Hey Guys,

<b>My Traffic Stats</b>
I have been thinking about how to start monetizing my php site for a few days now. I get about 50 to 100 visits from google with 120 to 200 page views a day. The max i had was 2 days ago with 98 visits and 218 page views. The average page view is 2 pages per visit and the average time spent on the site is little over 2 minutes. The bounce rate is still high, 65%.

<b>Skeptical about Google Ad sense or PPC</b>
Recently, i added google adsense to my site. I have had 500 impressions and 0 clicks so far.
I'm seeing that people come to the site through google search to look for a quick answer to their query. Less than half the people bother to read the text to help find answers to their questions. The ones that do read, get their answers and leave.

The google ads are not too relevant to my content and the ones that are are just not too interesting.

Should i wait to see adsense click improve my site before trying other forms of ads?
Could it be the placement of the ads on my site as you see it now?

<b>What Ads should i target?</b>
What kind of ads will be more appealing on my website given the theme of my site?
What do you think of php books referrals from amazon? Or Web Hosting referrals?

It's going to take some experimenting and time for me to see what works best. But i like to find out what kind of ads will suit my site and be beneficial to my revenue stream.

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Niche Affiliate Marketing | I make $15,000 a month with PPC marketing and so can you!

Hey webdev,

Your site looks really good. Have you thought of placing your adsense ads inside the gray box. They are outside of your content so I can see how they would be missed. Although I do see what you're talking about... they don't seem too relevant. That could be hurting yoru click.

I don't see why not try other programs as long as they don't conflict with Google's terms. Your traffic is still pretty low though so you probably won't start to see money coming in until you have at least 400-500 hits per day - at least that's what I've been told.

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Just call me Max.

Conversion rates for Programming (particularly HTML, PHP, etc) language sites, photoshop tutorials and those related to pay per click are usually very low.

The reason is that these sites are frequented by webmasters and other people who are in the same business. They are immune and banner blind towards adsense ads. Even if the ads are highly relevant to the text and "attracting" these people are reluctant to click because they know it is an ad.

However, if the you target newbies and not seasoned pros, the conversion rate should be OK. Please keep us posted about updates.

Edit: Another suggestion>> You will see better conversion if you place 468x60 text block below the heading on every page. You can display adsense of every page of your site and not just the homepage.

Hey webdev,

I agree that your traffic may be low to start seeing much with AdSense yet but I have to admit ncaditya had a good point about targeting programmers. I never thought about that.

Don't forget you can also use Link Units instead of the Ad Unit with AdSense. You can align those along the bottom of your articles.

Amazon pays terribly low commission rates (3-5% on average) Have you checked Clickbank.com for any related books? What about some of the larger networks like CJ, LinkShare, etc?

Also, check out other PHP or programming sites and see what they're using to monetize. That may give you some ideas of what to try.

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I would also recommend using more than one block of adsense. We are allowed to use upto 3 ad blocks, 1 text link unit and 2 search boxes on a page. Using all the three nearby may give the page a spammy appearance. However, always ensure that the visitor gets to see a block of ad all the time he/she stays on the page.

Text links and the search box are very useful. Once the visitor clicks on the links or uses the search box, he/she goes to a completely new page with ads in them. If the ads are relevent, the user will click on multiple number of ads. So the click through rate will be particularly high, if you text links and the search box.

Thanks for the feed back guys. Taking all the points in account, this how i will arrange the ads and test it out.

- Add one Links Unit at the bottom the page in the gray box just above my page links
- Add a search on the left above the menu items.
I'm not sure about this one
- Add a "Firefox with google tool bar" referral on the right of the table of contents on ever page OR add a square Ad using OR a link unit there?
- Not too sure what to replace the right sky ad unit with?

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Niche Affiliate Marketing | I make $15,000 a month with PPC marketing and so can you!

Dear Webdev,

First of all, excellent site! As a hobby, I wanted to pick up some PHP, and when I am ready, your website will be the first one I visit

I can see that you have already accommodated most of the suggestions made in the previous posts.

This is a fairly minor issue, but I just wanted to point out that Google can be strict about their ad placement. The way it is right now, your site slogan "Learn PHP By Example" directly precedes the Google Ads link unit. It may trick the visitor to click... which Google may not like.

I don't know if it is a big deal, but I have heard sporadic instances when Google cracked down on this sort of thing... (I recall recently, they prohibited placement of graphic/pictures that are aligned with Google Ads, because the visitor may think that the text links are related to the graphic).

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Hey ssmorgan, thanks for your feedback.

I had no idea i was violating their policy.

I had the ads running on the right side of the page and got no clicks. But with this, i have gotten 4-5 click in the last 2 weeks. So, in a way it is working but if it conflicting with Google policy then i might have to remove them

I'll wait and see how it goes

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Niche Affiliate Marketing | I make $15,000 a month with PPC marketing and so can you!