Urgent! Need Serious help Monetizing!

10 replies
Hello,

I have an active running video game fan site (for a particular franchise) that is getting around 100k Unique Pageviews a month but making around $30 off of Adsense.

I dont pollute my site with ads but the ad is visible on every page. Most of our users are fans and 60% are organic and 40% Referred from social media.

After some recent events which helped boost the site and generated 100k Unique Pageviews in 10 days but only made $14..

Im not good with understand analytics or know how to really improve this. Here is a screenshot of the past 9 days.

Hope this image helps to understand what im doing wrong...



If anyone can recommend me or advise me that would be great! Or point me to someone who does these kinds of service.

I feel im loosing a lot of money making opportunities here.

Thanks
#monetizing #serious #urgent
  • Profile picture of the author Sharpay
    Have you included ecommerce ads, like amazon? You can link to the game itsself, or components needed to play the game. If it's a console game thats the console itsself and controllers, for PC games that includes peripherals like gaming mice, gaming keyboards, etc.
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  • Profile picture of the author dave_hermansen
    I know I would be monetizing around affiliate programs, rather than AdSense. Not sure what is actually on your blog, but reviews are perfect places for adding affiliate links to products that surely pay more than AdSense.
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  • Profile picture of the author dburk
    Hi adib0313,

    Basic marketing principles apply to publishers, but some publishers do not understand exactly how to apply marketing principles to business of publishing content.

    First, understand who your customers are, your customer are those that are paying for your product or service. Some new publishers get confused about this and assume that their readers are their customers, which in most cases is not true. Your readers, or audience for your content, are what you are producing for your customers, that is your product. Your customers are the advertisers that are purchasing ad space on your content. Advertisers are your customers. With that perspective you can approach your problem with clear objectives in mind.

    Looking at your stats, it appears that your customers (advertisers) are not willing to pay very much for your product (pageviews). $0.26 eCPM is flat out abysmal. I would say that you need to improve both your product and your targeted audience (advertisers) substantially, employing basic marketing principles in the process.

    A key principle of marketing is segmentation. You need to identify audience segments and produce a product that is highly valuable to each individual audience segment that you are specifically targeting. Please remember that advertisers are your target customer audience, and your readers are your product. Some publishers get that backwards and don't understand why they are not successful at monetization.

    Obviously you want a great product, not just a lot of a crappy product. Your customers don't care about a crappy product, they want quality. Having a bunch of poor converting traffic is undesirable for advertisers and they will flee in droves if that is what you are producing.

    Start by segmenting your audience (your advertisers). Decide exactly which advertisers you wish to target. Pick a very specific advertiser that might be interested in purchasing a portion of your traffic if it was well targeted. Then focus on producing a great product (targeted audience) for that advertiser.

    Once you know which advertiser you are targeting, learn what type of audience that advertiser needs to sell his product or service. Create content that attracts that specific type of reader. Don't be shy, make it clear that you are writing about a product that people in your audience may have a need for, and might be interested in learning how to choose the right product to purchase from your advertisers.

    People that are in the market to make a purchase are who your advertisers need to reach. Produce that for your advertisers and they will pour money into purchasing your ad slots. The audience needs to be highly focused on purchasing your advertiser's products, anything else is diluting the value of your product.

    A small targeted audience is worth way more than a large untargeted audience. Choose a customer audience to segment and target. Produce a great product for that customer audience segment in the form of highly motivated buyers. Rinse and repeat.
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  • Profile picture of the author Brent Stangel
    Are you building an email list? If not, this should be priority #1.

    I know I would be monetizing around affiliate programs, rather than AdSense.
    Me too. Adsense should be a last resort when nothing else will work, not the first choice.

    Consider creating or outsourcing your own cheat, hack, guide, etc. Use it for a freebie to opt-in visitors.

    Run a poll and ask visitors about their interests, wants, and needs. Give people what they want.
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  • Profile picture of the author aizaku
    have u split tested adsense ads to see which perform best?

    https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6321879?hl=en

    are u collecting emails/leads and offering them game related cpa(s)?

    -Ike Paz
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  • Profile picture of the author zdebx
    Look into placement of Adsense ads and experiment with different sizes. You'll be amazed how much of a difference it can make...

    Unfortunately, people who make serious money with Adsense slap it all over their pages, obviously within Google's max ads per page guidelines, so when you say you don't "pollute" your site with ads, that could very well be the issue.

    With regards to affiliate programs, dburk made a good point - depending who is your audience, promoting products as an affiliate may not be the best solution, and as always only testing will tell, otherwise we can sit and discuss "what if's" all day here, but you won't find out anything until you actually try it and see what happens.
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  • Profile picture of the author RonnyLua
    There are many other options other than Adsense out there. Since your vertical is a video game fan site, this is my suggestion:
    Instead of placing adsense ads, you can look into CPA offers (In particular to the gaming/video niche).

    So for instance on your review page for a puzzle game, you could actually be promoting Farmville on your adspace since there is some relevance.

    And your home page could have more generic desktop games CPA offers. With such a targeted audience, Im sure your conversion rates for these offers will result in a overall higher eCPM as compared to just running adsense ads.

    You know your audience better than any adsense advertiser for sure
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  • Profile picture of the author JohnVianny
    Make a POP UP for List Building purpose: you can easily do it with Leadpages or Thriveleads or a simple WP plugin.

    And build a list. The better way to monetize.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
    Theres no reason to give a long drawn out answer. Adsense is not the way to monetize your traffic. As others have pointed out get affiliate offers that match your readership.

    The problem with video game audiences is generally they don't buy or are interested in very much outside of games,consoles and in game content when they visit sites for gaming. The younger ones don't even have card or paypal access.
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  • Profile picture of the author adib0313
    Thank you everyone for your input!! Its means a lot and i have learned a lot from reading the replies.

    Sorry for my late response, I have been very busy..

    I never had any experience with affiliate programs, and most I have seen doesnt seem right for my kind of audience. Only thing I can think of is Amazon which I have setup after you guys have advised me.

    I really thought Adsense would work :/

    I am also looking into other CPA Network thats for Game Niche.. If anyone can recommend one that would be great! My site is a fan site of a popular Japanese game franchise that recently released in USA and its for Nintendo 3Ds so my audience is a young crowd along with minor older crowd who are fans of Japanese anime..

    Im also thinking of opening up a shop to sell merchandise that can be wholesale bought from AliExpress .. Would do you guys think ?

    Im not too familiar with link building so I will need to look into that.

    Thanks a lot to everyone for the valuable insight, it did open my mind to alternative ideas.. If anyone can further assist that would be great.
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