not very successful in monetizing ~70k visitor - could someone help / advice?

[Kikos]

hi, I am not an expert and asking this question on behalf of someone who I want to help who is also not an expert, but who has a large website about a particular topic receiving about 70,000 visits (analytic) per month mostly from google and making roughly speaking only 1-2 hundred per month from adsense which, from all my reading, seems to be very little compared to the amount of visitors.

The CTR is rarely above 1% month after month and the payment per click is much more in the direction of 10-20 cents with only rare cases of >1 dollar clicks.

The structure of the website is a very simple menu on the left, menu on the top, article in the body with articles structured under several large category pages.

The latest optimisation following Google's advice (communication received) where lots of various ads were replaced by the big adsense box embedded in the text on top left of the article among few other adviced changes yielded good results and the income increased but still in the territory I wrote above (on the higher side).

So my question:

- 70,000 visits > 1-2 hundred adsense income per month - is that the correct expectation or normally people make more money from such traffic?

- if, for example, low earning and low CTR are due to the type of the niche and the type of the demographic then what could you advice to better monetize this traffic?

- anything else you could advice would be HIGHLY appreciated

Side question:

- how to control such a big website easier? still need to backlink each article? maybe need to outsource? (so far its all manually self done)


THANK YOU IN ADVANCE!

P.S. if any further details needed to give a better advice please say what and I will try to supply it.

[Ruby Rynne]

You don't mention anything about the niche or where the traffic is coming from. Adsense is only going to make money if it's a niche that there are high-paying advertisers for and the ads that get shown are relevant to the specific visitors you're getting.

More money to be made (in almost every niche market) by list building than Adsense. Could you build a list from the traffic and monetise on the back end (with affiliate offers, etc)?

Without more info about the demographics (source, interests, etc) of the traffic, it's impossible to give any specific advice.

[yukon]

Is that 70k uniques, or 70k page views? They are not the same things.

[indojobsearch]

I'm also not the expert..But..Yes..I agree with our friend above..You should make it clear first..70k page view or unique visit..If 70k unique visit I think You should earn much more than you earned..

[atrbiz]

If you want help from us you definitely need to provide more details. 70k unique visitors...?

[Kikos]

Thank you for the replies, here is further information as requested:

The website is about women's health and everything related to, to say in short, women's biological issues.

The traffic is all from google searches. No backlinking at all has been done. Just articles accumulated over last 2 years or so.

There are always adsense ads in the articles and most of the time they are relevant to the content, but of course not 100% of the time.

Demographics are mostly teenage girls, but of course some other people also visit.

The 70k per month is unique visitors. Inside analytics the visits and absolute unique visitors numbers are basically the same and then page views are around 150k.


We would appreciate very much if you could guide us in the right direction, because it is my impression that from such traffic some people here would make tons more and maybe not even from adsense.

[newmovies]

i think 1-200$ is very low for that traffic .
You can find direct advertisers at various websites like publishermedia.com/

[treezie]

Text ads or image ads?

Are the ads blended in with the articles?

Are you section targetting the ads?

[Matthew Loop]

$200 / month is Very low for that type of traffic. You could probably bank at least 10k / month (maybe a lot more) depending on your marketing funnel. Sounds like you don't have much of one right now. Adsense is one of many mediums you could be using but you won't get rich with it alone.

Rule #1 - Build an email list

Rule #2 - Build an email list

Rule #3 - (see rules 1 & 2)

With a list, you can create your own products to sell your subscribers... or you could promote other peoples products. Ideally, you want to build a list that knows, likes, and trusts you. There is a right way to do that.

Strive for at minimum a 25% conversion... meaning 1 out of 4 people that go to that site give you their name / email. You'll have to have a strong offer and incentive, though.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Kikos

Thank you for the replies, here is further information as requested:

The website is about women's health and everything related to, to say in short, women's biological issues.

The traffic is all from google searches. No backlinking at all has been done. Just articles accumulated over last 2 years or so.

There are always adsense ads in the articles and most of the time they are relevant to the content, but of course not 100% of the time.

Demographics are mostly teenage girls, but of course some other people also visit.

The 70k per month is unique visitors. Inside analytics the visits and absolute unique visitors numbers are basically the same and then page views are around 150k.


We would appreciate very much if you could guide us in the right direction, because it is my impression that from such traffic some people here would make tons more and maybe not even from adsense.

Ok, your getting 70K uniques per month (nice!).

I'll tell you what one of my sites does just for comparison, keep in mind I can only say it's not the same niche that your site is targeting.

One of my Adsense sites (set it & forget it) gets right at 5K uniques per month. That same site averages between $150-200 per month & has around 100+ pages. That same site averages 7 page views per unique, that's 35k page views per month.

I'll have to say your site is underperforming BIG time!

Don't worry about backlinking for now, If your getting 70K traffic & having a hard time converting that existing traffic into $$ the backlinks won't help (yet).

Without seeing the site the best I can say is test new Ad locations/colors/Ad-size on the existing pages.

[bobo70]

If I had 70K unique it will be over $25,000/month. Though we are in different market, I run an ecommerce store so not really same issues here

[PaxstonInAk]

knowing your niche is women's biological issues........

What products do you think your traffic would be interested in? There is a ton on Amazon!!

Get a carousel widget from amazon.....fill it with products that are in associated with your articles.....you should make a ton money!!

Do some research and see what your people are looking for. you should optimize each article page with products associated with that particular article. I know its alot of work but it will pay$$!!

Check out amazon and clickbank!! Clickbank should also have alot of products in your niche.

I feel the top 3 money makers are online are Adsense, clickbank, and amazon.

I hope this helps!!

Keep us posted!!

[LemonSqueezy]

The best bet is to play around with how your ads are displayed. Work to put them into your articles which is rather easy. Also the email list would come in very handy. Write a simple eBook and send it out once a month/every other week for the rest of the time send out interesting blog posts you read or whatever.

[chasnsx]

"Demographics are mostly teenage girls." THERE is your problem. Teenagers are the worst traffic for Adsense. Teen girls do not buy clothes, cosmetics or any other big ticket items online. They like to go to the mall to get those. What little online spending they do is limited to music downloads, and there is no ad money in that.

If you can target women 25-65 somehow, your adsense will show a big increase, because mature women who work all the time have generally zeroed on a specific line of cosmetics they like and use consistently, and they will buy online to save the time of going to the store.

Adsense tailors ads to the viewer, based on the cookies in the browser. Since my wife is with Estee Lauder, and buys Estee Lauder online, whenever she goes to a site, Adsense pops up an Estee Lauder ad. If it is for a new product she is interested in, she clicks. Boom, money in the bank.

[RevSEO]

If you haven't set up image ads yet, be sure that your ad placements are supporting more than just text links. I've noticed that image ads are more attractive to your target audience and will help with CTRs.

As others have mentioned though, that target market is a tough one as revenue is generally very poor. Try and get yourself an older target market if possible (25+ years old). I'd also recommend beginning to get some sort of opt-in email list going as well. I've had the best monetizing this traffic since you can email them targeted messages time and time again. It can seem somewhat intimidating getting your email list going but its worth it!

[AliceInk]

Your CTR seems really low, even with that target demographic. I would seriously try experimenting with your ads. Try various things and see how they work out. A little trial and error could really help.

Good luck!

[Deltia]

Firstly, well done for getting that traffic level!
Secondly, i think its clear that you could be making more off that traffic.
Its probably worth testing out other ways of making money.
Offer something to build a list and market them directly or try some other kind of affiliate offers (amazon products?) or CPA offers.

[vtotheyouknow]

Split test your ad positions!!

With that kind of traffic you're leaving serious money on the table if you haven't optimized ad placement.

Also, I agree with the posters above. If Adsense seems low, try monetizing with Amazon and Clickbank.

A handful of Clickbank sales will surpass your current Adsense income. A list would be great for this. :-)

Best Wishes,
Vic

[Kikos]

Firstly, thank you very very much everyone.
----------

Ads are both text ads and image ads as we were adviced by Google through a communication.
Ads are blended with articles and website colours as best as we can. They are also not always the same on all pages, but the most popular large rectangle in the top left part of articles is same everywhere.
There is no section targeting but ads are relevant already.

The site so far does not use any list. The list was installed and a button to sign up for a free newsletter was put. But very very few people signed up.

The site also tried to put clickbank/amazon related books specific to articles, which was a lot of work, but barely any people (in the hundreds maximum) went to see each book. Most books were very little visited. Finally just a few sales were made. And from those few even money was requested back.

The site did try and change the ads layout after receiving a recommendation from Google about the large rectangle, etc and as i wrote the income did improve from under or lower one hundred to higher one hundred lower 2 hundred.


Re: ""Demographics are mostly teenage girls." THERE is your problem. "
Very interesting.
Thank you chasnsx
Is there maybe another way to monetize teenage girls other than adsense?




So if I understand correctly TO DO:
- experiment with ad positions more
- try to increase demographic age to older women
- perhaps revisit Amazon/Clickbank
- perhaps revisit again the newsletter list


Is there anything else? Is there maybe some solution where the site could get paid for impressions and not clicks? Are there any advices on monetizing the teenage girls if the site has to stay with them? Is it ok that the site page rank is 0/10 even though 70k visits (no backlinks at all)?


Thank you again everyone

[Kikos]

HERE IS THE FOLD LINE
and then page 2 as you scroll down (i only made these 2 pics)

[yukon]

Replace Top Menu with a 728 x 90, put the big menu at the bottom (footer).

Slide the left menu down the sidebar, & ad a skyscraper so it's at the top left.

If the 3 link units don't get a good CTR, remove them.

Leave the existing Ad that is wrapped by the article.

[Kikos]

thanks yukon, would it not be too many ads in that case right in the face of visitors? (sky on left, leader on top, large rect in article = around half the screen ads....)
thanks

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Kikos

thanks yukon, would it not be too many ads in that case right in the face of visitors? (sky on left, leader on top, large rect in article = around half the screen ads....)
thanks

It's only 3 Ads per page.

Test it see how it works. The only way you'll ever get a higher CTR is testing new layouts (Ad positions, colors, etc...).

[ahew]

For teenage girls, I'd say do CPA offers for ringtones or facebook customizing. That kind of thing. Maybe even some links back to Amazon for the latest hottie they're all talking about.

[Kikos]

ok thank you yukon

ahew trouble is that is not related to the articles which are about women's biological issues