Pages/Visitors/Dollars

What does it really take?

[Heartlander]

I'm among those that are driven crazy by the posts here of the UPS Club, thousands a month from AdSense, etc.
Been doing this for a couple months...and can say I'm not yet at 50 bucks.
We are a forum-based site focusing on your basic "outdoors-widgets".
The clicks pay very little in this field, as we are finding.

I understand that creating new pages is a big part of it, but what I'd like to know is what does it really take to deliver a successful revenue for the publisher and G?

Is it number of pages or number of visitors?
Is it quality or quantity?

I mean, my keywords are about as solid as they can be for our type of widget enthusiasts...and SEO has been done about as far as it can be.

There are some people making big bucks here, and I'd like to know what it is that makes their sites tick...above all else.

[Dantol]

Heartlander, to become successful Adsense publisher,
your website needs to have two ingredients:
1. High traffic (which is interested in your content)
2. Quality Content in one of the fields that are highly valued by Google advertisers.

That's it! It's so simple, yet so complicated!

[incrediBILL]

You need to provide a site that people want to use.

If it's very useful it will take off.

However, if you're just trying to be another "me too" in a niche where there already are some major players then you'll have to work your butt off to get to that level.

[TheDonster]

According to most of the posts I've read here so far, forum sites have reported AdSense performs poorly despite the massive amounts of traffic they receive. For example, how many people here have noticed the corner page ad at the top right of all the pages on this forum? And now how many of you have clicked on it?

[Heartlander]

I've seen the same thing here regarding forum type sites.
High-traffic, but little to show for it.
I'm beginning to wonder if they attract low-paying advertisers as well.
Double-digit clicks consistently produce sometimes less than a buck for the day!

Great points made so far, thanks gang.

Any other pointers for those of us that need to work just a little bit harder?

[Alioc]

Heartlander, you may try developing some static pages as a courtesy to your forum section. It may be a detailed FAQ maybe. Compose a good list of topics in your niche and provide good info on these pages along with ad units. This way you can capture more visitors and people who would not stay on your site more than 5 seconds otherwise. You know, when you're in a hurry to find info, forums can be boring, especially if they require sign up to be able to read.

[charlier]

One way to check the potential for a site including forum sites is to examine the ads you are getting and try to figure out what advertisers keywords matched them to the content of your page. Then use the overture tool to see what the bids are like for those words and how many people search for them.

I have one site that is very well ranked for most of the keywords that are relevant and my traffic is still relatively low, but using the overture tool I can see that not many people look for the subject.

You really have to figure out where the break in the chain is for your site.

targeted traffic + targeted ads + good CPC + good CTR = good income, unfortunately unless you are willing to change the subject area of your site, about the only factors you can alter are the traffic numbers and the CTR.

[Heartlander]

Thanks.

You are right on there......
Who wants to maintain a site about meso-widgets, just because the keyword pays big bucks.
Kind of depressing, and I already have a depressing job that I go to every day. LOL.

[arrowman]

Heartlander, see what the ads are about, and create articles around those topics that your forum visitors will want to read. Put the ads inside those articles.

Put the articles on a permanent and separate website. This will give you more incoming links. And visitors will be more likely to keep reading and click from article to article.

Then use your forum to drive traffic to those articles. E.g. by:

putting permanent links to the categories of your site in the navigation menu of the forum

create stickies

post announcements of new articles

answer questions by pointing visitors to specific articles

Right now I have only content and no forum. I'm planning a forum, but I don't intend to put Adsense inside the forum itself (perhaps Adlinks). People just read differently in a forum, we'll have to accept that.

[Captain Dodgy]

Hi Heartlander,

Although I don't run forums, a good tip that I picked up from this website was incorporating the Adsense code into the forum threads. In other words, rather than just serving the ads at the top of each thread (where frequent visitors to your forum are likely to 'skip'), if you can intgerate the ads a third and/or two-thirds down the page amongst the forum replies, webmasters have reported significantly higher CTRs. Do a search on this website for info to the same effect and good luck!

[Radejr]

I rescently just had may ads on my forums wasn't making alot it loads on every page so it tries to match for content. I rescently put it on the main site page and am finding almost triple the clicks as I was before. Although I'm not making 100's a day I just started I so I am still learning. I although expect about $30 in my first month (at least it paid for my hosting.) goal for next month is $50. I think I can hit it with a few changes and from there my goals will climb :) (this is only 1 site i plan on opening 2-3 more sites so hopefully that will help out.)

[EricGiguere]

Another problem can be getting the AdSense crawler to figure out what the "right" content of the forum/blog is. I wrote a tip about this topic that might help you, just do a Google search for the phrase "carefully craft blog or forum pages".

Anyhow, paying for your hosting fees is the first step and it's something to be proud of -- you're making money! Not a lot, but it's better than nothing.

Eric

[Heartlander]

Thanks all.
We do have the ads-inline-topic mod going.
Just set a channel to it yesterday...nothing so far.
I did precisely what some suggested and started blogging from our server.
...not any scraper blogs either. Articles updated daily, with all kinds of links and playthings to get there from the forum index page. ; )
(the phpbb Weblog mod)

Even after optimizing my main blog, I still can't get rid of the Blog ads.
This particular page just keeps sending them and I keep filtering them...when will it stop? LOL
I had it under control, and now they are solid blog ads...hmmm.

[TheDonster]

You might want to review the webinar Jenstar posted on this board recently. There is a suggestion from the Google optimization team dealing specifically with forum site ad placement. I believe they mentioned placing your ads in between the first and second posts to really catch more attention. There's lots of hints for all types of sites with commentary by 3 site owners.

[google.com...]