> my site that covers the same area has about 44,000 unique visitors per month.

I maintain an IP list (CIDR list) in my router that blocks I'm guessing 25% of the internet from hitting my website. Roughly 150 to 300 unique IP's per day are blocked. I run them through a bulk IP-DNS somewhat regularly but the usual suspects keep showing up. Hosters of all sizes from many countries and unknowns from India and China make up the vast majority of those. These days, >90% of what gets through the router and hits my site are actual people, not bots.

There is no way you have 44k unique people hitting your site per month, and even 44k unique IP's from bots would be 10x higher than I would expect. This is why I don't trust "the system" when it comes to accurately reporting these stats. Ad companies like google and fecebook are thieving advertisers hand over fist I have no doubt.

I just checked my database, and from 10/9/20 until 11/8/20 I had 36,418 users to log in. My site doesn't require them to log in just to view information, though, and a lot of classified ads have telephone numbers, so it's realistic to think that a significant number of the users wouldn't log in.

I try to track ad blockers, and I think that I have just under 12,000 visitors since 10/9/20 that block ads (and presumably Analytics). That's nowhere near accurate, though, so I just use it as a guide to see if it goes up or down.

Why do you think that 44,000 is unbelievable?

Why do you think that 44,000 is unbelievable?

Because 75-80% of the web is bots of some kind?

YMMV

Do you log the IP address of these login's? If so, do you know how they break down (commercial IP space vs residential, geographical (local vs world) etc?

I thought the way that web-advertising worked is that if you have a site, and the right code, integrated with say google, that there are places on your web pages for ads that google will fill based on what they know about the individual browsing the site. If the ad generates a click, again that's something else that google knows. So google keeps track of the ad impressions and clicks that it's getting from the ads being shown on your site, and then periodically cuts you a check. 44k people per month, at just 1 ad per month, at 10 cents per ad (I have no idea, just guessing) would get you $4400 a month. That's my crude understanding on how web advertising works.

You say that your site is about gun classifieds and personals. Maybe google, being leftist as they are, don't like guns and hence don't want to drive any decent ads to your site, or support it in any way? I would think that personal, home and family security would be very popular these days, and there should be all sorts of gun and ammo makers and retailers that would want to advertise on your site, either through google ads or directly with you the site owner. Have you contacted any of them? Beyond guns, other related products (home security, alarm systems, cameras, etc) would also have some tie-in to your site users. What about hunting? Some of these guns are rifles or long guns? Archery? Hunting is huge and so are the product sales for it. ATV's, boats, etc. If you can't tap into those things for advertising then I have to ask why not.

But if I were you I'd be looking at the IP's hitting your site and then tracking each and every one of them back to their source and classify them as either likely bots or legit people. Anonymous VPN's and TOR are a big problem - I ended up blocking them all, but not by looking for them and blocking them before they hit my site but by looking at all garbage hits to my site and blocking their source - some of which are VPN's and TOR. I have never seen a legit hit from a VPN or TOR node prior to seeing a garbage hit from them.

Because 75-80% of the web is bots of some kind?

True, @tangor, but doesn't Analytics automatically exclude bots?

I was curious and did some digging... under Analytics I can go to Audience > Geo > Location, and see that 98.87% of my traffic in October was from the US (I didn't have non-US blocked for a period, so that makes sense) and 0.53% (the second highest percentage) is "not set".

Clicking on the US, I see that 77.18% originated from the state that I target. Which, again, isn't a surprise, since plenty of people move away but want to keep up with their home town.

Clicking on that state, I have 312 lines of cities, but I see that the top 25 are in or surrounding the county that my main site targets.

Based on that, I think it's safe to say that somewhere between 77% and 99% of my Unique Users are real people.

I thought the way that web-advertising worked.... 44k people per month, at just 1 ad per month, at 10 cents per ad (I have no idea, just guessing) would get you $4400 a month. That's my crude understanding on how web advertising works.

@SumGuy, well, that's more or less how Google Adsense works, but I also sell ads directly that are a flat monthly rate. So it's not safe to say that all web-advertising works that way.

And with Adsense, I get paid a mix of pay-per-click and pay-per-1000-impressions, which I assume is determined by the advertiser. So I don't get paid based on the number of users, I get paid based on how many times the ad was either shown or clicked.

You say that your site is about gun classifieds and personals.

No no, those are just two of the sections of my sites that I have but don't make money on, because Google doesn't allow their ads on them. They also don't allow ads in the live chat room, which boggles the mind.

I have tons of other features: 76 classifieds categories (where only 1 is for guns), local news, several message boards, local events, gas prices, restaurant listings, business directory, weather, games, and so on.

But it IS an irritant that I can't have ads on popular sections, for no logical reason. Hunting is perfectly legal here, and so is the sell of used guns, so it boggles the mind.

I'm also irritated that I regularly see highly sexual Adsense banners on my site (recently one that had a photo of a topless woman with pasties over her nipples), but I get flagged for a personal ad that has a photo of a woman in a sleeveless shirt. At the very least they should allow adult-oriented ads like the one I saw... but no. To be fair, though, they didn't actually order me to take the ads off of the personals, but I was getting flagged daily and got nervous that I was endangering the whole site, so I took them off voluntarily.

I would think that personal, home and family security would be very popular these days, and there should be all sorts of gun and ammo makers and retailers that would want to advertise on your site, either through google ads or directly with you the site owner.

You would think, right?! LOL Adsense simply doesn't allow it, though, and the local gun shops have expressed no interest (I'm guessing that they consider the gun classifieds to be competition). I found that other gun-oriented sites use BuySellAds.com so I tried to sign up with them, but they never replies to my registration or multiple email attempts to follow up.

At an estimated $1 per 1,000 pages, though, those sections are really only worth about $200 /month combined unless I could get more from a direct-sell ad. I haven't really pushed too hard beyond sending emails to local gun shops, but this is on my list of things to promote when I get done with the rebuild.

At an estimated $1 per 1,000 pages, though, those sections are really only worth about $200 /month combined ...

That actually sounds about right. Where it appears your money crunch is located is in your hosting expense. I know changing horses in mid-stream can be scary as heck, but better to bite the bullet NOW rather than IN THE END TIMES!

There's just too many capable hosts out there with significantly larger capacities (and speeds) for LESS DOLLARS.

I once used a host long after a change was indicated simply because it was comfortable. Thank goodness I woke up from that dream and made the change! (With all the trials and errors that followed). The end result was a boost in performance AND income.

YMMV!

Yeah, there's no doubt that I'm leaving this company behind. They've been going way, way downhill for a long time, and I should have left a few years ago >:-(

Right now my plan is to develop the rebuild on a new server, then when I'm ready to go live I'll just change the DNS and be done with it.