Horrible CTR. Horrible eCPM. Reasonable Traffic. Should I go CPM?

Genre: Entertainment - Reality TV

Discussion Forum (vBulletin)

So far this month w/ adsense:

Impressions 303,355 Clicks 187 CTR 0.06% eCPM $0.09


This site is just a hobby, but I hate to see all those impressions and nothing really to show for it.


I basically have 5 main ad blocks.

• 160x600 on the left column for all visitors (text and image)
• 160x90 link block for guests
• Referral text ad on the first post of a thread for guests
• 468x15 unit link ad on all other top posts per page for guests
• 336x280 box on last post of thread for guests (image only)

To show my frustration, today Bravo is doing a run of network ad for Shear Genius and I have had 17 clicks so far today (I have watched the number slowly climb) for the big box video ad, but not one cent has been made.


Just wondering if anyone had thoughts on why my performance is so poor (beyond it being a forum and a bad genre, lol)

I have looked around at a couple of CPM sites, but it seems that those that would be worth my time will not accept me into their ranks and those that will accept me might not offer rates better then adsense is currently paying.


BTW: I just went with orange links as of today to try and shake things up. I used to have black links with grey text for all ads.

 

welcome to the real world lol

amazing when all the people sell sites on here and they make all this money with there FAKE adsense.

I would change everything to CPM ads. usually on forums no one will click on ads since they are there for the forum content. With those impressions you can get approved with any one. casale for one.

Use a bunch of diff cpm companies so you can max your rev. Try adbrite as well and they have an intersitial that pays about 3.00 per 1000. Ha i have affiliate if you want to sign up with them as referral.

Then if you know of a good product goto cj.com and pick it and try to use that as a banner.

 

Thanks for the advice!

I would have given you the referral, but I had already signed up with them (just never pulled the trigger on putting the ads on the site.)

I'm going to give them a shot and just set the eCPM to .10 so that if they are doing under that google will come into play and over that then I'll be making more.

Also threw in the full page ads for guests on the first page they view (if it is not the home page.) Hell, CNET does it....why can't I? lol.

Although as a hobby I kind of wish I didn't have to wait NET 60 for beer money!

 

i am going thru the same thing so i know what you mean.
ha sign up again, i have faith you are gonna make money with them.

after the wait the check roll in like gravy lol

 

The forums part of my site this month

Impressions 201,901 Clicks 2,255 CTR XXXXX Earnings $223.95

I don't understand why yours is so low. 0.06% seems almost impossible. i checked your site out. Hmmm do people click orange links? Also, having a standard 728 x 90 banner below the "Vevmo" on every forum page would help

 

One more thing. I only saw one tower left ad on the home page? Since we all lose many of our visitors immediately, give them more to choose from as they leave.

 

I just went with the orange links yesterday, I figured that I had to try something new after 8 months of black links and minimal clicks. Actually saw a small rise in the CTR yesterday, but have no idea if it was the link color or better contextual ads.

I have been holding back on adding a leaderboard to the top of the page, but I think it is finally time to cave (at least for guests) if I want to get this site up to around $100 per month, so I just installed the adcode (with adbrite and google fallback) and I'll see how it goes.

 

Alright, I am done converting over to Adbrite w/ google fallbacks. As of right now all the ads that I can see are google so I guess I need to wait until someone buys each individual adspace before I start seeing CPM ads in those slots. I set the min price at .09/M as that is what I was making with only google ads.

The leaderboard I just added is already doing a .25% CTR and is incidentally a CPM Ad from google (most of the time for FX-Rescue Me) which is paying out at a reasonable rate.

...and I added a footer ad.

Any other ideas?

 

First of all don't give up on Adsense and go for some CPM only, do use the CPM like CPX but never take out Adsense completely, cause trust me you can't make better money with any other ADs other then Adsense.

I would like to suggest you some thing, that if it was my site i do following things :-

1) Header Ad 728x90 I will put only Text Ads, cause it display 4 Ads, within that 4 Ads, there might be one or 2 Ad in which your visitor is interested rather then having only one large banner.

2) On Top also use 1 x 728x15 Link unit

3) On Side where you have placed 160x600 Adesense Ad unit, below that you can also give some place to CPX or Adbrite CPM as well and try that out

4) Remove the Footer Ad for Adsense and give that place to CPM (i.e CPX, Value Click, Adbrite)

Do not consume all the allowed Adsense Ad unit and Link per page, cause if you use all the 3 allowed unit space then google will try to fill them all, which some times result in very very low CPC rate.

 

1) Header Ad 728x90 I will put only Text Ads, cause it display 4 Ads, within that 4 Ads, there might be one or 2 Ad in which your visitor is interested rather then having only one large banner.

I did switch to text only in the header for adsense (only shown if adbrite can't meet .10 CPM)

2) On Top also use 1 x 728x15 Link unit

I think I'm going to hold off on this for now. Something about link ads bother me. I had them on another site of mine and I'd get 40-50 clicks a day and hardly any revenue. For the visual damage they do (they look cheap) I don't think they are worth it at this juncture.


3) On Side where you have placed 160x600 Adesense Ad unit, below that you can also give some place to CPX or Adbrite CPM as well and try that out

Are you saying put adbrite above and below the 160x600? I noticed that by having an adrbite link unit above yesterday it made my CTR on the adsense ads drop to .02% on 6,000 impressions. It seems the adbrite link ads catch the eye before people make it down any further.

4) Remove the Footer Ad for Adsense and give that place to CPM (i.e CPX, Value Click, Adbrite)

I did this. Made the footer Adbrite CPM/CPC only.


Overall I guess I am doing better then I was...

Yesterday (the slowest day of the week for me) I made $3.25 between Adbrite and Adsense.

$1.34 on full page ads, $1.41 on Adbrite CPM Banner ads and $.50 from Adsense fill ins.

Based on my traffic I can see this averaging out to between $4-5 per day over a week with spikes higher on the adsense side of the equation.


Thanks everyone for the help.

 

Go for blue links, it triggers people.

 

I can see that might be the case, but don't blue links on a site without blue links scream - "I am an ad!"

?

 

no it doesn't screams that, use standard 0000FF blue.
Also adlink can be the best earner if grouped together as a navigational item. Check my site as an example.

 

I am going to start alternating blue with black and see if there is a substantial increase on the blue. I see where you are coming from, but at the same time am trying to find a compromise between aesthetic and financial desires.

Beyond that, I want to thank everyone for the help. Adbrite was the way to go for me (or so it would seem thus far.) I am making about 6x as much per day as I was last week with adsense on the same traffic.50% from full page ads (which are annoying but paying $4.00 CPM) and regular CPM banner ads making up most of the rest (with text ads getting all sorts of impressions but hardly any takers being they are not contextually targeted.)

BTW: I only show the full page ads to guests so no complaints thus far and registration rates have actually gone up.