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[Servant Corps]

I am asking this forum rather than the regular AdSense community because I suspect this community does not have as many liars out there boasting about their massive "income stream" to shoote their ego and try to sell something to me. What I want is real advice.

Right now, I work as a webmaster for a 501(c) corporation that is in charge of two religious buildings. I have recently installed AdSense a few weeks ago because I heard it is a good way to establish some revenue, and I wanted to help that 501(c) out by getting it a steady stream of revenue. Today, I am making $0.00/day. The only people clicking on my ads are likely bots, and I'm pretty sure I could get more clicks if I lift my ban on the Russian bots that previously made up 90% of my web traffic. Of course, those clicks do not raise my AdSense revenue any because Google can detect those clicks as being from bots, and refuse to pay up. I fear that with enough bots going around clicking on ads, Google might get irritated enough to ban me from AdSense entirely.

I know what I am supposed to do: create valuable content tied to keywords, bring in an audience, and wait for them to view or click on an ad. Problem is that I do not really have good ideas for what content to produce (other than having it relate to the religion that my 501(c) espouses), and it seems that, of the content I do produce, few people want to read it. I suspect most people go to the website's front page just to know where the religious buildings are and what are the prayer timings. Once they have such valuable content, they end up closing the website and moving on with their lives, with only a few people looking at our other services that the 501(c) provides.

There is also the fear that the content I produce may end up bringing ads that are unwelcome. For example, our 501(c) has a matchmaking service, meaning that AdSense is serving up ads to a rival matchmaking service. My boss doesn't really care, so I shouldn't care either, but it still seems irritating trying to get people to join our service when there is a nice juicy ad on that same page tempting them to join a much more successful and popular matchmaking service. Thing is, that is exactly the type of ad that would seem likely to get legitimate clicks...

Also, the ads do seem ugly and annoying, but I speculate that it might be because I use AdBlock on my home computer and am not used to seeing ads period. (Oh yeah, AdBlock...another strike against AdSense revenues.)

What should I even do? Just grin and bear the $0.00/day until I get enough content to generate enough traffic to slowly begin making pennies? Abandon the whole enterprise (remember...it has only been a few weeks)? Switching over to another ad provider seems risky because 1) they might not be as trustworthy as Google and 2) I may not have any legitimate traffic for them. Affiliate marketing is also right-out, if I am having difficulty getting people to even view an ad, how can I expect them to actually  get them to buy something?

Please help me. Meanwhile, I am going to petition the that the 501(c) worships for help as well.

[gimlet]

Yea random ads is just gonna make it look cheap, and will be a pittance unless you have massive MASSIVE traffic or you have high ranking for some superniche goldmine keyword like "mesothelioma".

You'd probably be better off with amazon referrals to books or products, especially if you could tie it to something your org does, or articles on the site that somehow use the product, even tailor articles on the site.  Looking at what people are searching for to get to your site might give you some ideas.  And if you MUST have banner ads, I'd prefer the amazon banner/side ads, at least they'll be from amazon not some possibly sleazy or virus-laden random spamshop.

At holidays link to some religion-appropriate books and products as gift ideas. 

Oh one other thing I've seen church sites do is get local businesses to pay for static ads monthly, the classy ones do it on a "supporter" page.  And have separate pages for special fund raising stuff like "pipe organ restoration" or whatever, with pics and info.

None of this will be big money, but it won't be an annoying eye-blot like random banner ads.

[wierd]

Advertisment is one of those "saturated" industries. Advertisers are always trying to force people to see their ads, and people are actively trying to avoid them.

As a  cosequence, people with cheap chinese shit to sell want to get the best bang for their buck in advertising. This means that unless your advertisements are so horrifically intrusive that people have no choice but to see them, OR, you are very popular content, and thus even poor impressions give good feedback, you will NOT be paid well.

I'd say we reached "Peak advertisement" sometime after the late 90s. The advertising industry would like you to believe otherwise though. If they could get away with it, they would make you watch adverts "Clockwork Orange" style.

Spoiler:  "Clockwork orange style", You know-- like this (click to show/hide)