SEM Tycoon

**Kickza** · 02-26-2007, 05:39 PM

Hi,

I'm totally new to the ad's world and been lurking around here a bit, and thought I should register and check out with you guys.

I have a relatively large gaming forum which I started about a year ago. We currently have about 10k members, getting about 22k unique vists each day and an average of 3.2 million hits a day.

I was wondering how much money it is possible to make with this kind of volume (i know everything is relative, but how much could I expect?).

I've tried out Buy.at, but after selling items to play.com and others for thousands of dollars, we only get 2%, which is basically nothing :s

I've just heard of CPA Empire and Azoogle and was wondering if this could be wise for us to chose? Should we look for programs that pay by views or by clicks?

I think we have a google pagerank of 5 or 6 if that matters.

Looking forward to your responses, and hopefully I'll get that green picture above the avatar in a couple of years

Thanks!
Kickza

**ManicBoss** · 02-26-2007, 07:31 PM

Kick:

That's terrific traffic but the demographic is a tough one.

Gaming typically appeals to teens/young adults and they aren't big spenders.

However, if you cherry-pick your offers you might win.

Try a banner company like Tribal Fusion, or perhaps Ad-Brite. They pay according to traffic.

I'm with an affiliate network that has a game rental offer sort of like NetFlix.
You pay a monthly fee and the games are delivered to your door. You might get some takers there, but the kids will have to enter a credit card number.

That's it for now- I'm sure you'll get some more good ideas here.

-Manic

**ndaru** · 02-27-2007, 08:23 AM

Try TribalFusion.com. With your traffic, you should find no trouble signing up.

I know some ads with 5 US$ CPM. But for a gaming site and your demography, I think the majority of ads served will be less than 1 US$ CPM. Plus, some of your visitors might use ad-blockers.

**johniman7** · 02-27-2007, 04:33 PM

I think adbrite may work for you since they pay by traffic and will be targeted to some extend. Adsense may work with that amount of visitors but if it is a gaming forum and you are showing gaming ads, chances are the visitors are legitimately interested, and if they are interested you would probably rather earn a commission on a sale instead of a few cents for the click that lead to the sale.

**jesterx** · 02-28-2007, 12:17 AM

any person in their rightful mind would rather earn a commission on a sale instead of a few cents for the click that lead to the sale....unless you getting a squillion billion hits to your site.

**Kickza** · 02-28-2007, 04:12 PM

Thank you for all your replies =)

Is it normal to only earn a couple of percent of the sales?

How in the world is people earning, $1000-5000, or yet 50k+, if a commision is the best way? =/

Like my Buy.at account:

Transaction Value : £1 300
Commission : £39

So if I want to earn £3900 a month, I have to sell items with my ads for £130 000?
If I was making so much money by referring to others, I could have just invested a store myself which I advertised to

I think I misunderstood the concepts of advertising. I know it shouldn't be easy making money on ads, but this hard... ouch.

**Kfleming** · 03-01-2007, 03:58 PM

Instead of getting hung up on statistics and numbers i would just go for it. try implementing some different types of ads and see how much you make..don't just use ONE service or program, use multiple ways to generate revenue across your site. I talk about this in detail in my latest article which can be found here.. http://kevinfleming.net/2007/03/01/t...ternet-part-2/

**mjesales** · 03-01-2007, 10:33 PM

I've used a lot of different things in the past trying to monetize on our article directory. I think Kevin is right when he says to use multiple strategies.

Put up a couple differnt blocks for ad brite - you can serve network ads until you find a few regular customers.

you should also look at doing affiliate programs from game rental places like Blockbuster and gamefly - both have their own affilaite programs.

if your site is more about mmorpg - why not trying to get some of the sites that sell credits - most will pay a 10% comission.

hope that helps

**Niklask** · 03-02-2007, 09:44 AM

Try Adsense or Text-link-ads.com or if you want to sell someting try with some affiliate network like cj.com.

**Lucas3677** · 03-02-2007, 11:09 AM

I found that AdBrite pays quite nicely. I remember there was a thread here a few months ago where a guy had a $200 CPM or something crazy like that. If you want more information about AdBrite, contact me over MSN, AIM, etc...

**imported_WillB** · 03-03-2007, 03:09 PM

It's common to get such a low commission on physical goods, yes.
If you want higher commissions, go for digital goods. There's a few
World Of Warcraft guides on ClickBank.com that will give you a 50%
or more cut.

Could you start a private, paid members area with some goodies or
special privileges?

If you've got 10K members, I'm sure a decent proportion of them
would be happy to pay $10 a month for something fancy that gamers
like (I wouldn't know what..)

**imported_feros** · 03-08-2007, 02:19 AM

With that kind of traffic I don't know how you can go wrong really. You can always try to get leads and sales, but with a young demographic like that you may end up with a Myspace effect. It doesn't hurt to try though, and if they actually do buy then you'll do a lot better with affiliate products than with contextual ads. You should definitely throw up some Adbrite and TLA though. With that kind of traffic you'll be making a killing just selling text links.

**imported_colorless** · 03-08-2007, 07:28 PM

As someone suggested already, try text-link-ads.com and/or selling links/banner directly. This will most likely be better than what you're doing now. Test a few options that people have listed here and see what happens.

**Daniel Alan** · 03-09-2007, 05:16 AM

The gaming market is huge, bro! The possibilities are nearly endless, really. You could affiliate with pretty much anything having to do with them. Just think about what people surfing your forum would whip out their credit card for and affiliate yourself with that!

**The Dino** · 03-11-2007, 04:21 PM

There is many affiliate programs related to games... You can also sell games through amazon associate program or there are some affiliate programs where you can win money by winning tournaments playing games (not casino).

**zinruss** · 03-12-2007, 12:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kickza

I have a relatively large gaming forum which I started about a year ago. We currently have about 10k members, getting about 22k unique vists each day and an average of 3.2 million hits a day.

I was wondering how much money it is possible to make with this kind of volume (i know everything is relative, but how much could I expect?).

Kickza, i strongly suggest that you could install the ads management modules for your forum and use the modules to sell ads space as side bar. Note that you could consider selling links if your site have pr5 and above. Selling slots as side bar in auction format might be a good option because advertisers are looking for web traffic ( your site have 22k unique visits on daily basis and that is good )

Google adsence is not a good option for forum because most of the time, the CTR is low for forum or blog. You might also consider CPM network where you can earn $ per 1k impression.

Just my 2 cents