New to Adsense and I would welcome the feedback of some pros

[DaStarBuG]

Hi

I am the Founder of an hiphop project that offers there users a platform to battle via audio files as rapper and/or beatboxer (see profile for url).

I run the site for 2 years now always without showing any advertising because normaly I hate ads.

But some changes in my personal life made it neccessary to rethink this policy of mine and I signed up for adsense.

Since then I read alot about good ad placings, playing around with colors etc but I am still not quite satisfied with my resaults.

Some stats about my page:

Uniques/Month: 37-41k
Hits/Month: 3-4Million

But my earnings are only around 150$/Month.

I think the main problem is that my site is not containing much text content.
The most text you can find on my site is my FAQ, the Battles itself (Lyrics are required for each battle) and my forum.

That is why I hope that someone from here can give me some pointers/hints where I could improve my ads.

Improving the site is in developement.
We are going to make a relaunch hopefully till the end of this year with a completly new code, a better design (much better actualy :D) and we are going to be part of a network with a site that has the same concept as mp3.com.

Any help is very much appreciated

[Zygoot]

Entertainment sites and forums are notorious because they don't bring in lots of dollars.

Maybe you should work on getting more traffic.

[ogletree]

It is hard to make money with adsense with that type of site and subject. You may do better with an affiliate program that fits your audience.

[Rodney]

You may want to look at the Google Heatmap and try to place the ads in a position that gets more "eyeball views" (for example, on your main page, try moving the ad units up above the fold instead of at the bottom)
[google.com...]

Try different size ad units instead of just the standard banner.

Also test to see which works best on your site. For example, blending the ads to match the content might not work best for your audience. You may need to make the ads contrast more with the content.

Just keep testing till you find the combination that works best for your site.

Keep in mind that adsense works best on pages with text content. So if you have a lot of pages that don't have any text content to them, but are high traffic areas, adsense may not perform well on those pages (unless you add more relevant text content to the page).

[DaStarBuG]

My Traffic is constantly improving and hopefully will make a big jump when we introduce the new version and the network.

Should I maybe consider CPM instead of CPC?

I changed my Skyscraper to serve Image and Text ads today, maybe this shows some improvements.

There are not many options of different banner sizes that would fit my page.
The leaderboard is to large for the design,
the half banner, button or rectangle would only annoy users because it would take to much space, especaly at the top. I will keep experimenting with colors but besides that any other help?

[Zygoot]

The skyscraper is one of the less performing formats.

The rectangle, square or button perform much better but they may look more 'spammy'.

[incrediBILL]

I think the biggest problem is the content as you're probably a dead man walking with AdSense on the site:

Copyrighted Material

In order to avoid associations with copyright claims, website publishers may not display Google ads on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results

[DaStarBuG]

I have written an email to adsense support asking them about the mp3s and they said that it would be no problem.

We hold full rights on all mp3s published on our site.
Copyright infringments will be deleted as soon as we are aware of them.

The thing with the google answer is that it was somewhat a canned response and did not answer my request fully that is why I asked them again stating that I added there ads on the download pages because that is what I understood from there response and if this was a wrong assumption that they please contact me again.

If anything changes I will post it here.

The skyscraper is one of the less performing formats.

actualy besides the link block below the menu it is one of the best working ads so far.

[DamonHD]

Hi,

Wide tower/skyscraper is consitently my best performer when on the page left.

Rgds

Damon

[incrediBILL]

Wide skyscraper ads perform very well for me too, perhaps it depends on your site design which ads work best.

[thewebboy]

I am very happy with the performance of my wide skyscrapers even on the right side of the page.

[ogletree]

I have to say wide skyscrapers work very well on the left side.