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[Ken]

I use Google AdSense on my other sites, but this site does not generate enough traffic and it actually hurts my overall AdSense revenue due to the way AdSense works and how poorly AdSense performs on forum sites.

To generate any kind of reasonable revenue from this forum I'd need a few thousand page views per day. That is not going to happen.

[Overdrive]

Yet at least.

THINK POSITIVE....

Why am I saying that...normally YOU would be saying that to ME!!

[Ken]

I did try AdSense on this site some time back and it actually lowered my overall revenues because this caused a downward adjustment in my AdSense eCPM. Shortly after I got rid of my AdSense ads from this site my overall eCPM went back up.

I've tried other banner ads on here, but figured out the traffic levels just weren't high enough to justify the time it takes to maintenance the ads.

A site like this would only really make a couple dollars per thousand page views from ads and at that I'd have to accept some really annoying ads. Quite literally this site would not earn enough from ad revenues to pay for the contests I used to run.

For now this site works best as fun place to hang out that is ad-free and not overly crowded.

[Overdrive]

So basically if you're a brand new site and all (This is more referring to my site), then you're better off without Adsense until you have a sufficient userbase / visiting base?

And what's eCPM?

[Ken]

eCPM is the estimated earnings per thousand AdSense impressions.

If you have a high traffic site with a good eCPM and really targeted traffic, it is a bad idea to add your AdSense code to a low traffic site with highly untargeted traffic and/or on a site where the majority of the ads will just keep getting seen by the same people. Also AdSense ads get targeted based on the text on the page. Discussions on a forum like this would rarely have text that would generate good ads.

On forums it is better to use ads that are either untargeted or are targeted using something other than the text on the page. These types of ads require more labor to maintain as ad code has to keep getting changed and/or ads have to be approved. If the site doesn't generate much traffic the revenue those ads would generate aren't worth the hassle.

[Overdrive]

The only part I understood was, "If the site doesn't generate much traffic the revenue those ads would generate aren't worth the hassle." The rest was like trying to interprate Mandarin with no knowledge of it honestly...could you possibly make it more English-er? Thanks.

[Ken]

I think your description fits it best. Basically putting AdSense on this site has in the past had a negative impact on how much Google paid me for AdSense ads on other sites. The lost revenue from other sites was more than the added revenue from this site.

[Builder]

So, how much do you make from this site? Or is it something that only take money from your pocket?

[Ken]

Back when I ran those contests I had someone who was buying some links from me which covered the prize money and left a little over for me.

For the past couple of years (I think) the site has had no advertising on it and makes me no money. Since I run this site on the same account as my other websites it only costs me $1 per month extra to run. Mostly I run it for fun.

[Builder]

Only one dollar?!

I never thought that running a website would be so cheap!

Or have I missed something?