Making Money from Adsense

[GofD]

Just a quick question - I use mainly text ads within Adsense - am I limiting my earnings potential by doing so?

Most likely, yes. Even Google will tell you that image ads generally pay better than text, but if you allow both, you'll always get the highest paying ad possible in that position. I say generally, because we have one extremely high-paying position that requires text ads only - the first post signature ad. Try it, and you'll see - it tripled our income overnight.

 

[borbole]

Thought I'd finally give AdSense a go after 3 years of running a site without adverts.

Put lots of conditionals in place so only the basic members and guests see the ad's.

Just 3 weeks after opening my account I've received an email from Google stating that it has been disabled because it "poses a risk of generating invalid activity".

Of course I won't get any response from Google as to exactly what that risk is, so that will be my first and last foray into pay per click advertising.

Same thing here but they left the ads running until the time of payment came and they pulled it off with a lame excuse. And the most irritating thing is that they don't bother to explain themselves or give you a chance to tell your side of the story. Since then I did not bother with advertisings anymore.

 

[trilogy33]

disabled because it "poses a risk of generating invalid activity"

I've heard that reported before on other development boards.
I remember reading that Google favours blogs and CMS "type" pages over forums. Possibly and I'm only guessing here, because who the heck knows what they're thinking, it's to do with forums having, by most part, a highly concentrated group on it's pages at a certain amount of time.
Also the potential for someone "clickbombing" you into Google's bad books because a Moderator has brassed someone off, is a very likely scenario.

 

[Paul B]

Makes the whole system farcical if a 3rd party can get your account banned without you having any knowledge or control over it.

 

[trilogy33]

You can appeal but your chances are limited. Their T&Cs are about as long-winded as FB's.

 

[Wildcat Media]

I say generally, because we have one extremely high-paying position that requires text ads only - the first post signature ad. Try it, and you'll see - it tripled our income overnight.

I can't quite picture what that looks like. Could you point me to an example of it? I'm really looking to monetize the forums I run, and need to get the income flowing to help pay for server hosting. (And, pay for all these XF licenses. )

 

[Walter]

I remember reading that Google favours blogs and CMS "type" pages over forums.

Not true.
They even have sections on their site that show how to optimize ad placements for forums.

I'm using them for years, never had any problems.

 

[GofD]

I can't quite picture what that looks like. Could you point me to an example of it? I'm really looking to monetize the forums I run, and need to get the income flowing to help pay for server hosting. (And, pay for all these XF licenses. )

Shown only to guests and use the colors of your forum for the headline. Shows up in the signature position (can't remember if it's above or below an actual signature.) Members never see it unless they don't log in, and so no complaints. Seriously - try this position and give it a couple weeks to settle out, but our income tripled overnight from this one position.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Shown only to guests and use the colors of your forum for the headline. Shows up in the signature position (can't remember if it's above or below an actual signature.) Members never see it unless they don't log in, and so no complaints. Seriously - try this position and give it a couple weeks to settle out, but our income tripled overnight from this one position.

Thanks Susan! I have seen plugins in which the ads were placed where the second post in the thread would be. Have you ever tried that in the past? I have seen the "second post" ads quite a bit as a guest, so I don't doubt it is a successful ad location. I'm definitely going to try the signature location once we get a good ad plugin for XF. (There is one being worked on that I'm watching. )

Just curious...do you see a lot of sharing activity on the AddThis links within the posts? I put them at the bottom of the page in thread view, but I feel they are buried down there. I would not put them in individual posts unless I could somehow code in a link directly to that post. (I have not had a chance to go through their API yet, but I am thinking it is possible with some extra work.) I might also go the stealthy approach and put a small text-based share link next to the Like and Reply links beneath the message that links to AddThis. I like the XF interface enough that I want to keep it clean and free of clutter.

 

[estranged]

I switched from php-nuke cms with phpbb forums to xenforo with xenporta and my adsense income dropped by half Do I regret the switch? NO!

 

[mrGTB]

Google AdSense, bla! I stopped using it on mine, and I avoid using forums if I can help it that display ads. Or I block them with ABP with FF.

 

[SgtSpike]

Anyone have any good suggestions for advertisers besides Google? My account was also banned and not reinstated. I've thought about trying to sign up again, but not sure what sort of validation criteria they use to compare banned persons vs non-banned persons.

Anyway, I've tried Adbrite. It sucked - 200k pageviews brought all of about $3.50. I am currently trying Project Wonderful, which is fun, but also low on the income amount. Really, I've seen nothing that comes close to matching Google's CPM payout that doesn't require a million pageviews or more a month.

I also recently switch domain names, which brought down visits and killed my site visit statistics, but those are slowly building back up.

Thoughts?

 

[trilogy33]

I see the clever/dumb balance has been restored. My account has been open for precisely 2 nights.

Oh come on!!

Hello Mr **********,

While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense
account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since
keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage
our advertisers in the future, we've decided to disable your account.

Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the
interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We
realize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you in
advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions about your account or the actions we've
taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information
by visiting
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_US.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.

 

[AzzidReign]

This is why I never suggest users to utilize ads, especially from Adsense unless they have at least 2,000 unique visitors a day. Anything lower than that, you risk your account being banned and that's not something you want. Adsense is one of the top payers right now (there's a few other networks that pay more but you have to have something like 20k uniques a day which most forum admins I talk to, don't quite get that), so you don't want to piss off google.

And as another member mentioned, be sure to only allow your code to be utilized on YOUR site. I forget the exact setting but you can make it so only sites you put in "accepted" will be allowed to have your ads on them. If you do that, I'm sure you will be much safer.

 

[trilogy33]

They want the third degree from me. A sort of Google Spanish Inquisition...screenshot follows:

 

[SgtSpike]

Lol, good luck with that trilogy. They did the same thing to me, then promptly denied my appeal.

Nice MX-5 BTW. I'm not a huge fan of NC's, but having own an NA and (currently) an MSM, I can appreciate Miata's of any type. Haven't visited your forum before, but hey, a Miata forum based on xenForo? What's not to love?!

Azzid, that's good advice. It seems to be extremely difficult to achieve a proper "clicks to pageviews" ratio with adsense, especially after first implementing them. And after reading all of the posts here, it sounds like any minor discrepancy in "normal" statistics triggers Google to nab you.

 

[trilogy33]

This is why I never suggest users to utilize ads, especially from Adsense unless they have at least 2,000 unique visitors a day..

So, instead of assessing the traffic beforehand and advising clients that maybe they should wait until they're at an acceptable level of traffic, what Google have done in fact, is take 2 days of earnings which, last I looked, was about £0.17 so, seventeen pence and banked it for themselves? Isn't this highway robbery?
This is based on: 0 clicks and over 1,000 impressions, I know this because I made a point of checking earlier, just before they closed the account and now I cannot say what is what?!

Of course, they've shot themselves in the foot here, ha!
What they "should" have done, is wait until just before the payout/payday was reached (quoting my own message above here) *spooooky* amass lots of funds, (ha! I doubt it) and then deny me the cash.
Silly Google, silly.

Meanwhile, now that I'm aware, I'll merely change a few templates, covering up the massive blank spaces and I'm none the worse off really.
I wouldn't have found this email out until this morning, so why not fill the those big blank spaces with non-paying Public Service Ads eh?
Again, very silly. They missed a trick there!

And as another member mentioned, be sure to only allow your code to be utilized on YOUR site. I forget the exact setting but you can make it so only sites you put in "accepted" will be allowed to have your ads on them. If you do that, I'm sure you will be much safer.

Yes the code only runs on my site.

Anyway, onwards:

Hello,

This message confirms that we've received your appeal submission.

We'll get to your appeal as soon as we can, though due to the high volume
of emails we receive, it may take us up to a week or more to process it.
If you've previously submitted an appeal for this account, you might not
receive a response to this or future appeals.

Also, please be aware that appealing the disabling of your AdSense account
does not guarantee that it will be reinstated.

If you have any questions or concerns about accounts disabled for invalid
activity, please visit
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Yours sincerely,



The Google AdSense Team

Must resist the sarcasm...trying really hard here

 

[trilogy33]

Lol, good luck with that trilogy. They did the same thing to me, then promptly denied my appeal.

I'll keep an open mind, but I'm sure you're right here...I get that sense of foreboding, that: "we're right, you're wrong because .... you are!"

Nice MX-5 BTW. I'm not a huge fan of NC's, but having own an NA and (currently) an MSM, I can appreciate Miata's of any type. Haven't visited your forum before, but hey, a Miata forum based on xenForo? What's not to love?!

Ah thanks dude that's brightened this sullen moment anyway. Feel free to register if you want (sorry, cheeky mode).

 

[erich37]

the first post signature ad. Try it, and you'll see - it tripled our income overnight.

could you please explain what you mean by "the first post signature ad" ?

Many thanks!

 

[Digital Doctor]

could you please explain what you mean by "the first post signature ad" ?

A First Post signature example.
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/making-money-from-adsense.9739/page-3#post-185270