ADSENSE, does anyone actually make any money now days?

Adsense seems to be going down the tubes as far as payouts to publishers is concerned :mad:

Do any of you see this trend of much lower CTR's and payouts on clicks or am I the only one that can see this going on :confused:

No- I see it too. I was thinking it may be seasonal ---


Read this Anthony - http://www.vbwebmaster.com/forums/showthread.php?t=761

Thanks Joey, that is a good report.

I guess we all need to find some of our own products to sell (e-books, services, subscriptions) to make a living online.

It does not seem that contextual advertising can do it anymore unless you have millions of page views per month.

thats what im working towards

Indeed, my CTR's are much, much lower over the past couple days although i have been receiving similar amounts of clicks and impressions. According to that report looks as though that keyword prices seem to fluxuate alot. I mean for Automotive for example, one month the prices are 50% change and then the next month only a 25% change.

And even Finicial seems to be up and down in extremes. One month 20%, and then the next -30%. Lets hope this is just a premature dip and nothing too reminisant of times to come.

How many millions of clicks do you need to make a living when a hell of a lot of keywords are only paying a couple pennies to the publisher :confused: :wave:

Reliance on adsense alone is not a good idea.

Adsense is great - but yu should have more. Sell text links, sell banner ads, offer a premium membership, sell T shirts or related items with your site logo. It all adds up.

Just one decent site, marketed well, with various profit centers that are marketed well, can make a nice living. It takes work to get it there, but a forum with a few thousand active members, on the right subject, can make a few thousand a month between the various profit centers.

All depends on the subject. A web hosting forum, for example, could easily bring good revenue on all those areas. You could sell banner ads to web hosting companies, sell products such as computer accessories, and its a decent Key Word for adsense. Thats just one example, but you can make it work for you with a little creativity and hard work.

I agree, but it takes time and you have to have the pages (e-stores) set up then you must buy some banners on other high traffic sites to draw traffic.

You have to spend a bit of money on promotion, not simply try to sell advertising to others, you have to pay to play in the marketing game.

So you want it all for free? LOL Me too!

Its a business like any other. You have to work hard and spend money to make money.

Gotta agree with what Joey said a few posts up... Premiere Membership is going to be a good one for me. Shop around for some great deals you can offer your members by discouts with suppliers they would use etc... then offer them a Premium Membership in return for these discounts.

I have grand plans in this arena.

Maybe a good landing page for affiliate links where members can go to find offers, at least you could let them know that it is a way for them to support the forum by purchasing from that page.

Be up front with your members because they know better anyway.

I use my affliate connections to answer requests for products. If I see a request that even looks close to what I can make money on, I post links to my programs. Of course on my own forums though.

Well there is nothing wrong with an e-store that would give members a place to support the forum when buying something they need.

I know that C8forums does that with their book store where members can support the forum by purchasing books from the forum store that is linked to Amazon.

All depends on the subject. A web hosting forum, for example, could easily bring good revenue on all those areas. You could sell banner ads to web hosting companies, sell products such as computer accessories, and its a decent Key Word for adsense. Thats just one example, but you can make it work for you with a little creativity and hard work.

I agree, it all depends on the subject. Running a forum that targets local traffic, most of the time doesn't get a good income on adsense. Unless you have millions of pageviews per day, maybe.

BTW, im new here. :) my first post.

Anyone can start a forum for free and the host will run adsense. Anyone can start a forum very cheaply and run their own adsense ads. The number of forums has grown tremendously and they're all competing for the same revenue. Hundreds of forums were started with the sole purpose of making money off adsense. The revenue that advertisers can spend hasn't increased commensurately. A company isn't going to increase its advertising budget because there are more publishers available that want to run their ads. They're just going to cut the pie into smaller pieces. It's only natural that CTR's will go down in that environment. They might go up a bit if Google has serious competition, but don't expect a huge improvement. Forums compete for finite advertising bucks, they also compete with each other for finite page views, impressions, clicks, etc.. It's not just Google, every advertiser or network is paying less. The law of supply and demand will always rule the market. You can do other things to generate more revenue as has been decribed, but the bottom line is still traffic.

Well there are also more and more webmaster forums starting all the time, so it is hard to get traffic up when folks are starting forums like they have with blogs, everyone has one or two now.

There are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians in this town :o

It takes a special twist if you are going to be successful when you have so many new entries in the marketplace.

I would imagine it is the same with auto or sports forums also, there will be more and more of those popping up also down the road.

It takes a special twist if you are going to be successful when you have so many new entries in the marketplace.

I would imagine it is the same with auto or sports forums also, there will be more and more of those popping up also down the road.

Like being for vBulletin forum owners only :D

Well there are also more and more webmaster forums starting all the time, so it is hard to get traffic up when folks are starting forums like they have with blogs, everyone has one or two now.

There are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians in this town :o

It takes a special twist if you are going to be successful when you have so many new entries in the marketplace.

I would imagine it is the same with auto or sports forums also, there will be more and more of those popping up also down the road.
You can look at that as a curse or as an opportunity. Most of these new forums don't have staying power. The owners find out how much time and work it takes to build it into something that'll even break even and they throw in the towel. There's a good opportunity to pick these forums up cheap and add them to your own. I think the bottom line is that people have to really have a passion for what they're doing to be successful. Forum's aren't one of those build it and they will come propositions.

Yeah Buff, it is sort of like owning a pizza shop, you have to have the best pizza in town and it has to be consistent in quality everyday if you want folks to come back.

Quality of content is what will make you or break you in the end, if you have great members that put up good topics and have a community that actually cares about the forum then you can build a great forum.

Yea my adsense has hit rock bottom here lately, was making a couple bucks a day, but now its like at 26cents and little things like that :sad:

I've never seen AdSense on forums as a big earner - just a bonus towards covering hosting costs. Then again, I figure decent-sized forums focussed on technology subjects would probably have the upper hand. Maybe I should start one... ;)

Yeah Adsense pays as I have heard. If you have a bigger userbase, it obviously pays a lot more, but still. I am actually still awaiting activation or something crazy for my forum. We will see what happens.

Jason F.