# Revenue from posting ads on my web site



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Hi everyone, I'd like to get some ideas... until I find a permanent job, I might as well maximize the assets I have including some web sites to earn a little extra income.

I run a couple software related web sites. They have totally organic, original content, one of them has been online since 1999. Many people arrive via google searches. Traffic has declined over the years but back in 2006/2007 at the peak of all this web advertising excitement, I was making around $1000/month mostly with "text link ads" that I placed at the bottom of my pages. I loved that they were basically hidden and not a nuisance. I have a couple Pagerank 6 pages and many Pagerank 5 pages.

That $1000/month plummeted in '08 just as the bubble-in-everything burst, and I wasn't that surprised. After that I was focused on my real job and lost touch with web advertising.

Currently my sites (including the pagerank 6 pages) carry Google Adsense ads and that's the only advertising. Even with a big banner at the top of the page -- far uglier than my old text ads -- they bring in very low income ... around $20/month. Sometimes $30/month. I estimate that my traffic today is probably 40% less than back in 2006. So although my traffic is down 40%, the ad revenue is down 97% from its peak. Was it just a different era back then?

Any tips on what I can do to bring in more advertising revenue? Have I gone the wrong route with Adsense?


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

My first thought is, could Google be just such a greedy middleman that very little of the money is trickling through to me? If that's the case I need to get rid of them.

Back when I did the text ads, I dealt almost directly with the advertisers... just one middleman. He was paying me $14 per text link per month. But these days I don't know where to find such people or even what kind of ads are the norm.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Google has total control over how much revenue they assign to their affiliate websites. There is no way to know if it is a true accounting.

Check your click through rate. Is it higher or lower than is used to be.

I found the click through rate for "content" ads on my website is an abysmal 1.5%, but pays 38 cents a click.

For the "search" ads (the little search box you can put on your website from Google Adsense) has a click through rate of almost 10%......but only pays 13 cents a click.

With the hundreds of millions of websites out there, the pie is being split up by more people, I think.

I doubt a lot of people are earning much from their website..........unless they are operating an actual online business.

The online "payday" or "auto loan" business looks interesting.............but it probably a lot of work to operate..........as an example.


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## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

The more I read about this the more I think it's the burst bubble effect you mentioned. The only people making real money on blogging are at it full time and they all say the same thing - "fresh informative content, everyday, all day". That sounds like a lot of pressure to me. As I mentioned in the "Frugality" section, I'm advertising on Facebook, directing the clicks to my website(landing page) in the hopes they will then like my music samples enough to hit the link to iTunes. After looking into "monetizing" my website by putting ads on it I decided not too, mainly because I don't want to "tacky up" my website just to make a few bucks a month. I even wonder if I had ads it might turn off some potential customers, having an adverse effect.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

I get a list of available domains emailed to me, and there is an interesting one on the list today.

EI.ca (ei.ca) for sale for $12,000

Interesting and rare phenomena, that a Google search shows the Service Canada unemployment site as the number 1 search return out of 700 million.

It is a rare two letter domain........perfectly suited for an employment website.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

sags said:


> EI.ca for sale for $12,000


Add an L in front of it and you could sell cameras. Very expensive cameras. ;-)


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

So maybe I wasn't the only person with crashing ad revenue... it certainly felt like a bubble at the time


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## Echo (Apr 1, 2011)

You can't compare Adsense with text link ad revenue. Adsense revenue is driven by traffic and ad placement. If you've lost 40% of your traffic, chances are you're just not getting enough traffic to generate significant revenue.

Text link ads on the footer or sidebar have gone away in favour of paid or sponsored posts. The theory is that Google will look more favourably at a link within an original article rather than a link on the home page. That said, I'm sure there are plenty of SEO firms who'll pay a premium for a link on a PR5 or PR6 website.

I suspect that your loss of online revenue was more about you ignoring the sites then about some cosmic shift in online trends. Plenty of people made plenty of money (and still do) online since 2008.

Have you added any new content to your sites lately?


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

Jim9guitars said:


> The only people making real money on blogging are at it full time and they all say the same thing - "fresh informative content, everyday, all day". ...


Once in a while, I run across an article sent by an email contact. If I want to resend it, I search for the text to find the reputable source. There I find all the bloggers that are posting the same stuff as "fresh every day". I think Marina has the right idea. Hire writers to create original content.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

I do have original content, it's just somewhat stale. It's not a blog with random thoughts ... it's specific technical info and unique work with a dedicated audience. Working full time at a demanding job, I definitely "neglected" this old hobby of mine.

A couple days ago I went and freshened the content and created some updates. At the same time I increased the size of the google ads and boosted them to text + graphics. I saw adsense revenue skyrocket in the last couple days (quadrupling, approximately) but I'll have to wait longer to see if that's just transient. Also since I changed two things at once it's not a very controlled experiment, and traffic may level off after the initial response to new content.

Maybe you're right that my traffic just dropped too low below a threshold that created the significant ad competition. I'll keep posting new content.

But perhaps I will still hunt for some of those SEO firms that might want a spot on my PR5 and PR6 pages.


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## Daniel A. (Mar 20, 2011)

I run a major forum my revenue comes from banner advertising.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Daniel, where do your banner ads come from? Who is the vendor/broker?


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I hear there's easy $$$ revenue in the credit card referrals. One finance blog claimed $4k/month just by having a separate page of credit card links... Most everyone are suckers for credit cards bonus so I can see these working

Does anyone actually click on ads though? As targeted as they are supposed to be nowadays.. they seem to miss the most basic basic stats on me.. even though I openly log into chrome and gmail. The ads are never even in my own language, so they're wasting their money. And I have been spending money online regularly for over 10 years now... None of them have figured out where it's being spent?

I wonder if it's just a huge SEO strategy to boost the placement in google results? Links and views etc, besides clicks. It's baffling because I quickly learned to ignore ads like white noise, which is entirely human nature.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Google just announced they are changing their search algorithm again.

As per usual, they don't disclose any information about their search software.

It will take awhile for the dust to settle, as some websites will find themselves elevated and others demoted.

SEO experts can help with the basics.........but Google walks to it's own drummer.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

sags said:


> Google just announced they are changing their search algorithm again.
> 
> As per usual, they don't disclose any information about their search software.
> 
> ...


I have many years in experience in this and the SEO people will claim they can get results for you but most of them will overkill on links , social media etc that can negatively affect your rankings.I do my own SEO , I taught myself and have gone to many conferences for my own use and everything has merits but without quality content and constant updating you will fail at keeping the rankings in google.
I have turned down so many offers from people who want me to teach them how to make money online , at least a dozen from this forum because frankly if I want to work it is going to be on my own websites and business.There is no such thing as easy money with online marketing but the credit card market is very profitable and I met a guy years ago who claimed to be getting $100,000 a month in revenue by buying adwords in google ,he was spending $30,000 + and making 100k.
I just bought a very nice credit card domain and I plan to pursue this niche next but not until after my brother passes.I will be happy to share my investment and what I make when I am fully working on it.My budget already consists of having a part time writer blogging credit card news and working on getting some older content on the domain.The domain is already 10+ years old but a domain broker sat on it for a while.
To give some basic ideas how I build my websites and what we are doing for content .We have been covering the Aeroplan story ,we do a review of the credit cards and any current promos.If you are pushing any products sign up to all supplier mailing lists , they will send out marketing stuff and you can write something about that in your own words.Financial calculators are very good as well , I just paid a programmer to write our own programs to help people calculate credit card costs ,payoffs etc.I am already about $25,000 into this project and my expected cost over next 1-2 years in site development is about $60,000.I considered doing a financial forum on this credit card site but I own several now and if I don't have a reasonable expectation to be in top 20 in search engines we wont do it.
I just wanted to add that sometimes you are better to buy what somebody has already built up than start from scratch and try to build things on it's own.Some of the best sites we have in our portfolio we bought from people who were looking to get out of the business and retire.I sold my largest portfolio this year but now we are in acquisition mode again as our year end comes we want to offset some gains with increase in Employee costs so it is a perfect time to do massive updates in the design and programming side of our business.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Why are you paying tens of thousands$ for programmers and web designers?

These are basic skills and you can find people working in Vietnam, Indonesia etc who do more or less the same thing at a fraction of the cost. Sure the quality isn't as good but we're talking about an order of magnitude reduction in cost of labour


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

James I have many websites and at least 20+ people working on them ,even at $10.00 per hour it adds up Also some of our databases are very complex so basic skills won't work.But one thing sticks out the quality is not good and we make seven figures a year (as in Millions ) so we only have quality work.My average word press template is about $1900 USD ,nothing I do is out of the box


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Ah ok that's a big operation! You're right, it will add up... and I am a fan of going for quality whenever possible.

Complex work does require good brains & skills.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

marina628 said:


> I have turned down so many offers from people who want me to teach them how to make money online , at least a dozen from this forum because frankly if I want to work it is going to be on my own websites and business.There is no such thing as easy money..


This is pretty much why I ignore most all "How to make money" guides. :tongue-new:



james4beach said:


> These are basic skills and you can find people working in Vietnam, Indonesia etc who do more or less the same thing at a fraction of the cost. Sure the quality isn't as good but we're talking about an order of magnitude reduction in cost of labour


The current generation is growing up with English and computers now though! I'm in the Balkans and besides the tourism growth I noticed they are making some serious money online somehow (sometimes probably illegally...) Lots of young guys driving around in BMWs and Audis and you have to wonder how they could extract that much from the local economy. The youth in many countries are becoming fluent in English and often have fast and cheap internet all over. I used to think Hollywood was causing this but I've realized it's the internet.

The quality of services could catch up and maybe even surpass before long. Probably long before their cost of living will catch up for many reasons.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

i think m3s is onto something that is 10 or 20 years ahead of its time.

the computer savvy class is going to rule & there is no reason why youth in 3rd world countries cannot teach themselves the necessary expertise ... even while they cannot physically emigrate their persons to so-called "rich" 1st world countries.

mode says youth are already visibly profiting in the balkans. Luxury cars are replacing dracula in transsylvania? maybe like dracula there is an illegal underbelly. We all know how there's a lot of computer crime coming from russia & former eastern bloc communist countries in northern europe, no reason why the talent should have not spread south.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

Thanks for sharing your direction Marina. Good luck with the credit card endeavour.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

humble_pie said:


> the computer savvy class is going to rule & there is no reason why youth in 3rd world countries cannot teach themselves the necessary expertise ... even while they cannot physically emigrate their persons to so-called "rich" 1st world countries.


Hmm how did you know I visited 'ol Dracula? He is unbelievably popular with tourists but the rest of the country is a real gem. The "hackers" are in the not-so-touristy medium sized towns, where horse-drawn-wagons clack clack clack past the luxury car dealerships... Starbucks and Guccis cropping up in the corners of communist era apartments... And all the trees being hacked down to feed the new open market and make room for the malls, 4 laners, parking lots and nuclear power plants.

I think all youth in the "free" world are just naturally computer savvy now and very fluent in English (maybe because they grew up immersed in English - online) In countries that have little economic prospects, the word has spread that they can make $$$ online (started illegally for sure, now less and less I think) I learned to write HTML in highschool but who needs that to make a website now. I learned to program in university but you don't need that now either. It baffled me that my younger gf with no technical computer background somehow makes a living wage importing/selling online for years. She just knew how to make money online, use social media, and tapped into a market that practically lives online. I would say 5-10 years tops.

But what is the point of all the random ads that mean nothing to me? I've casually searched for many big ticket "wants" for years that I would consider to pull the "trigger" (read mouse click and TD Visa card) if I saw an ad for a big sale (the sales exist I'm sure but I don't seek them out) Do companies get real results from ads? I know buying Google words can be money well spent, but I mean all those silly ads with the casino like games where they just try to lure you to click....


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

CMF is trying to advertise Life Insurance to me, but what true CMFer would buy universal or whole life insurance? These ads are less effective to me than door-to-door salesmen. I see the salesmen is a human and have to consciously avoid or shut the door somehow, but I never even read that ad until just now! It's just like the white noise that is always there that I don't hear.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

If you can master Dreamweaver having HTML, CSS ,PHP skills you can easily earn $100,000 a year online as a subcontractor .Go to any webmaster Conference these days and more and more people started from home doing little tasks and over time have built on this.Graphics People are also in high demand ,a lady who does occasional work for me from Hungary is earning $200+ a day doing small banner jobs.Once you build a network of contacts it is very easy to run a profitable services business.I like SEOBOOK and Shoemoney but you must be able to dedicate 10-20 hours a week learing to justify the monthly expense.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Online, you could probably say you are living in any country you want too. Like Americans who learned long ago it's often just better to just say you're Canadian when traveling. Nobody wants to hire someone from the war torn Balkans, just get a proxy service from any favourably stable country you want :tongue-new:


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

me i don't get casino ads, i get ads for brokers, option trading sites, gardens, travel, more brokers, porter airline, birthdays, moms, florists, farm communities.

after Brad posted how he buys Land's End clothing a few days ago, i suddenly started getting huge land's end ads. They blew up, bannered, stormed the screen, they all had some ageing guy in a plaid cloak down to his ankles, made me think of king Lear wandering on the moor after goneril & regan seized the kingdom. Phew, finally by today land's end seems to have taken itself off the edge of the continent.

i once exchanged a pmm w toronto.gal about laundry. Just one exchange. We each wrote just one private PM. Next thing we knew, our screens were being bombarded with ads for laundry products. The bubbly blitz went on for an entire week.

it's obvious that google has keyword analytics. Right now my screen is showing me an ad in french from a local dealer to test drive a BMW sedan. I guess google has just figured out that i was looking at this photograph ... don't u think it was smart of the data miners to know that i probably wouldn't be buying a motorcycle, but i might be interested in a car?

ps i didn't know you'd visited dracula, i just took a guess ... but journos nearly always have good noses for news stories ...

.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I've never seen a targeted ad. I do let Google default to whatever country I'm in, Gmail no longer warns me I'm logging in from a sketchy location, and Visa finally got tired of me telling them I could be anywhere tomorrow. Still, Google could figure out I never type in any of these foreign languages. I even use Google translate for !

h_p that picture tears my heart... but yes DIY youtube videos can even fix a transmission with just a hammer and vise, in the middle of a forgotten country, which would take BMW warranty weeks to get an appointment, analysis, part shipped from China, and finally replaced at $80/hour in the 1st world. Never heard of Land's End clothing either but it looks great to me


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

My uncle loved going to the horse track for the harness races.

One day, he read an ad in a magazine that said........"How to beat the horses.......100% guaranteed".

So he sent away his money and a couple weeks later he got a small package in the mail.

He opened the box and inside was a tiny plastic whip.

Point being............anyone who thinks there is easy money to be picked from the internet trees...........is going to be disappointed.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

LOL Sags that is priceless.I use to work 100+ hours a week first few years I started and took me 5 months to make my first $100.Most people will give up before they get to that point .


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Also the 'internet business' and marketing is oversaturated. Everyone and their aunt, literally, is trying to do it.

Just like the investment world where any idiot -- including some of the stupidest guys I went to school with -- are now salespeople for mutual funds and investments. Any moron can be an "advisor"


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

Well this idiot has made $8550.72 today on commission sales and day is not over  There are always adjustments with returns and such but this is best start of month I have had in a while.


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## Retired Peasant (Apr 22, 2013)

I didn't know you went to school with j4b.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

I run a business not an hobby site  Last year we spent over $400,000 on PPC .I downsized and now we have 31 websites with 5-10 of them receiving over 1 million visitors a month and 39% are repeat visitors .Our customer mailing lists now are close to 300,000 and some of the publishers tie them to be for life so if I sell you a book today then in 5 years I am still making money from you.Don't know James4beach at least he is trying and he shared a couple of his websites with me there is something between the ears 
I don't sell Real Estate,Mutual Funds,Pills or Porn .


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Kudos for trying James............

I think you already know how tough it can be to generate meaningful revenues from the internet.

I'm sure Marina knows as well...........having done the hard work to be successful.

My message is to those who dream of buying a bunch of 10 dollar domain names, putting up free websites.......and waiting for the cash to flow in.

The only ones getting rich on that..........are the domain name registrars.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

marina628 said:


> Well this idiot has made $8550.72 today on commission sales and day is not over  There are always adjustments with returns and such but this is best start of month I have had in a while.


Best day you have had in awhile........huh........let me think........

First day of the shutdown of the US government.............hmmm.............where is the tie-in?

Oh, I know.............Marina has websites selling stress beads to Republicans...............


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Reviving a thread from many years ago...

I continued using Google Adsense for the banner ads on my web site. They continue to generate revenue, though Google is steadily paying out less $. What bothers me is that they are marking high proportions of my traffic as "Invalid" and then subtracting revenue from my account. I can't find any clear reason why they think some of my traffic is invalid, and they won't answer my customer support inquiries.

I want to try a different ad system in case Google is unfairly holding back revenue they owe me. I've read reviews of a few others, such as Media.net (major competitor to Adsense) but wanted to ask here about first hand experiences.

What ad delivery system has worked for you? I'm looking for simple banner or text ads, and nothing intrusive.

Again, the point is that I have existing web sites and Adsense already does the job, but I want to try another ad network just in case the results are very different. I'm not looking to start up a new business at home or anything, just swap one ad network for another.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Generally, they disallow clicks when they are emanating from the same IP address, or known "click farms" where people get paid to click on ads all day.

But Google has also been known to wait until it is time to pay and then arbitrarily disallow the payment.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Honestly, I think Google is screwing me out of money they owe me. I don't even visit my own web site, let alone click my own links. I don't use any social media, so I'm not sending any friends or family towards my site. Unless some internet stranger has taken it upon themselves to inflate _my_ earnings, this doesn't make any sense.

I can't imagine any sensible reason they would disallow 10% to 50% of my revenue, routinely. Since they also can't provide any evidence or accounting trail, I am very suspicious of what they're doing.

I want to try another network, one of their competitors. This will tell me very quickly if these are Google shenanigans.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

I remember reading a blog entry about a guy who used google ads. He was suspicious that his revenue decreased, so he created an exact duplicate of his site with a different domain name. I believe his main complaint was the amount google was charging him to position his ads (being a long term user, the cost per click seemed to have increased significantly for the same keywords). 

According to him, the new site cost a lot less for the exact same keywords and got better placement (everything else being equal). When he confronted google, I think he said they banned both accounts...but it was years ago, so I may be misremembering...

I got the feeling that google's motto of "do no harm" left off the last part which says something like "to the bottom line".


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

We sold our business and websites so I am out of the loop on what changes are happening in past 4 years but a friend of mine who made on average $1000 from google is now down to about $200 - $300 a month with very similar traffic numbers.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

Google is King.

They sell an ad placement for $10 per click and pay the website owner $5 or $2 or 50 cents or 10 cents.........whatever they feel like paying.

Or maybe they say the clicks aren't genuine and pay nothing.

If website owners don't like it..........tough. There are millions of websites and probably many carrying the same product, service or message.

Small wonder it is such a great business model and highly valued stock.

There may be other advertisers. I am not current on that today. There used to be "parking pages" at Sedo and other websites.

Bottom line is Google controls both the search results and the advertising revenue.

They are good at data and it wouldn't be surprising if search is set up to prioritize Google ad websites first.

It is good to be King.


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## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Sounds like an antitrust lawsuit waiting to happen.

They completely control the marketplace of advertising, preventing normal trade from occurring. Their existing position as monopoly and gatekeeper of search results makes this possible.

I don't even have the means to produce evidence that they are robbing me. All it will take are a few insider/whistleblowers to blow this open. Or if Google makes enemies with the DoJ and administration.


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