Help! Can I Make Money From This Website with Adwords??

steve1980

Thermidor wrote: »

Wow, some interesting responses here...

Steve, I wouldn't have a clue how long it would take me to build it up to 500,000 visits a month level - probably never knowing how things turn out for me! Could I be nosey and ask you what sort of income you can generate each month from those figures? I'd imagine that takes a long time to get to such a high level?

Cheers

On average, about £25 per month.

As for Wordpress, yes, it's very easy to set up. I use it to set up all my websites.

Thermidor

Thanks for that, Steve. Wow, I didn't realise the income for such a higl level of visits would be just £25 a month. Going by some of the stuff they write on the web they make it sound like you make THOUSANDS each month from Adsense or advertising - I guessed it was too good to be true! But I'm stll going to do the website, it's a passion of mine, and the income will help with hosting fees etc, so that's a bonus. But it doesn't sound like you could make an income out it?

Cheers

Horace

Thermidor wrote: »

Thanks Horace, I'll look at Wordpress! Is it quite easy to set up?

What do you have to do to be accepted on the programmes for affiliate marketing? Oh, and if you are accepted, what sort of commision do you receive if people buy via your website?

Thanks in advance!

Wordpress is relatively easy to set up, must admit that my web geek set mine up but I did the work on it. He taught me to do the SEO work too which is why my site appears on the first page of google.

I applied to the affiliate companies to see if they would allow me to join their programmes. The commission payout varies according to which programme you have been accepted onto. I know that on Affiliate Window for instance, you can apply to join various programmes but you can be invited to join programmes which is what has happened to me recently. My main website has only been live since the beginning of June and I know that according to my stats (thank you wordpress) that I had 575 visitors to my site during August and in my first month I had around 400. I blog about the things that I have the affiliate links with but never include the affiliate company names in my search terms. Affiliate companies such as affiliate window and buy at do send emails to you when you have been accepted onto the various programmes and they will advise what you can and cannot do.

HTH

texranger

JuniorDesigner wrote: »

First of all you would need an immense amount of traffic to your website to make adwords worth it, income wise.

I would try and generate a good traffic to your site before you start thinking about Adwords!

i dont like adwordfs as these ads are usuallyed based on ads for the same services as your site. so take a hosting site with adwords.

you get traffic to your site hoping they will sign up and host with you, but you have ads plastered all over your site advertising hosting from other sources. how is this going to help your business by telling potential customers to go elsewhere.

steve1980

texranger wrote: »

i dont like adwordfs as these ads are usuallyed based on ads for the same services as your site. so take a hosting site with adwords.

you get traffic to your site hoping they will sign up and host with you, but you have ads plastered all over your site advertising hosting from other sources. how is this going to help your business by telling potential customers to go elsewhere.

But you can block the ones you don't want appearing as this is what I do.

Thermidor

steve1980 wrote: »

As others have said, you need huge amounts of traffic coming through your website/forum.

I run a very successful forum which generates approximately 500,000 visits a month. This will bring in the money but remember that you will only receive a payout when it reaches £60.

Hi there again, Steve,

I'd just like to clarify a couple of things if you don't mind (sorry, I sound so dense!:o) - for every 500,000 visits a month it would generate around £25 month, so a million visits would generate £50 etc?

One other thing, I've read people speak of 'visits' and 'hits' - I'm assuming visits are each unique person visiting the website, and hits are dufferent threads they read on there? For example, I read on one page somewhere that they had something like 50,000 visits a month and one million hits; so that must be a visitor reading different threads I assume? Or would that be them clicking on the adverts?

Thanks again.

paddyrg

'Hits' are, strictly speaking, the number of object requests made against the server, and include graphics, style sheets etc - and as such are a meaningless figure. However people misunderstand that in several different ways, so some take hits to mean pages, some to mean unique objects, etc. Basically, if anyone is talking in 'hits', they are likely to be confused or flannelling you. Unique page impressions is useful (how many whole pages) and unique visitor numbers per month is useful, but those are both aggregated and imprecise figures. But don't get too hung up on those terms or measures, you should concentrate on writing good quality, regular, informative and engaging content that people will want to read, and do it for the sake of doing it - even if you get £25/month from it (before tax!!) It is a bonus that way.

As I mentioned, those who tell you you can make big cash from adverts online are trying to sell you something. Look at it like this, why would they try to sell you some crappy ebook if they are already making a fortune from online ads? They exaggerate (if I am feeeling kind) and lie (that's more like it) hoping to sucker people in.

I once had the dubious honour of seeing one of these 'internet guru' types giving a seminar. Some fairly interesting info in it, granted, but nothing as a technical type I didn't already know at a much deeper/systems level anyway, it was all about the marketing of ebooks. This guy was evasive with the truth in a major way. Not a liar per se, but the Bentley parked out front was on lease (he implied it was bought outright from the proceeds of one ebook), for instance, and similar representations of conspicuous wealth that weren't the real deal. Yes, he made a few quid from ebooks, but charged *thousands* for the 'advanced' seminar (the same material, plus where to buy original ebooks - basically indian ghost writers copying and aggregating stuff off wikipedia). He had 20 or so signups on that day - £40k made not through the business he represented, but from selling the illusion.

steve1980

Thermidor wrote: »

Hi there again, Steve,

I'd just like to clarify a couple of things if you don't mind (sorry, I sound so dense!:o) - for every 500,000 visits a month it would generate around £25 month, so a million visits would generate £50 etc?

One other thing, I've read people speak of 'visits' and 'hits' - I'm assuming visits are each unique person visiting the website, and hits are dufferent threads they read on there? For example, I read on one page somewhere that they had something like 50,000 visits a month and one million hits; so that must be a visitor reading different threads I assume? Or would that be them clicking on the adverts?

Thanks again.

Not exactly. The ads that are displayed offer a different value depending on if they are just shown or clicked through from so it's not a standard x amount for x visits.

If you are starting a forum from scratch then it will be a very long time before you are hitting those sorts of figures.

InsideInsurance

Thermidor wrote: »

Oh thank you for going into so much detail for me - I really appreciate that!

I'm sounding slightly dumb here, but when you say:

"
I get a eCPM (basically the amount of money per 1,000 impressions) of around £3 and with 3,000 impressions per month its all ok given my £108 comes at the cost of none of my time and less than £15 a year in costs.


Do you mean you get £3 for every 3,000 clicks on the adverts?

The affiliate advertising sounds more lucrative, but that would be a long way off for me, but certainly something to consider. Do you need to have a certain amount of visits each month before a company will advertise on your site? Or do they just see it as free advertising and pay out when they get a sale via your site?

Sorry to be a pain, but could I ask you as a rough guide (I know you can't be exact and figures probably go up and down each month) but say, for example, you had 500,000 visits a month, what sort of percentage of those would be likely to generate income for you from affiliate advertising, or is that an impossible question to answer?

Thank so much for your time and knowledge.

Cheers

eCPM is the earnings you get per 1,000 times the adverts are displayed. So I get £3 per 1,000 times the adverts are displayed, on average.

That will be made up of how many adverts you have on a single page (I have 1). What percentage of your visitors click an advert (CTR - click through rate) and the average fee paid per click (eCPC - earned cost per click)

As I get 3,000 page views per month with 1 advert per page I earn about £9 per month but obviously this varies.


With affiliate marketing most companies will want to review your site prior to agreeing to you advertising their products. They aren't interested in volumes, generally, but they are interested in ensuring you fit their brand/ products etc. If you operated a website on the KKK and thought advertising a washing powder would be a good idea as blood is a hard thing to get out of the white costume you'd probably find most washing powder companies would decline the application as they dont want the association.

Affiliate advertising's success will depend on a number of factors, the more you know about your customers the easier it is to find products they are going to be interested in. If your travel to Turkey site is about backpacking etc there is no point becoming an affiliate of a luxury travel brand like Kuoni.

The challenge with affiliate marketing is that you are also dependent on the ability of the company you are advertising to convert leads into sales. You could send them 5,000 people a month but if their site is bad or their pricing too high etc you wont get many sales. Most affiliate systems will show the average numbers to help you decide which are the best for you but of cause you dont know the quality of the leads others are sending.

I am not into Travel for websites so not in a position to give any clue of the possible income from 500,000 visitors a month

Thermidor

steve1980 wrote: »

Not exactly. The ads that are displayed offer a different value depending on if they are just shown or clicked through from so it's not a standard x amount for x visits.

If you are starting a forum from scratch then it will be a very long time before you are hitting those sorts of figures.

Thanks for that, Steve. So you get paid if someone clicks on the ads, basically? And you get paid a bit just for having the ad up on the site? I think I'm grasping it now (sorry I sound so thick!) I just seem to find it a bit confusing.

One other quick thing (sorry to pest) but just to clarify again, on average , if you had 500,000 visitors a month you'd probably make about £25 a month. Is that right? My brains just not working at the moment - God knows why! Stress maybe.

Yep, I can imagine it would take years to get lots of visitors to the site, and there must be zillions to compete with too!:(