Google Ads on Forums

Scribbler · Joined: 12 Sep 2006 Posts: 5 Location: Toronto

Anyone have any experience with this? I have google ads on the main website for my webcomic but not on the forums, but I was thinking about it and forums would be a good place to put them. Lots of words flying around, so the potential is there for a far larger number of ads than usual.

Anyone have practical experience to either back-up or refute my armchair philosophy?
_________________
Because, and I mean this as an observation and not a criticism, it takes you longer to shower than it takes a star to form.

harikarki · Joined: 30 Sep 2007 Posts: 5

i used adsense on my forum for some times but i can't get more revenues from forum.

blakel12 · Joined: 25 Dec 2007 Posts: 5

Scribbler-

I have used Adsense before, with one major example coming to mind. I ran a forum about a year ago (It was sold in January 2007) using Adsense, and made roughly $400 a month. By the numbers the search service that Google offered pulled in the most money - roughly $300 a month, while the actual ads pulled in somewhere between $75-$150.

In terms of ad placement, I had one wide ad under the initial thread post, then one ad under the reply button at the bottom of the page.

Hopefully that helps you, PM me if you would like more advice.

Sven · Joined: 23 Mar 2008 Posts: 29

Yeah I ran Adsense on my forum, I even made quite a few bucks from it. However, one day the Adsense Gods decided 'meh, that guy is making to much money from our program, lets remove our ads from his forum'. Now I run different ads on my forum.. but they aren't making me half as much money as Adsense did Sad

.

But oh well, I guess I should be happy that Adsense didn't ban me or anything.

Showtek · Joined: 16 Apr 2008 Posts: 6

Using Adsense in forums has been working fine for me during the past years.
With Vbulletin you can also download a mod that places the ad in between the topic and the first answer.

Neal-UK · Joined: 13 Apr 2008 Posts: 1

Adsense did not work too well for me until I placed the large square boxes (2 of them) right at the top of the forum. Obviously this can be annoying to regular forum members and posters so I made sure these adverts could only be seen by guests. Members see the normal rectangle banner at the top, and one after the 1st forum post and last forum post.

My adsense earnings are between $200 - $400 per month, but I have started to add them to other sites I run and I use SEO enhancements.

swbcanning · Joined: 31 May 2008 Posts: 10

Can you really earn that much? At the moment I have Adbrite on my forum earning about a dollar a day. Very Happy

. I have one banner at the right hand side of the page. I'm gonna experiment with moving it to the top of the page. Ill let you know how it turns out.

Cheers

Samurai Jack · Joined: 24 Aug 2008 Posts: 16

I also used adbrite and didn't really generate a lot of revenue. Since my forum contained adult content, I couldn't use google. If I ever start up another site, I'll probably keep it PG rated in order to capitalize on so many of the affiliate programs I couldn't with an adult site.

taylorjay22 · Joined: 29 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

Hey,

In my opinion Google Adsense or any other ad programs can add a huge benefit to your forum. With the amount of page views most forums get it would be impractical not to use them. For example Digital Point is another huge online forum which makes thousands of dollars each and every month just from their Google Adsense ads between the menu bar and the content. If you do decide to use them though, make sure you blend your ads in to the content to match it. Studies show that the majority of people on the internet will not click on ads that are too extravagant and flashy, just make a couple of simple ads that blend into your forum. Try to place them where needed or where you think that they would be most effective and you should be on the road to success.

conorod · Joined: 31 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

I use Google adsense on my forum but in my experience you do not get as much revenue from forums as you do from blogs or websites since forum users generally develop "ad blindness", which means they ignore the ads after the first few visits. This results in a much lower CTR for forums.
The best places to have ads are in your index page at the top and bottom, in the forum view page above and below the list of topics, and after the first post. You should also try to blend the ads into your forum as much as possible.

bio · Joined: 12 Nov 2008 Posts: 5

Adsense works on forums that aren't internet or webmaster related. As soon as people start to understand that you're making money from the ads, if your forum is geared that way, then you stop making money from adsense. Webmaster forums are very difficult to make money from, but something about .. cooking? Would be quite profitable.