whipnet

Yeah, your CTR is real low. It needs to be between 1-2 clicks per 100 page impressions.

Where are you running your ads on the pages?

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RickLeigh

You can view them on my site: http://yourhobbycommunity.com

I have them in my header, Left Block, Footer, and within my news postings

Thanks for any help on this as I to am hoping that the site can atleast support itself at some point in time

whipnet

Your site looks great and I think your ad placement is OK too. I think your problem is that it's a forum. I have never run one, but I have read that they are not good for Adsense. I have also heard that Google frowns on their ads being run in them even though I see it all the time.

You just need more traffic at this point I think.

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RickLeigh

Thanks for the kind words

Yah, I had read that before too. I was hoping that being its not just a forum like allot of other RC sites are, it wouldn't effect it much. Being that my home page isn't the forum and it having allot of other features as well.

Is the channel option in adsense just to organize and label on my end or is it to be a guide for advertisers to choose your site for the type of buyers there looking for. Kind of confused on how to us it/label them if my thought is right.

whipnet

I see, well focus more on the static material. Organic traffic is where it's at.

The channels I use are for me to organize, but I think there is something like you mentioned 2nd as well. It just didn't interest me, and I have never had public service ads run, so I never experimented with it. I've been using adsense since 2004 and have seen programs come and go from them.

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RickLeigh

Ok, Thank you for your time. Now that I have a design I like and will stick with for awhile. I'm going to work on the back end to get it more SEO friendly and work on good keywords and such.

xnitrorc

What did you use to get this statistic?

I use 4 differen't types of website statistics/analytics and they all give differen't results so i never rely just on a single one.

RickLeigh

I just used the embeded one on my site : http://yourhobbycommunity.com/stats.html

I also have the awstats that my host provides in the cpanel thats showing:468304 page views from March.

I have changed domain names as well as re-done my database so my stats for each program don't match up. So I guess my CTR really sucks if you use the bigger number

xnitrorc

Have you got Google Analytics installed??

Theres mixed thought's on how people see it as a tool, but i seem to think it works quite well.

whipnet

Keep in mind Google Analytics require scripts to run on the person's browser. So people like me who visit your site will not be counted.

When in doubt, always use the raw logs.

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xnitrorc

Yeah i don't soley rely on it i have onsite statistics that run in real time when people visit my website, but even that sometimes doesn't track everyone.

But its not bad

whipnet

When you start getting 10's of thousands of hits a day, you stop worrying about it too much. I rarely check anymore. I only check the $$ every now and then to see how much RC stuff I can buy every month. LOL

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xnitrorc

Thats the way to do it!