Anyone has experience with entertainment sites?

[DomainMagnate]

Hey guys,

I'm looking at an entertainment site to purchase and this niche is totally new for me. The site basically posts funny pictures every day and has a large following, monetized with adsense.

For those of you here who have similar sites, what can you expect to make per 1000 views on such site with adsense or other monetization methods?
Also any niche-specific advice on how to evaluate/check it and avoid any traffic pumping scams?

[grynge]

I have not had any success with AS but different affill programs can give vastly different results. You kind of need to know the age group of the average user and then target them. The other thing is depending on the users, their attention span can be very erratic. I have had some affill progs working fine and then one day bang that was it. So to me you need to keep a close eye on the programs and make sure your users don't get sick of them.

Without checking the logs, there are 100's of different traffic scams around some will work and others are just pure scams.

[Clinton]

Those sites are notorious difficult to monetise. I understand that they often do better with incentivised schemes than they do with Adsense. I believe the highest RPM I've seen on a site like that was in the region of $3-$4.

As grynge says, there are many traffic scams about some that you can detect and some that are close to impossible. I started putting some traffic related DD material here but never got quite around to completing it.

[DomainMagnate]

thanks, I have access to g analytics, so traffic seems natural, another question is if it'd last. $3-4 rpm matches the data as well, although it only has a couple adsense banners on top, might be some space for improvement.
What are some possible adsense alternatives for this kind of sites? I can't think of any affiliate programs as it's just funny pictures.

[Clinton]

I have access to g analytics, so traffic seems natural

Oh, well, if you're happy with that

If he's making $3-$4 per 1000 pageviews then he must have pretty aggressive Adsense placements even though you say it's just a couple of banners.

That, combined with the fact that it's non-unique content, spells big trouble and possible loss of the Adsense account. Buy if you have an alternate plan. Tip: People who visit these sites are often the type who'll happily click a few links, jump a few hoops and even download a toolbar or two to make a few dollars.

[DomainMagnate]

I guess I compared the revenues to the unique visits from g analytics, so it's more like $3 per 1000 uniques. Yes I'm also aware of the risk with adsense on such sites so trying to figure possible alternatives, looking at what similar sites use.

[benitez17]

I own a couple of these sites. In my experience, Adsense is nearly useless, so I just stuck some CPM banner ads on the site from a couple major networks, and I make around $2 CPM. The sites generate a lot of page views, so the revenue isn't too bad given the CPM, and I don't have to touch the site.

[WSYSBroker]

I sold one of these sites a few months ago and I know that site specifically is doing fantastic with Adsense. All it does is post daily pictures and makes a killing off of Adsense and nothing else. The site gets around $0.02 per unique visitor so with around 150,000 uniques a DAY I would say that Adsense is doing quite well for it. It's all about strength in numbers. There could be another way to monetize the traffic, but right now the site is very hands off so why mess with a good thing?

[Edmunds]

Hey guys,

I'm looking at an entertainment site to purchase and this niche is totally new for me. The site basically posts funny pictures every day and has a large following, monetized with adsense.

For those of you here who have similar sites, what can you expect to make per 1000 views on such site with adsense or other monetization methods?
Also any niche-specific advice on how to evaluate/check it and avoid any traffic pumping scams?

I haven't found adsense to be too useful. It works for several months, maybe a year. And then, due to high impressions and low CTR, you just get paid less per click, and lets face it, ad blindness is a gigantic problem. Back in the old days when you used to have pictures next to ads and disguised ads as yet another item in the latest news bit and other stuff of course adsense made a killing, but now its pretty crappy.

I would say with about 5 ads total (2-3 adsense, 2-3 CPM ads), looking long term, you're lucky if you get $3 CPMs.

One of my entertainment sites which has less aggressive ad placement (2 ads, not adsense, but only because adsense income was a joke) and it makes about $600/mo with about 300k visits and 1m pageviews.

Also, beware of pre-christmas CPMs! CPMs regularily decrease by about 30% comparing November with February. The difference between 20th of Dec and 1st of January can be completely ridiculous (upto 4x decrease).

EDIT: oh yeah. Pump & Dump. Its super easy. With hundreds of thousands of uniques checking traffic for irregularities is basically impossible, but one easy giveaway is the % of traffic coming from referring sites. If that % is super high check out which sites they are and why is traffic coming from them. If you can't find a logical reason traffic is coming from a site you can bet your ass that referring site is gonna disappear as your traffic source a month after the sale.

[elster]

Would all the above CPM rates apply for sports news based sites? or are those CPMs much lower? I am looking at a site with CPMs that have really declined in the 4th quarter. Should I expect an uptick in 2012? I assumed this was a larger indication of advertising industry woes. Also, for some ad networks, does CTR even matter? I assume some ad networks do bump your CPM if you are getting good CTR, but I have heard conflicting things saying they don't. Thanks!