So you have either applied for a Google Adsense account for your forum or you already have an approved Google Adsense account and just not sure about the ad placement. Right up front I’m going to warn you that on forums, members tend to get ad blindness so please don’t count on making a living from Adsense on your forum not unless your forum get’s over 100,000 unique visitors a month or more. Then you have a good chance at earning some huge figures. Of course in some countries, making $500 a month is a ton of money and people might be able to survive on that. I’m in the USA so it’ll cost a $%@@ of money to make a living from Adsense. Darn gas price’s are killing us american’s in the wallet.
Let me mention a few idea’s I have (prolly already mentioned online) about ad placements on any type of forum software.
- Adsense 120×600 or 160×600 skyscraper ad in your side column of the forum. Have this ad showing for Guests only. When they login, the ad will be removed and no side column if you wish to not have one.
- 2 300×350 blocks under the first post in each thread and have them spaced apart. Leave this ad type for guests and member’s.
- Maybe add a 460×90 block right next to your logo if you wish to put an ad up there. It’ll get seen a ton of times because your header shows up on all pages.
- You could try squeezing in some link units somewhere.
- The 728×90 block could be added under the navigational bar. That type of ad seems to do well on most forums.
Those are just my Adsense location suggestions from when I had owned a forum. That’s what I did with my Adsense setup. Now Google does make their own suggestions for ad placement and I’ll show you what they are. (fyi, no guarantee you’ll make good clicks from their suggestions)
1. Forum HomePage:
2. Category Page
3. Post Page
As you can see, my suggestions for ad placement are a bit different from Google’s suggestions. Try out my suggestions for 2 months and see how well you do with the click’s. One thing to get members to join your forum is have more ads showing for guests and fewer ads showing for registered members. Add in your “welcome guest message” on your forum that joining the forum will show fewer ads. Also you could create a premium membership group for your members in which less or all Adsense ads will be removed. Make it a monthly or a 6 month membership people would have to renew. This is a great way to get revenue and make your forum members happy with no ad’s showing.
Think outside the box when using Adsense. You can make good money with Adsense but have other options available to earn revenue off your forum. I do like my membership idea though. You’d have to see if your forum software offer’s you to create a premium membership group or have a plugin coded for you if there isn’t one out there already for your type of forum software. I think on vBulletin, you can add some coding or to show ads for guests and for members but I’m not the coding type of person so ask for help on the vBulletin support forum.
To Your Success
Derek
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