Really Low Earnings :(

I am really stuck as to what to do to start earning money on my main forum.

It is getting large traffic and the only monetising we have done so far is Google Adsense which is getting us around $1 - $3 per day which is not that much for the traffic we are getting.

I have put on big ad blocks for guests but I don't think the revenue is anywhere near enough just yet!

I see this as quite a large forum but we are just struggling earning anything off it at the minute.

Does anybody have any ideas?

By the way it is this Soccer AM Forum.

Thanks

I think you should open a critique request. There are a few things you can improve quickly.

Is the eBay stuff yielding anything? If not, you might as well get it off the page. If it does not produce revenue, don't let it steal "focus" that you can better direct elsewhere.

I think there are probably some issues with ad relevancy. If you're getting people interested in soccer being exposed to ads that have nothing to do with soccer, it's unlikely they will click through on them.

I think you could benefit from this:
Strategy for Optimizing Keywords in Your vBulletin Forum Title and Descriptions

You have a lot of topics not specifically related to soccer as sub-forums. I think you should tighten up your focus a lot more and get better coverage on terms directly related to your niche.

Beyond just boosting your ad relevancy and targeted long tail, you might also have the side effect of making it easier to track down direct advertisers for your site.

Hi,
I think the block is simply to big.
The eyes of the visitors are skipping the block and start reading under the Ads.
If you see my Forum:
Brasilien Forum - Das Brasilienforum vom Brasil Web
The little block on the top make the most revenue for the side. Ads are only visible fore Guests.
You mey try that maby smaller is better.
Christian

You should be getting more, especially because there is some revenue in your niche. I am owning a blog where I am always writing about Adsense issues - I don't want to advertise, but I am attaching 4 links which might help you a little.

First thing is that you need to change your Link colors. Yours are good, but there are better colors of course. I wrote about the best Adsense colors and must say that for me #000080 worked out best.

Second thing is that it could be that you got smart priced. Google added smart pricing to protect the advertisers. What they are doing is, checking the Return of Investment for the advertiser and if that is incredibly low then they cut the amount the publisher earns per click greatly. Pretty unfair if you ask me, but we can not do anything. You usually notice that if you are getting extremely bad CPCs. Next thing would be to read my post about increasing your adsense CPCs. I summed up some techniques and reviewed what works and what does not... In fact there are some people suggesting techniques that will get your account banned - for sure.

Third thing would be to consider other advertisement programs. Brian here on VBseo taught me some good things. In fact, for some websites CPM networks are just better, simply because they pay per impressions. To give you some names, adsdaq, cpxinteractive, tribalfusion, valueclick... If you want to add a popunder then definately go for Valueclick, their popunders pay out most.

Good luck and let me know if there are more problems. And again sorry for linking to my own blog :-).