banner design and placement, time of year etc...) but do you know what is TYPICALLY the kind of traffic needed to be able to make high revenue out of adsense? I mean something like more than $1000/month.

I know that AdSense revenue are not based solely on traffic but my understanding is that highly visited sites are more likely to generate money.

I own 27 content sites + 3 forums, everything related to travel. I have a total of 15 millions pages viewed and 700 000 unique visitors per year. I have no idea if this type of traffic is considered to be very low compare to webmasters who can make a living with the adsense program?

[WolfLover]

I make a decent living on AdSense and my page views are way way lower than yours. But like you said, it depends on so many things like content, quality of traffic, etc.

There is no way to tell anyone for sure how much they will make but based on traffic alone, you should be able to make a decent living. It will all depend on your CTR and eCPM rate.

Just keep adding quality content to your sites and keep it all above board and you should do well.

[LilyTousi]

Thank you WolfLover! it's encouraging!

Until now I make only an average of $8/per day, but I put ads only in my 3 forums and 3 of my websites. I hope revenue will grow when I put ads in all my website.

Lily

[signor_john]

I'd guess that AdSense will work better on your content sites than on your forums, assuming that those travel sites are for people who are planning trips. (AdSense tends to work best when readers are researching how to spend their money.)

[IanCP]

FWIW

My metrics are back around "olden glory days".

The only difference, finacially, is traffic then versus now.

My problem.

[zett]

Adsense might work for you. The travel niche seems to still work quite OK these days. However, we found that affiliate deals pay better, and with better transparency than anything Google.

I mean something like more than $1000/month.

Let's see.

$1000 a month is $12000 a year.

$12000 / 15000000 * 1000 = $0.80

So, to earn $12000 from 15 million page views, you need an eCPM of $0.80 or better. This should be achievable with Adsense.

But again, I think that you can easily beat Adsense by using affiliate deals with travel sites.

[LilyTousi]

I've been on adsense for about one week now...

signor_john
True! My content sites are doing much better (eCPM ~ $3.00 average) than the forum pages (eCPM ~ $0.25). With my 3 forums I have thousands of impressions but very few clicks, not enough fresh eyes I guess, veeeeery low CTR!

zett
From what I'm seing until now I think it will be very hard to acheive the $1000 /month, too much of my traffic is from my forums.

In the forums I tried a few types of banners and positioning but it seems that the users quickly become blind to them. Any suggestions on how to improve the CTR and CPM of forum pages?

[dibbern2]

Ignore the forums and invest your work in the content pages. You have a chance then at a fair return on your investment of time. Trying to get a forum -especially in the travel market- to generate a decent CTR and eCPM is fighting against overwhelming odds.

The traffic is enticing, but its a red herring.

[dataguy]

The most accurate formula I've seen is simply 1 penny per unique visitor, which would indicate that your sites would bring in $7,000 per year.

I've seen sites bring in 10x that formula and one tenth that formula, but averaged out it's a good rule of thumb.

[londrum]

you should work on ways to shift your forum people over to your content pages. do stuff like scanning the posts for specific phrases, and linking them to your content.