Help Needed with AdSense - 20,000 PageViews and only $0.50/day

Where is the traffic coming from?

I don't really have any good knowledge of google adsense, but I hear a lot of people with this problem.
Maybe you got monetize your articles with affiliate programs and see the whole adsense thing as an extra to cover your hosting/domain costs. I'm not an expert, just giving you some tips...

Hey wargun02 -
What is your website? A link wouldn't be a bad idea.. it would give the WarriorForum community a chance to look at your site to get a better understanding and there's nothing wrong with a little shameless self promotion.

How have you set up your Adsense and gae you monetizing your website with any other methods besides Google?

Ad at top of each article is more effective instead of way at the top or over on the side.

Here is some suggestions for you :
1. use a responsive template. There are a lot of mobile users out there and if you don't monetize them properly you lose a very big chunk of money. Or install a plugin that gives you a mobile version of the website and include responsive ads there .
2. Make your fonts bigger. I can't believe nobody noticed that. Everything is so little and tight and hard to read. My eyes literally hurt trying to read that. Please make it more user friendly . Because the more time users spent on your website, the more likely they will click your banners.
3. when i finish reading an article there should be a normal banner waiting me there ( 468 x 60 ) . Because that's the spot most people leave. Would expect for me as a visitor to scroll back up to click on a banner ?! Speaking of which , why there isn't a scroll to top button ?
4. your website is loading too slow for that small amounts of images. Use wp super cache + autoptimize plugins to add more joy to your visitors and make your website load under a second. This way, better load speed - more time spent on website - more clicks.

You are clearly a very calculated person and you think all about the numbers, but you forget that your visitors are humans. you need to make them happy ! If they are happy, they will click your banners because they will spent more time on your website and maybe even revisit. Otherwise will leave in under 5 seconds.

Numbers aren't everything , user experience is.

Hope this helps

Brandon Mason makes a really good point about your site. I'd have to agree you'd be much better off promoting something else besides Adsense ads. If you really wanted to use Adsense then you might want to take a look at a keyword tool that can help you target more expensive keywords. Check out spyfu.com or keywordrevealer.com . Also some of your ads are way off target. Consider using a preview tool and removing ads that aren't a good fit for your site. For instance, one of your ads showed a PDF toolbar :/ not sure why someone who is learning Java would even need this.

Apparently you can definitely increase your adsense income with just changing your theme with a premium wordpress theme (may be from mythemeshop.com or genesis or thesis) that will help your ads stand out. Presently the site layout and presentation is not attractive, at least to me. And having rectangle instead of skyscrapper should also help because rectangle ad units have high CTRs.

Placing different ad formats in various places will give some knowledge how adsense works. please share after two days how much you made in these 2 days.

Max (WarGun02),

If you really want to earn significant ad revenues from your site, then go with videos. Here's WHY:

=>> Your traffic sounds like they want to learn school and work-related stuff that's related to your niche. They'd most likely want to watch videos that teach them the stuff they want. So, here are some options that you can test:

OPTION 1. Earn ad revenues from your videos -- Create relevant tutorial videos. Create a Youtube channel. Sign up as a Youtube Partner. Sign up as a Dailymotion Official. Upload your videos to Youtube and Dailymotion; and

Optimize the titles, descriptions and tags of your videos for human viewers and SE bots. Use tags of trending, wildly popular and viral videos in Youtube and Dailymotion as additional tags of your videos, in order to increase the likelihood of your videos to be listed in the related videos sidebar of those other relevant videos in Youtube and Dailymotion, so as to funnel the traffic of those videos to your videos; and

Drive traffic to your videos. Entice viewers to like your videos, become your subscribers, share your videos and check out your site for more relevant content. Tell them in your videos to do these things; and

Embed your Youtube videos in your site. Integrate viral social locking functions for your embedded videos, in order to convert first time viewers into fans of your Facebook page, and returning fans into viral social sharers of your videos and subscribers of your mailing lists; and

Continue to drive traffic to your site. Also, here's why you could also use Dailymotion -- Members of the Dailymotion Publisher network will be able to find your videos and embed it in their relevant sites and drive traffic to those embedded videos, in order for them to earn part of the ad revenues that your videos can generate. This also generates ad revenues for you, as the author of those embedded videos...

OPTION 2. Earn ad revenues from relevant videos of others -- Sign up as a member of the Dailymotion Publisher network. Find videos that your site viewers would most likely want to watch; and

Embed these videos with your syndication key (provided by Dailymotion) in your site. Optimize the titles, descriptions and tags of your embedded videos for human viewers and SE bots. Integrate viral social locking functions into your embedded videos, so as to achieve the same objectives mentioned above regarding this; and

Continue to drive traffic to your site...

That's it. Test it out...

I dont know what the typical CPM/RPN is in your niche assuming your traffic is quality and your ads units are placed in optimal locations on your site.

But let's assume it's $10 (just for simple math).

This would mean that based on your 20K page views per month that you can expect to make $200/mo with this site.

If it's $50 cpm, then simple math dictates monthly earnings to be $1K.

At 20K page views per month, you're averaging 666 page views per day.

Your CPM/RPM would need to be around $150 for you to earn $100 per day on your site.

CPM or RPM is revenue per 1000 visitors. Adsense calls it RPM, analytics calls it CPM. Same thing though.

Remove 300x600 large banner and add 300x250 banner you'll get improvement in cpc and ctr also.

Don't calculate based on articles, calculate based on keywords. Some articles bring in 50,000+ visitors per month to my site, and some only bring in 10. It all depends on what keywords they're ranking for.

Get your pages targeting bigger keywords ranked higher, optimize your ad placements, and keep testing with ad layouts and color styles.

You should be making a lot more than $0.50/day.

Also, penny clicks are normal. Some people click an ad and click back within a few seconds, some are international clicks where cpc is low, there are so many factors.

As you get more visitors, you'll also notice your earnings rising slightly even without clicks because of your impressions. It's not much and usually goes up a penny or two.

I think Brandon is right. Your niche has a lot to do with why you're having such bad luck at earning passive income. Trying something different might be a good idea, if you're serious about generating passive income. Good luck!