Making Money With AdSense Is Not So Easy Anymore
Four years ago, I was writing a book called Make Easy Money with Google: Using the AdSense Advertising Program. While I didn’t come up with the title, it does reflect fairly accurately the general tone of the book. Because when I wrote it, it was easy to make money with AdSense.
But I wouldn’t use that title today. Making money with AdSense — or any advertising or affiliate system — isn’t nearly as easy anymore. Especially in the last year.
Why? Because it’s hard to get ranked in Google. Targeted organic traffic — which is what really works well with AdSense — is so hard to get now that anyone just starting out is going to find it hard to make any significant money.
Content Grows Exponentially
Not too long ago, I created a silly online tool called How Much Of The Web Do You Own?. Type in how many pages of content you have on the Web and it tells your miniscule percentage of the entire Web. Today, for example, it says there are 1,152,913,072,000 pages on the Web, with 12,000 more pages being added every second. See Estimating the total number of web pages for my logic.
There is a fundamental flaw in my logic, though, in that it assumes the growth of the web is linear. And if everyone was interesting in creating content rather than getting that content to rank well, that’s probably what it would be.
But the reality is that many webmasters want their pages pushed up in the rankings. After they’ve chosen good titles for their pages (perhaps the most important on-page SEO factor) and implemented a good site structure, the next thing they need are links from external sites. Lots of links.
You can go and buy links, but there’s only so much money you can spend doing that. You can go and leave comments on blogs and forums, but there’s only so much time you can spend doing that. These techniques also take a long time to have an effect.
What the big boys do is create lots of content in automated or semi-automated fashion. You can read posts like SEO Empire to get an idea of what’s involved. Once these sites are created, their owners can use them to give their “money sites” a big boost in the rankings by linking to them. Whether or not you agree with these tactics, it’s what people are doing. Let’s not debate ethics.
The point is that while regular website owners and bloggers are putting out one or two pages of content per day on their sites, there are others out there creating essentially thousands of pages of content per site per day. And some of those sites in turn end up feeding other sites, which generate even more content (automation is key).
Add to the mix webmasters who decide that they have to go in that direction themselves to succeed and you can see why I say that content is growing exponentially, not linearly.
But Searches Don’t
On the other hand, the number of searches being done — we’re talking search terms here, not search volume — is not growing exponentially. It can’t — there are only so many people in the world and there are only so many things they’ll search for and so many ways they’ll search for it. A lot of searches are influenced by outside events. Others are in response to needs and wants. The number of truly “new” searches done is surely quite small.
If content is growing exponentially but searches are growing linearly, this means that the number of pages that match a given search term will grow quite quickly over a short amount of time. It’ll be exponential in some cases, linear in others, but either way there will be a lot of content to compete against in the search engine rankings, and it only gets worse as time goes on.
Not to mention that there’s a feedback loop built into the whole system: to outrank a competitor, you need more links. So you create more content. The competitor fights back and creates even more content. And so on ad infinitum.
And Then There’s Recency…
One of the things Google’s done to its ranking algorithm in the last year is place a premium on recency. New, fresh content gets a temporary big boost over older content, although after a day or two it falls back down to its “natural” place in the rankings. Giving prominence to up-to-the-minute content makes for more relevant searches in many cases.
Of course, the content creators aren’t fools and they’ve noticed this. Rather than unleash their autogenerated content in big chunks, they “drip feed” it out to the Web via blogs or other feed-based content management systems. A blog that updates itself with new content every couple of hours gets visited often by the Googlebot, and it doesn’t take those pages long to get into Google’s index. Take those feeds and add them to RSS aggregators like Feedage and you’ll get some immediate links to that blog. Bookmark the blog for good measure on as many social bookmarking accounts as you can to get a few more links. (Many will be nofollow, but not all will, and you’ll get some traffic and legitimacy from the links.)
By drip feeding content, webmasters can get their “new” content to rank temporarily way higher than it normally would. And they get the search engines visiting that much more often, which means their content gets indexed that much more quickly. Which means the links in that content can boost the rankings of the sites they link to.
Pity The Poor Website Owner
Making money with AdSense is all about traffic. You can say that about affiliate marketing, too, but the payouts in affiliate marketing can be so much larger than the per-click values you’ll get from AdSense that you can make money with much less traffic. This is why all the big guns in Internet Marketing focus on affiliate marketing these days.
That said, AdSense is an easy way to monetize a traffic stream when you have lots of content. Google makes a huge profit with the AdSense ads it places on hundreds of thousands of websites.
There are sites out there making good profits from their share of that revenue as well.
But the easy AdSense money is long gone. (It’s like the despair phase of the gold rush.) You can’t just throw up a site and expect it to get organic traffic. You need a “foundation” (like the SEO Empire post mentions) of pages that link to the site to increase its rankings. You need regularly-updated content to keep the crawlers coming back. You have to work hard at getting traffic to your site, because the numbers just don’t add up anymore — too many people are fighting over a pie that just isn’t large enough to feed everyone who wants a bite.
And Your Options Are?
There are things you can do to even things out, of course:
- Build a content network. Don’t settle for one or two sites. Build yourself a network of sites that’ll give you the linking power you need to rank well.
- Build a captive audience. Although controversial, the AdSense Resurrected technique is still valid if you can do it: build a list (pay for it) and get each person in that list to visit your pages in a specific sequence, making money from AdSense ads and affiliate links sprinkled throughout the content. As long as the average income per list member exceeds the cost to obtain those list members, you’ll make money.
- Pay for traffic. You pretty much have to abandon AdSense for this one, as AdSense arbitrage doesn’t work very well. So you have to focus on affiliate marketing, on products that have relatively large payouts in order to pay for the traffic.
None of these are new, of course. And they all take a lot of time and a lot of effort.
Of course, in the “real world” business owners face these issues all the time. How do you get your message out to a widely dispersed and fragmented audience? How do you get people into your place of business? How do you find and reach potential buyers?
The Web has gone mainstream, and so has AdSense. That means it’s no so easy anymore.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments on this topic.
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95 Responses to “Making Money With AdSense Is Not So Easy Anymore”
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While I agree that it’s not as easy as it once was, I can’t say enough that I believe that most people fail because they aren’t really looking to add value to the web in the first place…to build something that helps people, or draws them to refer others and return themselves.
It’s just SO easy to buy a video import script, or import the written content of others, or (insert auto-generated content system here)…it seems that nearly everyone fails because they take “the easy turn” right out of the gate. Building with uniqueness and value in mind requires the ability to ask one’s self really hard questions. Such as:
- Do I really have anything to say…or am I just blowing hot air…in effect, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic (if you’re running the world’s 100,000th “make money online” blog, this is probably you)?
- Do I even have the English skills to communicate clearly with an audience whose primary language is not my own (or, even as a native English speaker, can you use the language well enough to keep anyone’s interest…do you know how to tell a story without people falling asleep)?
- Do I actually know anything about the topic that I’m attempting to address (if not, why should anyone care what I have to say)?
Those are hard questions. And, if you can’t answer yes…that doesn’t mean that all is lost. But it DOES mean that you shouldn’t just go out and start a blog or a site until you’ve got a better idea.
Instead, do some research:
1. partner with someone who DOES know content, and instead focus your attention on link-building, managing the blog structure and design, etc (which is likely something they don’t know as much about)
2. find out where exist only mediocre online resources for a certain area of interest. And build something better. Organize it better. Make it prettier. Add new resources.
3. start a niche directory where one doesn’t exist. Try a geographically-based directory for businesses in your local area. Or build a directory of therapeutic hypnotists around the world. Or some other area of speciality. Not too narrow…but where a good resource that doesn’t currently exist. Believe me, if you can route traffic through your directory, people will be killing to get into it.
4. come up with a unique vehicle to be powered by user-generated content. Does YouTube produce all the videos on their site? Nope…none of them. People go there because it’s THE place for content creators to get their stuff seen. DON’T do another video site (unless your vision is truly unique). But there are cool new ideas create all the time. Makes your one of them.
Just DON’T DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING. Brainstorm. Get creative. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be open to (and benefit from) constructive criticism.
Most people will never get rich from AdSense. And smart people approach it first as an additional income stream, not a way to feed the family.
Finally, I still argue that AdSense Resurrected sounds like a bad way to go. If you’re paying people to visit your sites, you are (at best) dancing on the line of violating AdSense TOS, which does not permit the program to be used on “surf” programs. Whether or not it’s spelled out, it seems strongly implied that you, as the compensated visitor, will be clicking on ads while you’re there if you hope to continue to get paid. I suspect Google would take a very dim view of this, were it brought to their attention.
Your post is very timely.
Is it not illegal to link to your own websites if the B and C in the IP address are the same?
Thanks,
Sandra
Chuck:
if you’re running the world’s 100,000th “make money online†blog, this is probably you
Ouch!
Some great tips in there, as usual, Chuck, and a much more positive message than my cynical one.
About the AR approach: you’re not paying people to read your sites, you’re paying ad costs to get them to signup to a list you run, and from there you get them to visit specific pages on your site. This doesn’t run contrary to the guidelines as long as you’re not actually encouraging the readers to click any ads or links (except the one in the email that brings up the page).
Perhaps I’ve gotten too cynical dealing with all those people out there to make lots of money online. I’ve actually desubscribed from most of the lists I was on and my inbox is now refreshingly less full… maybe it’ll take me a few months to find a better mindset.
Eric
Sandra:
First of all, “illegal” is strong word to use for search engine optimization… Google is not the police
Anyhow, there’s nothing wrong with interlinking your own sites, on any IP address, as long as the links are relevant and for a good purpose.
Eric
I think what Sandra is referring to is the strategy that the originating IP address is considered to be ONE of many factors Google uses to determine rankings. Judicious linking should be fine.
But, Eric…you know what I mean. The make money online niche is SO over-saturated, it’s ridiculous. You’ve never been a copycat, but most of the blogs in the niche just rehash what the true thought leaders in the space have already said in their post the day before. There’s a place for slightly dumbed-down explanations, since not everyone is at the same level of experience or sophistication. But that niche is tapped out now, and it’s time for people to move on. If they’re not wise enough to do so, it’s hard to feel sorry for them. I’m just trying to make the point in a constructive way.
The reason I’m not burned out is because I’ve always believed there is more room for quality resources. But I agree that “more of the same” is enough to depress anyone.
As far as AdSense Resurrected, I haven’t read it. I’m only referring to what I would consider to be “the natural implication” of the facts contained in your summary. Of course no one will say “go there and click”. That would get them an immediate ban. But anyone with a brain who’s getting paid to do it will eventually conclude that the only way to keep the beast fed is to do so. And leading the horse to that particular pond would not only be against AdSense TOS, it strikes me as downright immoral. A system of paying-to-visit without interacting with them is exactly the same as autosurfing, which also doesn’t require clicking on ads, and I would suggest that it’s the kind of exploitation of the trust loophole that has so badly damaged the AdSense system in recent years. I’d love to see the creators of such a system left alone in a room with 10 advertisers whose money is going to pay for those ads…which, I would wager, will very rarely result in a successful transaction. Just a TON of click-thru’s (and, of course, payouts). Again, I am speaking beyond my personal knowledge and experience here…just addressing the principle of the thing based on how it sounds.
Chuck, I’ve mischaracterized the AR system. All you do in AR is setup a squeeze page offering an online course. You divide the online course into individual web pages and each day or so the person gets an email giving them the link to the next lesson in the course. You make money by putting ads and affiliate links as appropriate in or near the course content. What you pay for is traffic to the squeeze page…. or co-registration. The people taking the course don’t get any money.
Eric
Oops…so it’s not…SATAN??!!??
(in the voice of Emily Litella) “Never mind.”
I’ve been wondering how the economy will affect AdSense earnings. I can’t help but think that companies will cut down advertising expenses (like everything else), which will cause AdSense eanings to go down. I hope that’s not so, the earnings are low enough as it is.
I’ve been wondering the same thing, Rich. All I can say is that, while I’ve seen fluctuations between sites, I haven’t noticed an overall dip.
I think that at least PART of that is due to the fact that AdSense is based upon the expression of interest, as opposed to a completed transaction.
It would be interesting to know whether the number of sales has stayed about the same or dropped. But we’re not given access to that information. If they’ve dropped, one would think that AdSense income will drop as well.
However, in a down economy, I would wager that savvy advertisers will advertise more…just like buying stocks when the prices is low.
By the way, in regard to the theme of this post…here’s a bit of hard information.
It looks like I’m going to have my biggest day ever on AdSense today. (golf clap-volumed standing ovation)
My previous biggest day was December 23, 2005. On that day, I had a total of 26,025 page impressions across my suite of sites. Today, to equal the same dollar amount I made then, I will need to have at least 75-80K page impressions. In other words, I need THREE TIMES the traffic I needed that day, nearly 3 years ago.
What does that mean, exactly? Not sure. The actual number of clicks will be different, but not drastically so. Back then, I was averaging 7 cents a click overall. Today, it’s 5 cents a click. What’s the difference? I would guess that much of it is due to “ad blindness”. AdSense has been around so long that people have grown to simply tune out the ads. There are probably other factors…such as advertisers learning how to play the system in order to pay less for their ads.
But I found that quite interesting. 3 times as much traffic for the same amount of money. Whew… that’s a lot of work!
The economy will definitely affect AdSense, but perhaps not as much as you might think. Businesses may turn to more online advertising in times of recession, since it’s more easily tracked and the outlay can be a lot less that traditional media advertising.
I have seen one or two articles where “experts” claim the economy will not negatively affect internet marketing. I suppose it depends on how one looks at it.
It does seem like it takes more clicks to make as much money with AdSense as in the past. I guess then one has to either have more sites or traffic or both, or one has to “think outside the box” to get a decent income with AdSense.
My income from AdSense is low, but I’m hoping it will go up through the next year, by having more sites, more articles with links, and hopefully blogroll links from other sites. But my sights from each indiviual site probabaly needs to be set lower I guess.
Really great to see a well thought out post with a generous dash of healthy skepticism.
A question: do the big automated sites really make a lot of money? The content seems so poor, and the relevance so low.
But then again I guess they have so many sites done at such a low cost that the benefit from “spam economics” – even a .001% clickthrough can make them a lot of money.
Depressing really – especially if the automated crap pushes real content off the SERPs. And disappointing that it seems it’s no longer possible for a little guy with a great idea to make a fortune from it.
Ian
It’s true that the adsense rules have changed quite a few times and each time they have changed, bloggers have expressed their concerns with lower revenues.
Some of the changes over the last year or so have been not having adsense near images, not having link units under subjective blog titles etc.
For Interlinking, that would be an On-page SEO strategy for giving SE crawlers easily access to index web-pages and locate links inside the content of a website. Jeee…
I agree that it is getting much more difficult to make money with AdSense. What about setting up 2 identical sites. One that you SEO the heck out of it and place AdSense ads all over the place and the other don’t SEO and do not place Ads on it. Then use your email list to drive traffic to the non ad site to remain credibly?
I see a lot of webpages out there trying to sell you their mini page money making scheme. Where you are to set up a website, add some content and sit back and collect the adsense paychecks. Although, there may be a few niche markets that you can do that. I don’t think it is very easy anymore.
I think that using adwords/PPC campaign to promote your site might work, but only if you have links to high paying affiliate sites. But you have the risk of loosing money this way.
Just think, 1 trillion web pages on the net. 9 trillion in US debt. I thought for a minute I could fathom how deep the US government got us into financial trouble but it’s still to big for me to picture.
I have been having major issues with adsense as of late I lost 90% of my revenue since last year I just started a new site Console, hardware, and Gadget Review so far not one click granted it is a new site but overclockers hq has been up a week and already gets over 100 uniques a day with no click through. Everything is above the fold and color matched to the design it doesn’t make sense. Not to mention formerly high paying keywords aren’t as high paying since all the companies pulled money from there advertising budget.
I have a couple of sites on shared hosting. Now if I interlink between these sites, I do not think google will give it more weightage, for a simple fact that it’s easy for Google to figure out it pretty much belongs to the same person.
Correct me if I’m wrong
/G
Yes, looks like my adsense earnings are going down a little, although my blogs have higher traffic than ever…
It’s scary, but true. It’s not as easy as it used to be making money online.
Google said it’s illegal to place adsense blocks near pictures, but they are doing it now.
and yes I agree about the affiliate marketing – same effort with better income at the end of the day
Well it’s not as easy anymore coz everyone is doing it now. Those were the days when blogging was elite and only few quality people had the motherload share of the traffic
I think, whatever the matter with google and adsense and they compact the system; at one side it seems to prevent fraud clicks to boost up the honest advertise marketing. One day this thing comes in the eye’s of google and they did it. I think if you have latest news, that it is really hard to collect the traffic as well as generate the revenue through the adsense. Yesterday I have read out the article on the same issue.
I missed the time when getting free traffic from search engine was easy.
But I guess i’m not too late if start now. I pretty sure of it.
I totally agree with skyhook. I think, it’s not only Adsense, but almost entire the ad providers got lose and this is very difficult for amateur blogger likes me to earn money.
Internet marketing campaigns and PPC such as Adwords are easy to launch and control, so it’s not obvious to deduct Adsense income should go lower during hard times … conversion rates and ROI will become even more important though
I completely agree with your article. Designing a site to make money purely via AdSense is a flawed strategy now – you’re doing all the work for half the advertising revenue, and that’s only when the ads are clicked on. There’s a branding effect of AdSense ads which website owners don’t receive any money for either.
Affiliate marketing is definitely the way to go in my opinion.
I think if you know what you doing and have good resources, you can make money online with Adsense
sory for poor english…
And nobody says that making money online is easy…
with the new advertising in sponsored suggestions of google, we all are losing money, everyday getting is worst. they have to do something.
regards from Spain,
Sawsana
I think you raise some good points, Adsense isn’t as easy as it once was, but that happens with all aspects of making money online, you have to change and adapt how you attack your marketing strategy to succeed, once everyone does the same it becomes less effective.
Thanks for the article. Quite informative and very well written.
It would be nice if all the garbage pages out there went away. Sick of seeing content created for the sole purpose of gaming the search engines. There are so many garbage sites out there just hosting AdSense – most of which are also on great domains that I want, but cant have cause of these squatters.
Oh well.
Thanks for mentioning the factor of Recency. I didn’t realize that before.
Hi Eric, good article.
It is true that it is hard to get ranked in Google, and get targeted organic traffic. I think the secret is to find terms that people are searching, but have no many compatiotion.
It gets harder, but still possible.
And it is probably still very imoportant to have external links, and not only new content.
Jim R. from how to invest stock market.
Most people are followers, not initiators. When a lot of “internet gurus” talk about “making money with Google,” the crowd follows and and succumbs to the temptation. There is always a cycle in every great brand or product. Not only that it is difficult to make money with Adsense today, the Adwords advertisers are also getting cleverer.
I would say the main problem is not ranking on Google but the low Adsense income. That kills me!
Chuck,
Your stats on needing 3 times as many impressions to make the same money are scary.
I guess the challenge is whether the numbers are easily scaleable. Could you just have 3 times as many sites (based on similar content) and get 3 times as many clicks – or are there diminishing returns?
Ian
I’ve set up a dozen domains for a test I plan on running for a few months – we’ll see if its worthwhile. I will keep a running update on clicks and revenue on http://pbarnhart.wordpress.com/testing-adsense-for-domains/
I’m up 64 cents so far
is true that making money with adsense is getting very hard – or instead I should say, getting traffic from google is very hard. two years ago I built a site that in less than six months was getting good traffic from google, and in about a year it was getting good traffic to yield me a good amount of money from adsense.
now I’m building another site, it’s been almost fours month now. I being building good links, but not a soul from Google yet.. I know it takes time, but definitely the wait is much longer now.
organic results are hard to achieve ..u r right ..but wen u achieve a certain level of authority in google ..such as a pr 3 high ranking blog .. then the rest journey will be a smooth one .. u wud nt need to worry on anything else just watch the cash flow in , and i am not kidding…..
Well, maybe there are different ways to make money on your website. At my website we do it all through affiliate sales. This way you recommend products your users will actually use and make money from it instead of random ads.
I think you have good posted for think about adsense. You have given some good points, It is not easy to make money online by adsense. You have excellent post about adsense because most of the person no idea about it… Thanks
With all the changes and increasing difficulty, I’ve started investing time in affiliate marketing. People seem to be making a lot more with a lot less in that field.
Oh man this sounds disappointing, I honestly thought making money from Adsense is that easy as all the people make it look like.
Any comments on how stumble upon traffic might help in bringing more adsense visitors??
I definitely think that making money strictly from Adsense is over, unless you own a super high traffic site. Even then you will probably make more by selling ad space like banners and buttons. I also thing that Big G has really come down on affiliate sites too. I know that I’ve seen my PR on most of mine drop during the last change.
This post is really timely. I too find it more and more difficult to make good money with Adsense, so I am looking for other ways to monetize my tiny traffic.
I have been slowly watching my clicks decline each month. I am wondering if the slow economy has anything to do with the number of people willing to click. While we are stilll getting a lot of visitors to our informational pages the sales pages have also dropped. I am just thinking this may be due to a decrease in the number wanting to see sales info and looking more for do it yourself or informational items.
Just a thought!
The way that recency with blogs and other constantly updated content is changing the web is quite drastic. The point of not as easy as it use to be, well I guess there are people who adapt quickly to these changes and people who don’t. Considering some people have gone from $0 to $1000 per day in less than a year, that seems pretty easy to me. Not that it’s without work, it’s just having the audience now and finding that value add you can deliver to make your work pay off. If done well, it’s still easy to make good money… It’s not the same way as before however.
It is sad but true what you say about Adsense. I just today received my first check from Google. It only took me 2 years to reach the minimum payout! Of course, I just write my blog and let the clicks fall where they may!
Adsensers grows exponentially,
Content grows geometrically,
While advertisers are leaving adwords to its alternatives because of MFA-like websites.
great article, you just knock me hard with the reality.
@sandra, i think its legal to link site A to site B, in which you own both A and B site. Google doesn’t bother looking for the owner of the sites, however google count similarity of the content.
hi.i have banned from google adsense.is there a chance to open my acoount again? thanks
I noticed a change when they brought in steps to stop fraudulent clicks, I think it’s better for advertisers now, but publishers are noticing the difference.
Well.. i do think is a matter of evolution.. eventually google will find out the way to filter trashy sites from good relevant content, even if it will be in the need of involving more human handwork… it is that or loosing credibility to its adwords customers…
I think that Recency was a huge thing that needed to be mentioned or we would all be dead
Not to offend, but all of these changes may actually be steps in the right direction… maybe not for the Internet marketers that focus on the (previously) low hanging fruits of the online-ad business, but for the general public that would get better content.
making money on adsense…that train left the station years back unfortunately.
When I had a PR5, there were few hits from Google and on fewer number of key phrases. Besides these were not premium key phrases. However there were huge hits from LIVE.
Keeping my adsense did not make sense.
Now that I have a PR0 (zero), everyday I gets a good number of hits from Google on more number of key phrases and some of them are Premium key phrases. Hits from LIVE et all have dried up.
But…..adsense has jumped.
But its still very low to really be happy about or make me throw my job and sit at home.
So I still wonder if it really makes sense to keep adsense running on my site.
I say, its never been easy making money from adsense
You bring up some very interesting concepts. Among them that Google really notices completly fresh content and awards accordingly. I continue to write completely brand new things on my blog.
You have got some nice points out there. but its expected that the adsense would evolve with time. People will keep finding loopholes and google will keep plugging them. 5 years down the line people would again say the same thing “It was easier earlier”. I guess people like us would just have to keep working hard.
you are absolutly right….making money through google adsense is not so much easy job now as it was few years back and the website really need to have good ranking on google which is not so much easy….the content of your post is very impressive..thanks for all those real and cool stuffs…in the end thanks for this good post..
regard,
clare
It could be true that if website content increase exponential and number of search increase linear than it could be difficult to get money from adsense. However, The difficulty also in Google algoritm. Long time a go link from directory is good enough. but not now.
One good think currently PPC already overbid. It is good enough since we can get more money per click.
Search engines are “deleting” pages from their index. This is the best way to keep the SERP’s relevant and stop the immense growth off content. Just make sure your content is relevant.
Adsense rules change all the time, so the official adsense blog is a good place to visit once in a while.
To earn money with Adsense, you need lots of unique quality content, you need to use the right ad blocks, testing what works…
Official Adsense Blog:
http://adsense.blogspot.com/
Great article. And it really highlights the cynical way people are manipulating search engines to their advantage. I work for a marketing agency and its surprising how many clients are just starting to wake up to the internet and pick up terms such as ’search engine optimisation’. Now with the economy the way it is we are seeing more and more clients turn to digital.
The message here is that it probably means more gash content! It looks like it is set to get worse. But im a firm beleiver in cycles – it cant go on ad infinitum. something will come in that is newer and more different – be it an algorith change by google, or a different approach to search by users. But that isnt going to be for a long time yet.
Out here in Europe we have alot of negative effects because the dollar is so low at this moment. Linkbuilding keeps getting harder and the only option as it seems sometimes is to build more site’s to get good backlinks.
yeah the recency info was good, I got banned from adsense and I make more money without it as if forced me to change my sites, I get annoyed with those garbage sites also, especially when I find all my posts scraped and there is nothing I can do to stop them.
I think its important that you mentioned the similarity between having a website or a network of websites and having a traditionally run business..
The secret is out now, and everyone has jumped to internet as the new way to get rich quickly and easily..a real life digital bandwagon..
but on the brighter side, as with business and even art, the more cluster the more individuals are forced to be innovative and develop interesting ideas to separate themselves from the rest..
My adsense seems to be pretty steady. I don’t use it on that many pages, but I make enough to get a deposit every month, but not much more. These are some old sites that I don’t really promote, but since they’re about a year old they’ve ended up on the front pages of yahoo and msn (nowhere to be found in google).
It seems like a lot of pages tend to hold a high ranking based on the quality and age of the domain name. This makes it extremely difficult for new entering competition to even stand a change, now that recency seems to be a big part of the algorithm, it’s likely that this mantra is in the process of changing right now
The key is building a community and providing relevant information. Yes, its way harder than auto but should be more productive.
http://solarpowerenergy.myresourcenet.net/
Great Post. I have been doing websites for 3 years. I originally got into it because my friends were making “easy money”. I tried to do the same things in a different market but failed because the rules had changed. For the first 2 years, I tried all kinds of black-hat stuff but I never could fool Google. Now I am all white-hat, I just plug away every day and I am slowly building a modest income through hard work. It ain’t easy but it is a great job.
Scott has a really good point it may seem that the web is almost infinite but if you take away all the crap pages out there and link farms its more manageable. Also if you find a good niche and know basic internet marketing you can still make good money online.
A great post with very informative comments. Not having my primary income from on line advertising, I’ve always been surprised and annoyed about the focus of the publishers on search engines.
@Mujie – Why an amateur blogger should suppose to make money from advertising? Does “amateur” means just someone without a formal train and not someone exposing personal passion for a particular activity?
Its hard for me to get 3 dollars with adsense today, with 50 clicks, i just get 1.12 dollar
Generating revenue from adsense should not be the primary motivating force behind starting a blog or any other web presence. A page full of ads is not going to attract visitors.
Neither is filling your site with articles that have been taken from other online sources. In fact I would go as far as to suggest that this could have a negative impact on page rank and search position if too much of the content on your site is viewed as duplicate content.
Nothing in life is free, you have to put some effort into things. Any adsense revenue should be looked on as a bonus, and not as the reason for a web presence.
Adense used to be all the rage but now especially after reading ,i to believe it is getting more and more difficult to succeed.With all the new software coming out it is becoming so easy to saturate markets
Thank you for sharing!
My choice is building of content network. But not just content – I bet on user-generated content…
Great info dude ..I agree with you adsense is not a piece of cake
AdSense is a joke. Unless you have massive traffic it’s not worth it.
I recently had to remove adesense from my sites because my earnings were so low. 3 years ago I was earning $500 monthly with only 1 website, last year I was earning $50/month
The best thing you can do is sell banner spots, you will earn more.
That’s my opinion
What Chuck said (first comment).
I would add: DONT buy links – Google is cracking down on this and it’s just not worth the risk.
Adsense is now probably best as a supplementary income to the sites main earner. So build a site with quality original content (yes it’s hard work) and over time you should repa the rewards. But don’t build a site just to get adsense clicks, build a site (preferably on a topic you are passionate about – makes it easier to add that content) based around a product / service with an affiliate program. Preferably something withh a choice of several merchants with affiliate programs as affiliate programs can and do end/ change for various reasons. But make good content the main aspect of your site – not affiliate links or adsense ads.
I don’t know how Google would know if a link was bought or not. But I do agree that it’s not a good idea to buy links, just because if you work hard enough you can get them for free.
I admit I do have strictly AdSense sites. They do OK, even though my traffic isn’t great yet. But I will start some affiliate sites as well.
The mesothelioma keyword. That was huge years ago. I personally use the Adwords Keyword suggestion tool to find keywords, and there it does have information as to what the top 3 are paying.
I agree with what many have said, unless you have traffic it’s just not worth the effort.
This is a great post with some awesome insight. I saw a few people talk about User Generated content and I think that is key. I also think a smart SEM based domaining strategy works wonders if you are building a content network. Lastly, good content always wins out. With every page ask yourself, what is the reader getting?
I’ve only just come across this blog and have spent a little while reading some of your posts – great stuff!
I agree that making money from AdSense is not as easy as it once was due to the greater degree of difficulty in obtaining the right type of traffic, but I also feel that there are many more people ‘trying’ to do it, and failing due to lack of knowledge, which makes it seem even more so this way.
I think for those that know what they are doing, then there is still great possibilities to make money from AdSense.
I have seen one or two articles where “experts†claim the economy will not negatively affect internet marketing. I suppose it depends on how one looks at it.
Seems like there is no alternative to making your own network of sites that link together, and here comes the question about how to write a lot of content in very little time. Well u could outsource it to a company like: agentsofvalue. As long as the costs of a ghostwriter does not exceed your income.
Making money with Adsense it’s becoming harder and harder. Couple of years ago, Adsense program was really hot
Nowdays, affiliate earnings are much more rewarding. More and more publishers go into CPA networks everyday. Adsense is paying penny per clicks .. Too bad .. I actually enjoyed it while it lasted.
I see a lot of webpages out there trying to sell you their mini page money making scheme. Where you are to set up a website, add some content and sit back and collect the adsense paychecks. Although, there may be a few niche markets that you can do that. I don’t think it is very easy anymore.
My previous biggest day was December 23, 2005. On that day, I had a total of 26,025 page impressions across my suite of sites. Today, to equal the same dollar amount I made then, I will need to have at least 75-80K page impressions. In other words, I need THREE TIMES the traffic I needed that day, nearly 3 years ago.