Video Game News site and adsense earning very low

[Vishwakarma]

I have a 9 month old Video Game News website that I have recently applied for Google Adsense in the month of July and got approved for it. Everything has been verified but still now the earnings that I have seen is very less as to what I have heard from other same niche owners? Even for having 6400 impressions with 2500+ pageviews I am paid very less, that is, 0.78$. You can check the stats in the below image (dunno if it is valid to post image), but I am desperately needing help from all webmasters who could help me. Can anyone please tell me what is the reason why the earnings are so less or is it proper? Thank you in advance

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:02 pm (utc) on Oct 29, 2015]
[edit reason] Removed personal details by member request. [/edit]

[Vishwakarma]

Is there anyone who can tell me if the stats are correct for this niche or not? Thanks

[tangor]

The use of adblockers are on the rise, see:
[webmasterworld.com...]
and
[webmasterworld.com...]

This might explain relatively low impressions, but the valuation is entirely whatever the payouts are these days, and that depends on the ad quality, time on site, catching the visitor in a buy cycle and other things.

You need to give it a bit more time, July to September is not a very long time.

[Vishwakarma]

Hi Tangor, Thank you very much for your reply.

As per the discussion, you mean to say that advertisers are paying very less for any clicks or even the impressions on our website. Also, as far as I have noticed, we are not getting any impression payout but only clicks payout.

Since it is a very new website, so only after 6-12 months we would see any increase in the revenue? We are dedicated in updating content on our website daily, so do you think we should follow the same pattern and give it some time to get settled. How long do you think will it take time, as per your experience? Thank you

[tangor]

Forgive my bad manners! WELCOME to WEBMASTERWORLD! I usually notice as we are always happy to have new folks join the discussions! Welcome!

Time? As long as it takes! Seriously, it is difficult to say. Surely another six-month period will give you more real world analytic data to make determinations for future actions.

It also depends on your geo location, or your targeted audience (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific). Each will have differing results, and amounts of payout.

As for payouts, yes, the sums are lower these days than years past. There are few "living wage" adsense only sites, though some do very well, those that are very HIGH traffic sites (20-30M and up).

As for content, please do continue to be fresh with new content as that will help keep the site located in the top serps (if you are there now, if not, might help you get there!). Just know that at some time G will send another of its animal named indexes (Panda, Penguin, etc) which are three-six-nine months apart and things might change again.

A year's worth of adsense operation will give you more info. Meanwhile, grow the site, increase your traffic and, if you read all the other threads in this forum, look to other methods of monetization so that all your revenues are NOT tied up in one source.

Good luck!

(Note: I continue adsense on a number of sites. I use other methods for the rest of the sites I own or manage. I am not adsense reliant on those).

[Vishwakarma]

Hi again and Thanks for your warm welcome.

I have been digging up on niche sites and since I am an expert in hardcore gaming, so I opted to follow my passion in gaming niche. But I am also a technical content writer as well.

Have you heard if Video Game niche is poorly paid compared to any other niche such as technology, gadgets and gizmos, etc. One of my friend is also in a video game news niche but his website is very old (5 years old) and he is getting good revenue i think.

We will continue our hard work for our passion for sure, but it is just that, if this gaming niche is so biased, then will it be worth the effort. Or should we also start working our way on other niche such as technical writing. Thanks again for all the help.

[tangor]

New sites generally have a steep hill to climb. If a new site is something completely different than all the others in a niche (difficult to do, as if too different it won't be IN the Niche!) it might do well. The niche dictates what kinds of content make sense. Where you can stand out is if you offer services or products which relate to the niche, but are not ordinary gizmos usually associated with the niche. (And I don't mean videos or game captures!)

As for pay... most channels are (in the impression range) modest to low. There is a flood of advertisers out there and the number of places to place those ads is astronomically larger than any time previous.... the pie is only so big, so that means as more come to the table, advertisers and publishers, the slice will get smaller. The only real winners in this game are the ad servicing companies (G, for example).

Please avoid overdoing it. More than three ads per page will have a negative effect. You can't make up for, or force, income by throwing more gasoline on the fire, you'll just burn your site down.

Only you can decide if the passion is enough. By that I mean you truly do not care if you make a penny, nickle or dime off the site. If the passion is there then by all means keep after it, after all, you might create something better than all the others in your niche. But if you need adsense to justify that passion then you are already doomed. Sorry. Just turns out that way too often. Yet, it really is too soon to make those kind of decisions. The site is not old enough. You haven't promoted it sufficiently. Check your back link catalog... do you have any back links at all? Look to Page Rank as well as CPM, etc. You need all the OTHER things that make a website successful before you can look to the advertising income side.

This is real world experience speaking. Taking nothing away from your skills, passion, or your website, things just don't happen overnight, you live or die by traffic/user experience, it begs for increased traffic month on month, every freakin' month, and enough cash to keep at it for at least a year.... and that's just to get the website running, fill its niche, and get noticed. Then you can starting thinking about income, though it doesn't hurt to have something going on while all the rest happens.

Patience is the most difficult part.

One can code a page/site like a bat out of heck, but getting noticed... that takes time... Unless you can get Jennifer Lopez to give a shout out regarding your example.com! And that usually costs a boatload of money for a Hollowood (sic) shill!

[Vishwakarma]

All the above you have said is very true.

We will keep doing what we love and hope that someday we will achieve our goals.

As for the Pageranks, CPMs, Backlinks, how do we check that stuff. Need to do a little digging and reading onto it.

Thank you

[RedBar]

You also have to realise that many publishers are removing AdSense owing to much reduced earnings and especially so this past three months. For instance I have been with AdSense since day 1, my best earning days were in excess of $300+ per day, yesterday it was not even $3, that's not a typo, less than three Dollars, and I have a realworld business that turns over millions of Dollars therefore I know what is happening in my global industry and AdSense ads do not relect that whatsoever.

For some/many of us this programme is now defunct and if you do not have eyes on your site that are in a buying/researching products mode then you may be wasting your time.

Do not get your hopes up that things may improve with time.

[martinibuster]

Video game news about games that are not released yet? Is that what the news is about? In general, news does not sell. That's why many newspaper sites are struggling.

Think this through. The site is about products that are not yet available. There is nothing to buy. Thus, the ads will not be appealing.

If you care about AdSense earnings, then build the site around products people need and desire.

[netmeg]

Also think about your target audience. They're probably not coming to your site to click on ads. That can work, but you have to have tons of good quality traffic to make it work.

Also, I am an advertiser, and I for one block my ads from appearing on sites in the video game category, because that's not the audience I want for my clients. Many others do the same. Plus you have a lot of competition in that niche.

Check and see how much of your traffic is mobile. Is your site mobile friendly? And if it is, do all the ads sink to the bottom when someone uses it with a smartphone? That could be an issue too.

In short, manage your expectations. When I start a new site, I give it TWO YEARS to start earning serious money.

[Vishwakarma]

Hello to everyone,

Martinibuster,

We are targetting each and every video game content and not just games that are going to release. I hope you get what I mean.

Also to Martinibuster and netmeg,

We are Indian based and we are getting maximum traffic from US and Europe but still we are not getting paid for impressions but only clicks (and that too pennies). Since our website is new so we thought we still have a very long way to go, but after reading all your comments, it seems that the scenario has completely changed.

Thank you in any case.

[charvel]

I had a video games site a good few years ago. Look into affiliate programs that sell related items (games, controllers, peripherals etc) and feature offers alongside your news.

I found many vendors would post prices for pre order well in advance of the launch of games, so I would run simple price comparisons at the bottom of each update, often the click-throughs would generate decent sales of other products before the launch of the game itself, as well as pre-orders. Also vendors tend to offer bundles and limited editions for a premium.

Think out of the box with regard to your news. Report on the obvious stuff but, think about how you can create traffic that others haven't. For example, question certain aspects of a weapon on Call of Duty to drive a debate. Provoke people to link to your content by making a big thing from a small aspect of the game that no one else has picked up on.

Basically dissect the game into as many pieces as possible but be careful with your quality or you will drive people away.

Finally, if you're getting good traffic, make sure you're ready for release day!

[MrSavage]

I'm going to say regarding video games, that's a tough go. The only time I've made a go on anything related to video games and adsense, the traffic was very extraordinary. It can be done I suppose, but you need to really consider time vs. reward. I don't want to douse on enthusiasm. My feeling is ad inventory simply sucks. I think more than anything, you have to decide whether you're going to be able to hit some good/high traffic volumes. More than anything though, just look at it long term. As in, do you want to invest your time into something that may end up with very little residual value. I've personally pulled out of video games even though that is one of my passions.

[martinibuster]

We are targetting each and every video game content and not just games that are going to release.

Demand for older games is low. [google.com] Compare the search trends for deus ex human revolution and deus ex the fall. Low and slow. Maybe ads for add-on modules will earn a click.

Is your content just news or is it walkthroughs? Is it just news or is it reviews? There's a difference in earnings depending on the focus of your content.

I'll restate what I already posted, it's the focus of your content that's going to determine how well you do. Traffic alone is not a determinant of earnings.

[Vishwakarma]

Hello martinibuster,

We are targeting all the latest video game news, reviews, guides, walkthroughs, trailers, etc. We even got to review a game from a PR company who sent us Steam codes. Considering it is too early for our website, we will wait and see what the outcome would be in the future.

Thanks

[martinibuster]

Vishwakarma,
That's a solid focus of content. Do you also have a community? A good time to start the community is after the site is a year or two in and there is decent traffic.

I like charvel's suggestions. Peripherals that help a gamer have a better experience may be a good direction. Think in terms of aspirations, what the user aspires to, then build your site experience around that.

[eek2121]

Just looking at your stats tells me that you have a) been smart priced, b) have tons of low paying traffic from countries other than the US, or c) have tons of bot traffic.

For starters, I've never seen a gaming site with that high of a CTR (I've seen 0.5%-1% CTRs on the gaming sites i've worked on in the past. Gamers are generally not in a buying cycle) Make sure that you aren't placing your ads in a way that causes people to accidentally click on them...view it across mobile, tablet, and desktop. If users can't scroll or click (or touch) on links in your page without accidentally clicking an ad, you will get smart priced. Google can measure user engagement (i.e. what does the user do once they click on the ad...do they immediately click that back button/close the tab? Do they buy the product?) with the ads on your site. If your stats don't perform to average thresholds, you'll get smart priced.

Also choose countries from the top (next to report type) and find out what percentage of that is US traffic. You'd be surprised...Those stats look like the india section of my adsense reporting. Certain countries (like india) pay pennies per click instead of dollars per click. Remember: it's not the traffic itself that counts, its those who click. if 500 people in a month from india click an ad for $0.03/click, and only one person from the US clicks an ad (for $2/click), your earnings for that month would be a measly $17. on the other hand, if 300 people from the US click and nobody from india clicks, you'd earn $600.

Finally, make sure you aren't buying traffic or generating fake traffic. You obviously won't get paid for that...even if Google doesn't catch and ban you for such an activity, they'll consider the traffic poor quality and smart price you.

[Vishwakarma]

Hi eek2121,

We are using the automatic Wordpress Google Adsense plugin to show ads on our webpage, so does all this kind of plugin make any mess. One Ad is at the right top side, other ad is placed exactly below the content/article title and the last ad is placed in between the content. I have uploaded the stats of september 2015 below that you can check for the traffic report. (Here, the only thing that I am suspecting is that, since we are a new site based in India, we are having advertisers paying less for the clicks, or something else that you know).

We are targetting 2/3 Unique content out of every 10 content that we are making and thus we are getting a lot of traffic for the same. We are not buying/doing anything to increase traffic, why would we want such traffic anyways.

The only thing that we cannot understand is that, even with a pageview of 2000+ and impressions of 6000+ why we are getting paid for clicks only. I applied for Google Adsense because I read that we get some kind of CPM (1000+ impression) based payment as well but we are not getting anything.

Also, do you know a way how to check if we are getting a lot of bot traffic? How to ban such bots on our wordpress website, do we have to do something in robots.txt file? Thank you for your advice.

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:16 pm (utc) on Oct 29, 2015]
[edit reason] Removed personal info per member request. [/edit]