Making Money from Adsense

[Dark Matter]

One way to make $ off of adsense is to offer upgrades that include no ads.

Sorry, you lost me on that one. How can you make money from ads if your not using them?

 

[Russ]

Sorry, you lost me on that one. How can you make money from ads if your not using them?

Simple, using XenForo's subscription plan, offer the ability to those who do pay a subscription fee, whether its monthly, quarterly or annually what not, hide the ads for that usergroup. You lose the money off those folks clicking the ads but could make it up in the subscription fees.

 

[Blue]

Simple, using XenForo's subscription plan, offer the ability to those who do pay a subscription fee, whether its monthly, quarterly or annually what not, hide the ads for that usergroup. You lose the money off those folks clicking the ads but could make it up in the subscription fees.

That's it exactly. Adsense seems to be most effective with visitors and new members. After a while regular members will become somewhat ad blind and mostly the ignore the ads anyway. Offering upgrades that hide the ads are a sure fire way to make money from them, but in reverse, by not displaying them.

 

[a legacy reborn]

One way to make $ off of adsense is to offer upgrades that include no ads.

That is actually a very good idea .

 

[Dean]

One way to make $ off of adsense is to offer upgrades that include no ads.

Or even better ads, such as deep discount specials just for the people that upgrade.

 

[melbo]

I never show ads to members... they don't click them and are bothered by them. Only show ads to guests (who usually come in by Google).

Mine fluctuates but I typically make around a $500 a month Adsense and $150 a month Amazon. Highest adsense month was around $725

 

[Andy.N]

Mine fluctuates but I typically make around a month Adsense and $150 a month Amazon. Highest adsense month was around $725

You missed some number there?

 

[a legacy reborn]

You missed some number there?

Yea, that is good money though. I wish I could make that on any of my puny little sites lul.

 

[melbo]

Fixed.

 

[AzzidReign]

I find it hard to believe myself some people are making so much money with AdSense, to the point they don't even need to work any other job to earn money. I'm not saying some don't earn good money from it, but I'm very sceptical about it all when people claim they are making this and that from it.

Sometimes I think people just say it trying to drive traffic towards their own site, joining asking questions there on how they do it. I've also got quite an interesting story below, I'm sure Mark won't mind me quoting him on this one.

Mark.B - who owns BCForums recently put Google AdSense Ads up about a month ago for a short while "as a test to see what could be earned from it". Now normally he runs an Ads Free community using vBulletin and his forum in question has over 80,000+ threads, with over a million posts listed. He told me he made pennies after a week or two putting AdSense up in place - so removed them all again soon after.

The test was a complete failure for him! He only did it to prove a point and see, if in fact he could earn good money using his community like people claim you can from Google AdSense.

With that many threads and posts listed all indexed well by Google. He should have been making more than that if your to believe what people claim they make with much less content listed on their forums. I understand that the Niche comes into play with regards to getting the best high paying advertisers wanting to put their ads via Google on your community to make you big money. But still, making pennies after a week or two with 80,000+ threads all showing AdSense ads?

Not often do you hear from people running a very large forum that it was a waste of time. Mark.B - is one of those who did come clean and was honest in saying he made nothing from it with his Big Board (and it is one). He wasn't trying any con anyone into joining, he admitted it was a waste of time for him personally making only pennies.

That site really isn't that big. You mention his thread count like it's an ungodly amount. When I've helped people earn money from adsense, I tell them to not put up any ads until they are getting roughly 2,000 uniques a day. Even then, you will only be making a few bucks here and there.

Ad placements and sizes are key with adsense. There are sizes that pay great for certain placements. I wouldn't write off Adsense or using ads bc one person with a small site said that he didn't make money off of it...

 

[-GR-]

You do need a decent amount of traffic to start really doing well with adsense. I would almost say a minimum of 250,000 page views a month is when to start putting ads on a site.

 

[Matt George]

That's ridiculous! You can make reasonable Adsense $ with far less pageviews. Say, 20,000 to 30,000 pageviews a month.

 

[-GR-]

I find it hard to believe that you are going to make a fair amount with just 30,000 page views. Maybe $20 a month.

 

[Matt George]

More like 10 times that. It just depends on how you set up your Adsense and forum.

 

[Carlos]

Sorry, you lost me on that one. How can you make money from ads if your not using them?

There are a lot of sites that offer user enhancements via paid subscriptions.

For example, MW3Forum does exactly this via Donations.

What you get for donating are two options:

Donator:
- Custom title
- Donator "badge."
- Different username color.
- Some other stuff I forget.

Donator over 50 dollars worth:
- Custom title
- Custom "badge."
- Custom username color.
- Again, stuff I forget.

Those that buy advertising from the site don't get any of these titles, and extras.

Unfortunately, this actually causes trouble - I have been seeing it first hand myself.

I find it hard to believe that you are going to make a fair amount with just 30,000 page views. Maybe $20 a month.

Actually, over.

Especially if you have more than one website, more than one forum. Like I do.

MW3Blog has been making me over 40 dollars in 3 months alone. CODForums, MVC3Forum, and another blog contribute to this number. Come this fall, my company is going to grow thanks to this fast growth.

 

[Digital Doctor]

It also depends on your content.
If you are a site taking about games ... well .. a sale is $50-100.
When you are talking about BMWs ... a sale is $50,000.
When you are talking about CRM software, a sale could be 2 million.
I think a Google ad which directs people to a page that sells a product for 2 million will be willing to pay alot per click.

 

[Wildcat Media]

Sorry for taking this a little off-topic, but is anyone on Amazon Associates' program? I find it much better than Google Adsense in terms of bringing in money. The graphic banner widgets also look much better than the text-based Google Adsense Ads.

I've been with Amazon since CDNow closed up shop, and Amazon took over their affiliate program. I hit some peaks where I was making hundreds per month, but with the economy it has slowed to a trickle. If you have a site that specializes in certain kinds of music, movies or books, consider setting up an Amazon A-Store. You can create your own product categories, listing Amazon products, and putting your own blurbs under them. It will take a lot of work to make it generate income, but visitors will be more likely to click (and hopefully buy) after seeing that you've put a good amount of effort into it.
On a few of my sites, many long-time members encourage others to use our Amazon links to purchase product, and it has helped. That sense of community helps with the Amazon purchases--they realize the product costs them the same amount, but that part of that sale will come back to the forum to help us out.

 

[DRE]

Offtopic
How is experiences of all people here about Chitika?. Someone say it is better than Adsense and some say it is very bad.

I use Chitika because some lame keeps reporting my bikini threads to Google and getting my adsense turned off.

 

[mrGTB]

That's ridiculous! You can make reasonable Adsense $ with far less pageviews. Say, 20,000 to 30,000 pageviews a month.

It is, because a lot depends on how well you integrate the ads into your site really. For example, I had an Aquarium Website (Not Forum) I custom built from nothing years ago. The site theme was dark and I created frames for text ads making them look like real site links. The website only had around 600 pages when finished and I was getting daily clicks on AdSense ads due to great integration. It wasn't making much, but it was earning enough to pay the site cost. I know for a fact I was getting daily clicks because people were fooled into thinking they wasn't adverts, but site links.

 

[3dsoft]

More like 10 times that. It just depends on how you set up your Adsense and forum.

So what ad placements do you recommend? To me it seems like that most admins use similar ad placements.