Sim
Well-known member
Back pre-GFC I was making over US$6K per month from just one of my sites (finance niche forum in Australia), with quite low traffic - and only from banner ads and sponsored content.
This was not Adsense, this was advertising from big financial institutions sold by a broker who took 35% of the gross ... so that $6K per month I was getting was only the net income!
We were getting CPMs of over $50 ... some premium CPMs were approaching $100, but we were too small to attract that level of advertising.
Unfortunately, post-GFC the traffic dried up, as did the advertising revenue. It's only just starting to pick up again now, 5 years later.
Banner advert CPMs are almost non-existent these days, large advertisers in the finance sector in Australia are looking for something unique ... tailored advertising, sponsored content, anything other than banners to get engagement - most people are either banner-blind or use blockers. You have to work hard to get good money from advertising these days (or just have a massive amount of traffic and accept lower CPMs).
I've just started talking with a new advertising broker who says advertisers are far more interested in unique visitors than pageviews now ... which tells me that they have matured and are looking for eyeballs and engagement rather than simply throwing banners out there blindly.
Of course, advertising is only one of many ways to monetise a site.
This was not Adsense, this was advertising from big financial institutions sold by a broker who took 35% of the gross ... so that $6K per month I was getting was only the net income!
We were getting CPMs of over $50 ... some premium CPMs were approaching $100, but we were too small to attract that level of advertising.
Unfortunately, post-GFC the traffic dried up, as did the advertising revenue. It's only just starting to pick up again now, 5 years later.
Banner advert CPMs are almost non-existent these days, large advertisers in the finance sector in Australia are looking for something unique ... tailored advertising, sponsored content, anything other than banners to get engagement - most people are either banner-blind or use blockers. You have to work hard to get good money from advertising these days (or just have a massive amount of traffic and accept lower CPMs).
I've just started talking with a new advertising broker who says advertisers are far more interested in unique visitors than pageviews now ... which tells me that they have matured and are looking for eyeballs and engagement rather than simply throwing banners out there blindly.
Of course, advertising is only one of many ways to monetise a site.