Google AdSense

[Jeffrey S. Wexler]

Does anyone know how much money can be made from Google AdSense? I know that major websites make a lot but what is possible with a small, low traffic website?

If things take off with this site I am thinking of converting to a PAID network (no, you don't have to pay, as owner I have to pay) in which case the ADS you see in the right hand sidebar could help subsidize my cost of running this.

[Simon Bishop]

Hi Jeff,

I for one, would be delighted to offer to assist with the running costs of this site, if that were to get rid of the adverts altogether. I cite as an example. the cinematography-l list, which the other Geoff runs!! They get donations from sponsor companies and also form individual members, that help to cover the costs of running the site. I would be glad to put my hand in my pocket to make this site a less advertorial kind of place to be. Anyone else care to step up to the plate?

Kindest regards,

Simon B

[Jeffrey S. Wexler]

Thank you so much for the offer. At this point, this site doesn't cost me anything because NING supplies all of the tools and the network but you are required to have Google ads (their choosing and no revenue to me) and various other things. I don't mind the present ads, pretty unobtrusive, I was just enquiring as to what could happen if I started to pay NING (which allows us to be ad-free if we want). We'll see how it goes for now. Thank you again for your continuing support and participation both here and my Discussion Group.
- Jeff Wexler

[Danijel Milosevic]

I have a friend who lives from AdSense. He has many websites, and some of them bring around 50-100$/ month, and then he has a big one with thousands of hits a day which makes a couple of hundred /month AFAIR. The problem is, you are payed by click, but when you have a website for professionals, they generally don't click the ads, because they are an educated crowd. Furthermore, your visitors are coming back, and they learn to not even look at anything else but the content they are after. The best AdSense crowds are so called 'surfers' that just pointlessly click through anything they see. That's why people who make their living on it, tend to make web sites on general topics like 'weight loss', 'car review' etc.
IMHO, you'd be much better with having banners from recording device manufacturers at jwsound.net that would be on top of every page, and even useful to the visitors, because they'd be really 'sensible' unlike AdSense :)
Like gearslutz.com - here's a list of their advertisers: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/advertisements/

Much more money than AdSense, I strongly believe!

[Jeffrey S. Wexler]

Thank you, Danijel, for this analysis of how ads work --- I agree with what you observe that with a site like this (or anything else I would probably do) it doesn't work --- we just "tune out" the ads. Relevant advertising, from sound houses and manufacturers that relate to our jobs, that's another story.

[Mike Peter Reed]

Well, it's obviously not an exact science but I'll tell you what I know (which should be taken as one opinion/impression only)

About 1 in 200 people respond to direct marketing. (I forgot where I heard this, I may be paraphrasing, but it stuck in my mind for whatever reason)

AdSense pays fractions of pennies for every click (and 1 in 200 people might click). I don't remember the exact terms for AdSense though.

Unless you have traffic in the thousands or millions it's probably not worth doing (though I've not done the maths).

Ning has the consolidated prospects of ALL of its networks. That's likely thousands/millions. Worth doing for Ning as a whole, but I reckon high risk for a single Ning community.

As a prospect I quite like Google AdSense ... it's unobtrusive and easy to tune out. With your own AdSense account you could define the focus of the ads to make clicks more likely (on the right now I see ads for yearbooks, a Wii, student sotrage and a career with the RAF).

Surprising, one reason to run AdSense ads (even if they make no money for you) is that people think websites with ads are obviously more professional than sites with no ads.

Signing up to AdSense itself is a no-risk proposition (you don't ever get an invoice from Google).

[Simon Bishop]

Out of interest, Jeff. Approximately what would it cost to block out the ads for this community?

Kindest,

sb

[Jeffrey S. Wexler]

NING charges $24.00/month (U.S.) to be able to get rid of the ads and the NING banner "Create Your Own Social Network" and stuff like that. You are then free to do whatever you want with the sidebar real estate. So, there are two ways I can go: pay the $24.00/month so that we do not have to "suffer" the NING-Google placed ads, or, purchase software package from a company and do my own coding to put up a truly independent and free network that would run on my server account with Lunarpages. Neither of these ideas is too attractive at the moment so I think we will just carry on as is. Let's not let any of these things deter us from building a great community here.

[Thomas Popp]

I don't know about everyone else, but I would definitely help pay to have either the "clutter" on this service removed, or even better, a specific website service made for all of us. This service is definitely a great way to go, but putting our heads together, we could probably all come up with a great way of encoding a site worthy of all of us.

To have a site that was maintained by someone, that everyone contributed to would keep spammers away, keep it neat and organized, and would be just plain classy! I would be willing to pay 5-10 bucks a month for a site like that...

The more people involved, means the better development of the site! If no one agrees, I am still for splitting up the 24.00 bucks a month to get rid of the ads. Nothing against Chia Pets and the University of Phoenix courses online - I would just rather come here to talk to all you fine people!

:)

[Jeffrey S. Wexler]

The ads required on NING are really pretty unobtrusive I think and there are so many good things that are provided via this software platform for free, it is probably best to just carry on as is.

- JW