(written by ihstiv)
Hi Everybody – I have a vbulletin forum that is starting to make a little $ with adsense, so I’m here to learn how to optimize it as much as possible.
I’ve already learned a lot just lurking around.
Thanks for having me!
One thing you should look into is skimlinks.com I use them and I've read they have a partnership with vbulletin (they did have a partnership anyway, don't know if it's still current) so that it's very easy to activate it on your forum.
But even so, it's easy to activate on any site, just a javascript to paste and then they handle the contextual affiliate programs automatically. I've read their direct competitor is called viglink if you want to look into it as well.
Have fun trying to optimize everything, it's worth it!
Yes - I'm in the VB / DFP / Adsense boat as well, so I'm really enjoying reading through all the great content on this site so far.
I've been reluctant to enable skimlinks on our forum for fear of turning away users - do people find it to be profitable enough to be worth the irritation factor? how does it compare to adsense percentage wise in forums?
It targets to the word and the overall performance will likely depend on the type of discussions you have on your forum, if it's product oriented, that's good.
I don't know if you're aware also of the Omakaze amazon associates widget which tries to show relevant product, it's a contextual widget provided by amazon, meaning amazon bot will come crawl your page to analyse your content in order to show relevant products.
The format is similar to adsense, so you need to find ad spots for them.
As for the skimlinks, as I said it depends on the nature of your content. As for users irritation, you can choose not to show them for loggued in members if you want, they are those who matter most as they provide content which in turn attract visitors.
So run a pool, involve the community. Be prepared to not show them the ads, but ask them, like if you're unsure, make a poll and if the result is YES WE DON'T MIND, then all the better.
If the answer is NO WE MIND, then it doesn't matter since you had already planned not to show them ads, but those who have participated in the poll and argumented will feel their opinion matter, good for the forum again.
So anyway, I installed skimlinks 2 weeks ago on a couple of sites which are not forums (minus point: one is in french) and are already heavily ad cluttered, here are my stats:
- Revenue $63.13
- Clicks All 44,649
- Affiliate Enabled 2,581
The script tracks all outgoing textlinks-clicks from my pages , but only 2,581 times it was a link they were able to transform into an affiliate link.I didn't switch on the amazon overwrite, so if I did there would be much more, but I'm already earning through my own amazon links and also I didn't switch it on because my sites are ad revenue sharing and my members are sensitive about me overwriting their amazon links :-)
Enjoy your stay :)