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View Full Version : does placing advertisements make money?



rezzy
02-23-2009, 01:09 PM
As time has contiuned I have noticed everyone has some form of advertising on their site. For those that use Google, Yahoo advertising, or others, how much do you generally make?

How have you liked having them on your site? Other opinions?

nealrm
02-23-2009, 01:18 PM
I diid have Google ads on my site. However, the control over what was displayed was very limited. This created some clashes with my regular customers so I pulled the ads. Instead I sell advertising directly on my site. It is OK as a side revenue.

Harold Mansfield
02-23-2009, 01:22 PM
I personally don't like adsense or other types of "ads" on my sites. I mostly use affiliate links, or my own banners for other related sites that I own.

I really just can't stand the way Google ads look, and they have infected the web so much that I think many people just ignore them now, especially on new sites.

Also, the last thing I want to do is send someone to another site that is "selling" the same thing as I am. If they are going to click away, they are either going to another one of my sites, or directly to buy a product where I make commission.

I have never made one dime on ads, but then again, I have never been able to leave them up for longer than a week without wanting to snatch them down.

One last thing...I think ads like adsense on a professional, or company site is a really bad idea.

billbenson
02-23-2009, 01:50 PM
As part of an experiment a number of years ago, I registered 100 domains, wrote some content, and put adsense on them. Most only had a few pages of content and didn't rank very well. The experiment was for a program I had written. Adsense was an afterthought.

Across the sites the adsense paid for the domain and hosting. Remember these were just several page sites that were not really managed in any way. Had I built up the sites for the last 5 years, I suspect I could be making more money that I do today selling product with the adsense sites.

I think building them to 100 page well optimized sites is one of the keys. The type of site matters as well. One was a dolphin site. Everybody likes dolphins. Its pretty easy to see adsense working on a well done dolphin site. That's one domain I kept. Might be ideal for adsense.

vangogh
02-23-2009, 01:54 PM
Unless you have the traffic ads usually don't pay much. The benefit of something like AdSense is that once added to your site you don't have to work much for those ads to potentially bring in revenue. Most people don't make much with AdSense, but there are people who make 7 figures a year from AdSense alone.

You can probably make more selling ads directly, but it's more work and you still need to have the traffic. Not many people are going to pay you to advertise on your site if you pull in 50 visitors a month.

I agree with eborg that affiliate links are a better way to go. Advertising as a business model online seems to be the past, though I'm sure it will exist for a long time to come. Some of the ads you see online probably are affiliate links and in other cases it's someone just making some additional income.

Unless you're pulling in a lot of traffic there are generally better business models than advertising, though it really depends on a lot of factors.

rezzy
02-23-2009, 02:57 PM
Vangogh, I see you dont use adsense on your blog but here you do.

I figure one would be easier to get, but since my visitor stream is low at this moment, it doesnt help either way. It came down to curiosity since I know some many sites that build adverts into their sites.

nighthawk
02-23-2009, 03:17 PM
Judging from the posts here, most people posting here use their site to sell a product or service. In such a case the primary source of revenue should be your product/service, any adverts are just costing you business and sending visitors to rivals.

Web advertising works best on informational websites, an article showing information about a given topic then offering links to related products or services. Adverts really start to pay their way on websites that do not offer what the user came for.

Take for example searching for information on the latest Yellow Widget. If you land on a site that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about widgets, then your goal is accomplished and you move on to the next task, closing the browser or navigating away back to google. If on the other hand the website you land on tells you very little, then you are far more likely to consider clicking on one of the ads down the side that looks appealing.

I guess this is why link farms and cyber squatting are so common and appear to pay so well.

billbenson
02-23-2009, 04:20 PM
Another approach could be: Many of us register sites for use in the future. You think of a domain name you like, but don't have the time to develop it right now. Stick up a 5 or 10 page site with adsense on it. You might find that it gets indexed, gets out of the sandbox, and pays for itself until you get the time to work on it.

vangogh
02-23-2009, 05:03 PM
Bryan I used to place a few AdSense blocks in all posts just to see what they would do. I stopped a few years ago, but I left ads on some of the older posts. A few that pick up search traffic bring in some money each month, though hardly anything worth talking about.

I placed them here less for the ads themselves and more to hold the space on the site. Down the road when we've grown a little more I do want to do some things with ads and affiliate links, but I think it's too soon in the life of this forum to make it worthwhile. However I thought it would be harder to introduce ads later than earlier. By the time I am ready to do what I want to do everyone will be used to seeing ads in general. I've seen members of other forums get upset when ads suddenly appeared and I wanted to avoid that.

Ideally the AdSense ads will pay the hosting bills for the forum till then, though sadly it's not even close to being the case.

I agree with Gavin that if you're selling a product or service you'd be better not to display the ads and instead drive people to your products and services. One thing though that I've noticed over the years is that you get the highest CTR on ads from search traffic. One thing I may do is code things so the ads show when the referrer is a search engine and not have them show otherwise.

billbenson
02-23-2009, 05:43 PM
One thing though that I've noticed over the years is that you get the highest CTR on ads from search traffic. One thing I may do is code things so the ads show when the referrer is a search engine and not have them show otherwise.

That makes a lot of sense. If I'm buying something and I want to get a feeling if its a good product I do a search for "product forum" no quotes. Just coming to this forum, I probably don't even look at adsense ads if they are there.

Do you have a feel for how well the adsense ads match the actual posts? You might consider putting them up for two weeks and ask the members for their input on ads versus the thread topic. It might be a useful thread / experiment for a lot of us. I don't think anyone would mind the ads in that context.

vangogh
02-23-2009, 06:25 PM
Bill the ads seem to change. For the most part they do seem related to the posts. If you look at the ones we're running here they're general business related. I think if you go into some of the specific forums they become more specific. Depends on what people are bidding on and the availability of ads for that topic. I think Google does a pretty good job of matching the ads to the content, though it's not perfect.

As I'm typing this I'm seeing ads for internet marketing in both the header and footer. One is even for Google AdWords. I'd say those are all relevant to the content in this thread to this point.

Those ads might change later and they may even be different depending on where you live. Without any real testing I've generally found AdSense to be pretty good at being relevant to whatever content is on the page. Perfect no, but pretty good for an automated system.

Business Attorney
02-23-2009, 11:42 PM
rezzy, I think it really depends on what you want out of your site. I would never think of putting ads on my Illinois business attorney site. In my view that would simply be inappropriate. I've been contacted several times by people who want to run an ad on my homepage and I always wonder if they have even looked at my site or if it just turned up in a Google search. What are they thinking?

For about 2 years I had no ads on my LLC site, either. It was simply a pet project and I considered it an extension of my professional site. However, traffic eventually grew and it was obvious that a visitor wanting to learn about Virginia LLC or an Oregon LLC really had no need for an Illinois lawyer, so I decided to put on a few AdSense ads and show some Amazon books about LLCs to capitalize on the traffic. The ads won't make me rich, but if I pick up a couple of thousand dollars each year for something I was doing anyway, why not? At least that's what I figure.

nighthawk
02-24-2009, 07:52 AM
Bryan I used to place a few AdSense blocks in all posts just to see what they would do. I stopped a few years ago, but I left ads on some of the older posts. A few that pick up search traffic bring in some money each month, though hardly anything worth talking about.

I placed them here less for the ads themselves and more to hold the space on the site. Down the road when we've grown a little more I do want to do some things with ads and affiliate links, but I think it's too soon in the life of this forum to make it worthwhile. However I thought it would be harder to introduce ads later than earlier. By the time I am ready to do what I want to do everyone will be used to seeing ads in general. I've seen members of other forums get upset when ads suddenly appeared and I wanted to avoid that.

Ideally the AdSense ads will pay the hosting bills for the forum till then, though sadly it's not even close to being the case.

I agree with Gavin that if you're selling a product or service you'd be better not to display the ads and instead drive people to your products and services. One thing though that I've noticed over the years is that you get the highest CTR on ads from search traffic. One thing I may do is code things so the ads show when the referrer is a search engine and not have them show otherwise.

Forums and community sites seem to be the hardest to monetise - the problem is a lot of your traffic is the same users visiting frequently. Repeat users soon get used to the placement of the ads and quickly zone out, concentrating only on the actual text of the page. Additionally repeat users will probably see the same ads each time, again reducing the chances of them clicking them (if they were going to they would have already done so).

From my own experience I have found that most revenue comes from search boxes - one of my sites has a "search the web" google text box - this seems to have a very high CTR, although doesnt get many searches. That may be a subtle way of generating revenue on a forum site without covering the place in ads.

Your idea of only showing ads to search engine referrals is a good one - as I said regulars will soon get used to the ad placement and will stop noticing them. What a lot of forums seem to do is hide ads for logged in users. This also works as an extra incentive for users to register rather than just lurk around the forums.

vangogh
02-24-2009, 10:37 AM
Interesting idea about the search box Gavin. I agree with you about members not clicking on ads and I wouldn't expect them too. I have some ideas for bringing in revenue through the forum, but first we grow the community more. If all we eve do here is pay the hosting bills and other expenses of running the place I'll be happy, though I do think we and other forums can do more.

billbenson
02-24-2009, 09:47 PM
I would think that using the site to support some sort of core business site such as what I believe the old forum was trying to do albeit poor execution. A second site with information about running a business and leads / recommendations for everything from web designers to accountants. That site would have ads. At least that's the sort of direction that I think I would investigate?

rezzy
02-25-2009, 02:50 PM
With the invenition of some Firefox plugins, I dont even see most ads. I find it weird when I use a machine that doesnt have it and all of sudden I see ads on sites I didnt think had them.

vangogh
02-25-2009, 04:07 PM
I don't mind seeing ads. I find it just as annoying to see the empty space. I also think the ad blockers end up blocking things that are real content. Besides ads can give you some clues about the motivation of the site and I think everyone has a right to make a living. If I'm not willing to see ads on someone else's site than I can't complain if no one looks at mine.

Having said that I think advertising is not the best form of revenue online, unless you happen to be one of the big traffic sites. I see it as a way to make some extra money and help pay the costs of running the site. Regardless of my opinion of ad blockers I know many people are using them and many more will use them in the future. Advertising is probably not the best business model for most websites, though it can likely compliment other forms of revenue depending on the site and business model.

Harold Mansfield
02-25-2009, 06:45 PM
As part of an experiment a number of years ago, I registered 100 domains, wrote some content, and put adsense on them. Most only had a few pages of content and didn't rank very well. The experiment was for a program I had written. Adsense was an afterthought.

Across the sites the adsense paid for the domain and hosting. Remember these were just several page sites that were not really managed in any way. Had I built up the sites for the last 5 years, I suspect I could be making more money that I do today selling product with the adsense sites.


A number of years ago that was very possible...today the web is littered with crappy blogs trying every niche imaginable to get the adsense revenue they heard about 5 years ago.



Web advertising works best on informational websites, an article showing information about a given topic then offering links to related products or services. Adverts really start to pay their way on websites that do not offer what the user came for.
.

It took me months to figure that out, and the amount of traffic needed for ads to pay off is getting higher and higher everyday.

To me, ads work well if you have a well written, very niche targeted site...and even then, I still wouldn't waste the space with adsense.

For instance...If am an authority on Lionel Train Collecting and have a small but hard core following in the Model RR circuit, I would rather deal with Lionel directly for banner ads, or for my affiliate deal, rather than going with Google or yahoo to put whatever the hell they want on my valuable real estate and pay me peanuts.

The bottom line is, outside of MFA's (sites put together just for ad money), I need to be in control over what is shown and advertised on my site. It;s like letting an outside company stick ads on the front lawn of your house anytime they want, advertising what ever they want.

nealrm
02-25-2009, 08:07 PM
Eborg,
I agree, ads work best on sites with a very targeted market and with ads that fit that market. Banks, insurance, home improvement go well with real estate sites. Tech sites may do well with computer or gaming ads.

Also, you always want to control who is advertising on your site. That is why I don't use anything like adsence.

orion_joel
02-25-2009, 11:41 PM
Eborg, i think that one of the main problems with people expecting these similar ad revenues to five years ago is that so much of the material published from 5 years ago is still going around, albeit as often free give away books. This will most often lead to i think people trying to do it on the cheap but achieve what is now unrealistic results.

My actual advertising income literally still does not cover my hosting costs, and in the last 8 months i have increased my site traffic by over 5 times. However in saying this, i have not had ads on all those sites for all that time.

One thing i am noticing though is that while the visitor's are increasing at a steady pace, impressions are varying hugely. Which i am still trying to explain, but may be one of those things just not worth explaining.

orion_joel
02-25-2009, 11:50 PM
Actually i am now trying to redirect my sites to using affiliate ad's mostly from commission junction, rather then google, ads but also trying to keep the mix a little.

Also as other suggest the site i dont touch with ads is my business site Orion Networks, however all the others the whole point is to make money from them at some point, and as Vangogh mentioned about the forum here it is easier for people to swallow ads if they are there earlier rather then just happen to appear sometime.