Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I already have two ghost and paranormal sites, but am only making around $135.00 per month from them. So I need a more profitable area on which to build a site.
Oh yes, and are all these ready-made Adsense Template Packs advertised on the web any good?
Of course adding the adsense code is easy, I'm talking more about getting paid a decent amount for a click off your site.
Of course adding the adsense code is easy, I'm talking more about getting paid a decent amount for a click off your site.
There's a lot involved when it comes to the "getting paid" part of it. Getting a decent paying click is part of it. Getting the advertiser to run the ad is another part. Counting the impressions and the clicks, as well as the billing and collecting the fees.
For the record, I am primarily an advertiser that focuses on site targeting (which is why I follow this Adsense forum), and we all know what general CTRs are.
For obvious reasons I can't go into the details, but I'm sure we can all agree that there is much that happens away from the clicks on a site. Those are all opportunities. And if you choose to focus on the minority activity (Adsense clicks) and ignore the majority, you are giving yourself an uphill battle.
If I were primarily a publisher, I would think of Adsense as the cherry on the sundae, but never as a primary source of income.
Now, having said all that, I have just a couple of tips if you are looking to get to a more stable point in your publishing business using Adsense. Keep in mind that this is coming from an advertiser's perspective which I believe is important to think about because a successful publishing business achieves a win-win relationship between the two.
Think that high quality advertisers are measuring the traffic they get from your site. Google is opening this up more and more and smart advertisers really do know what they are doing. As an advertiser I want to get high quality traffic from the sites I target. This is what many of the replies are alluding to: Don't expect good results without providing quality traffic.
Also, think about taking matters into your own hands in regards to your inventory offerings. Google is making this possible with the ad manager system (I think that's what it is called). If you can provide advertisers with high quality traffic, you've got something that you can sell.
Now, since there is a good system to offer it to those advertisers, you just need to start selling it. If you can lock in some advertisers as regulars this will help stable out your income at the very least and possibly raise it. But I think it is sometimes overlooked that you are actually selling your inventory.
Also, it's worth stating that the Google advertising/publishing systems are not just some mystical system where clicks show up as stats in your account. There are advertisers paying for those clicks and the sharp ones, the ones spending real money, are monitoring closely the performance of the traffic we get from your sites.
To me, making a living off of Adsense alone is not logical.
In an ideal world, every business would have a diverse set of revenue streams. But the reality is most don't. I don't see sites that only make money from Adsense as not being a viable business, that is just the income stream they chose. If Adsense goes away, their site can switch to another ad provider, and so on. They don't exist solely because of Adsense, they exist because the provide a valuable service or information to consumers/users. That is the viable business model... not the particular ad partner you are using.
Advertising is a very lucrative and viable business model. Adsense is just one of many players in the game.
There are advertisers paying for those clicks and the sharp ones, the ones spending real money, are monitoring closely the performance of the traffic we get from your sites.
Just curious since I am not a heavy Adwords user, can you see performance results from a site that you are not targeting? Does Adwords show you all the sites your clicks were generated from? Or do you need to have sites "targeted" to see such data?
Just curious how it works. I know we had site targeting turned off at the GooglePlex level last year due to some problems with spammers filling our ad slots with crappy weight-loss and diet ads, etc. I'm hoping that does not hurt our ability to showcase our performance with Advertisers such as yourself.
Just curious since I am not a heavy Adwords user, can you see performance results from a site that you are not targeting? Does Adwords show you all the sites your clicks were generated from? Or do you need to have sites "targeted" to see such data?
couldn't for a long time, but we can now. And it's wonderful. I just got through blocking around 5000 sites for a client's account (the most Adwords would let me at the campaign level) where we were consistently getting clicks over six months, but no conversions. And I still have a couple thousand more sites I have to figure out how to get around that limit and block as well.
Makes sense, I would want to know where my money is being spent...
I just got through blocking around 5000 sites for a client's account (the most Adwords would let me at the campaign level) where we were consistently getting clicks over six months, but no conversions.
Do those sites share anything in common - are they "article" sites, blogs, newspaper sites, whatever...?
FarmBoy
what exactly is 'quality traffic' from a advertiser's perspective.
And is there any middle ground i.e. North America search engine traffic that might not convert very well.
How do you rate quality traffic on a scale of 1 to whatever?
cheers,
Do those sites share anything in common - are they "article" sites, blogs, newspaper sites, whatever...?
I don't know, didn't recognize a lot of them and didn't go to most of them. They're all nominally related to some degree to my client's niche; many are MFA I'm sure, many are perfectly legit but not a really good match - no idea on them all. There are certain "types" of sites you can block en masse - parked domains, video sites such as youtube, social media sites such as myspace, forums, violent sites, etc. Apart from that, you have to go specific.
What I would suggest is spread your target audience into things they would surf through other websites. If you have a website for cars which people in their 20s and 30s visit, how about creating a career site and promote it from the first one. In a period of time, you should have created a family of sites all catering to the age group..and a few thousands of dollars a month..
Having a site about, your favorite hobby is good.. but it may not necessarily be a 'big money spinner'..
The OP I Think, has a site about Ghost Stories.. Now try and give him suggestions on how to increase monetization? :-) I think , it is a challenge.
Here are some thoughts:
Ghost and Paranormal travel tours
Halloween supplies
Ghost novelties for theme parties
Ghost toys for kids
Ghost/paranormal movie and documentary reviews (along with links to purchase those movies)
Ghost towns in the US (along with hotel reservation links for nearby cities)
Adding all of these things will have the site looking like a 99 cent store, but monetization isn't necessarily pretty.
Having a site about, your favorite hobby is good.. but it may not necessarily be a 'big money spinner'..
you know, I use to think that too, but not anymore. You can monotize anything if you brainstorm. I have a site that when I started it, I was sure it was not going to make any money. But I found a way to monitize itand make good money off it now.
Personally, for the ghost stories, I would start writing about how to travel to the places where the ghost stories take place. Paranormal tourism is getting big and travel ads can make a nice penny.
To be honest, what is the value of another adsense web site? we already have billions of web pages. Why need 1 more from you, that just trying to drain blood from advertisers?
You are wrong. But I do not really worry, as there is less competition in the content network, because of this precise thinking.
adSense web sites are mostly junks
You can target sites of your choosing in the content network, last I heard.
londrum: The amount of traffic matters a great deal, but it must convert at a high percentage otherwise it's impossible to overcome the waste (traffic that doesn't convert but is still paid for). Granted there are ways of digging down into the traffic and picking apart the waste, but it's time consuming. That's what ever advertiser must do otherwise there is too much bloat that is being paid for that shrinks margins to the point that it could go negative.
Fortunately, it is possible to site target down to the page level, which is fantastic since 1 site can cover such a wide variety of topics.
Even so, as publishers you should keep this in mind that since we advertisers can hit these specific pages on your sites, help us out to organise your sites tightly, maybe even breaking it up into several parts.
Doing this will ensure that we advertisers get the most targeted traffic. For example, if you have a site about dog training and I'm selling a special collar only for dalmatians, advertising my product on your site means that I will have a lot of waste traffic. I may not be able to separate the converting traffic from the non-converting enough to pull it back from the negative and thus not become one of your regular advertisers.
However, if your site is just about dalmatians or your site has a specific section about dalmatians and I can advertiser on it, the chances that there will be less waste traffic is higher, meaning that I can probably advertise on your site for a profit and that I would become a regular advertiser. It's very simple and scientific actually; if you give me traffic that consistently converts at a profit for me, I will buy out your entire inventory. It's like spending 5 dollars to immediately get 10. If that ratio happens every 100 visitors, then 100 becomes my multiplier. I would want as much converting traffic as you could give me.
maximillianos: I agree with you, I didn't mean that it isn't viable, just that it doesn't make sense to only use Adsense since such a small percentage of visitors click on adsense ads when the great majority that don't could be monetized in another, more lucrative way. I think it's an important realization for a publisher that they are not just Adsense publishers, but publishers in general and should be on the lookout for other ways to monetize the "valuable information" they give to consumers.
I already have two ghost and paranormal sites, but am only making around $135.00 per month from them.
Hang in there. My first month I made $27.
What works for me is to just put up a bunch of sites on different topics. Some end up being duds and some take off, and then I try to focus on most of my time on the ones that make the most money with the least effort.
There are some links to posts here on what to do if you get banned, and I'm sure someone will drop them here. But frankly, if you've created six accounts and each one's gotten shut down, it probably won't do any good. You need to start looking for something else.
Well your first problem is you made six AdSense accounts. You apparently don't get it. You're *banned*. You can't play in this sandbox anymore until you fix whatever it was that got you banned. I suggest you read the terms of service and take a look at your sites.
I think I would take care of that unrealistic CTR. Advertisers probably see that and figure, "hey there's a money sieve" then with the check of a box their ads are no longer displayed on the suspicious site. You get enough advertisers doing this and Google is bound to notice.
The chance that this guy is a legit, white hat publisher is pretty slim.
And how anyone can "always maintained my Ctr at 10 to 20%" is beyond me.
Back on track...
Everyone's mileage varies with adsense and everyone is looking to improve results BUT the proposition of earning a living from adsense isn't a difficult one.
Traffic - if I get $500 a month from 2500 visitors a day I need to find a way to raise the traffic tenfold. Possible? Yes but unlikely, at least anytime soon.
Multiple sites? When you've reached saturation on a website, that is when you've covered most of the searched for keywords by writing about each the biggest bang for your time will come from starting another site on a different topic. A word of warning here, finish what you start. Having 10 partially finished or spammy sites doesn't work, 2 finished sites is much better in the long run.
You have two sites with x traffic and 130 a month. Figure out what you need to live on and begin planning to reach that goal. Be reasonable, keep at it and you will succeed.
Another word of warning, have a backup plan in case adsense folds or drops you for whatever reason, multiple sources of income can and do work well together... test, test and re-test until you find the right combo.
Oh and guess what... YOU are the expert on "paranormal" topics so it's up to YOU to figure out if those sites can pay what you need, we should be asking you for advice in your niches :-)
Traffic - if I get $500 a month from 2500 visitors a day I need to find a way to raise the traffic tenfold.
Adsense doesn't always scale like that because of smart pricing. Increasing traffic in general sometimes leads to a drop in epc.
