Adsense optimization tips for my website

Hello guys,

I have around 8000-11000 unique visitors daily on my vbulletin forum. What are the earnings you would expect?

I changed the layouts and wrote a little guide about Psychological Adsense optimization. I also wrote a guide about the best Vbulletin Adsense placements.

A few people here have said that the only ad placement/format that gets reasonable clickthroughs is a 336x280 under the header. I used to run a 728x90 leaderboard in that location and it didn't perform very well. This week I changed it to the 336x280 format and I'm getting 5x the clicks compared to the 728x90 leaderboard.

FYI I clicked your link before I started typing this reply, and the page still hasn't finished loading. If this is a normal occurrence for your site, you need to address it.

Originally Posted by curriertech

A few people here have said that the only ad placement/format that gets reasonable clickthroughs is a 336x280 under the header. I used to run a 728x90 leaderboard in that location and it didn't perform very well. This week I changed it to the 336x280 format and I'm getting 5x the clicks compared to the 728x90 leaderboard.

Awesome. A welcome increase I'm sure.

Originally Posted by Joe Ward

Awesome. A welcome increase I'm sure.

You're not kidding! That location is guest-only ads and for the month of December I got 27 clicks (it's a regional forum that doesn't get too much visitor traffic) on the leaderboard. In the last 7 days I've had 44 clicks on the 336x280 ads. If that pace keeps up it'll be 6.5x the clicks that I was getting. Not bad!

...relatively, of course, since my click numbers still bite compared to some of the boards around here.

Thanks, I will try that out for sure. Which other ad locations are you using?

Originally Posted by Hendricius

Thanks, I will try that out for sure. Which other ad locations are you using?

I've tried the following placements with the included performance results:

468x60 banner in the header - medium/low performance
728x90 under navbar and in footer - medium performance
728x90 as random/first/last posts in showthread - low performance

I've heard from a couple people here that the 336x280 ads below the navbar are the only worthwhile ads to run, but obviously individual results can vary. So far though, my results are right on par with the "336x280=gold" comments.

I had my top results with a left column advertisement 120*600. However I am using a new style now which unfortunately uses static tables (yes I paid for it).

Sorry for double post,

does anyone know how to add an advertisement before the content of the first post?

Thanks.

In the last 7 days I've had 44 clicks on the 336x280 ads.

I have similar stats, how many visitors / day do you have?

Thanks to briansol.

I signed up to tribalfusion and now earn at least the double per day. I will give adsense another try soon.

Originally Posted by Hendricius

Thanks to briansol.

I signed up to tribalfusion and now earn at least the double per day. I will give adsense another try soon.

I wish I had the traffic to qualify for tribalfusion. :(

We had a bad experience with Tribal Fusion, loads of members reported problems with redirects etc to malicious sites.

As soon as we disabled their ads, the redirects stopped.

Originally Posted by gedsta

We had a bad experience with Tribal Fusion, loads of members reported problems with redirects etc to malicious sites.

As soon as we disabled their ads, the redirects stopped.

Yep. Only guests are seeing ADs on my forums.

Do you earn the same with Adsense? If not, what are your AD programs?

Hi

We limit Adsense to just our guests, since adding the 350 size ones to under the Navbar, our income from them has increased immensely. This is coupled with a 350 agency served ad as well. Once you become a registered member, these change to one 728*90 advert.

We have also added the First Post ads, showing a 728*90 to guests only. Again once registered this is no longer shown.

We also use Ads served by our own software as well as an agency, which in 3 months of us using has never served one bad advert so far.

As we have a policy of constantly improving our website for our members, the more we generate the greater enhancements we can provide. An example of which in December we ordered two quad xeon servers. All paid for by the ads.

Adsense alone does not cover all of our costs, but it does pay for our Speedtester software and running costs of this for a year or so

There's a fine line I feel between too many ads, and your costs, but whether we like it or not, they have to be met. Members appreciate this and we have hardly any complaints, but at the end of the day, guests are allowed to use all of our facilities and these costs need to be factored in as well.

We try not to be too obtrusive, but the harsh reality is that a busier site has higher hosting costs etc. And so I would not limit the ads just to the guests. Our philosophy has always been free for our members, and asking them to cope with some ads is a small price to pay, of course they are free to choose whether or not to click on them.

Thanks . Tribalfusion works better for me hence my CPC is only around 5-10 clicks.