What I bought with my AdSense earnings

Well, my buddy Rick Blythe has just bought himself a car with his blogging earnings, see The car that blogging bought. His site was quickly linked to from Darren Rowse's site, of course, and that's brought Rick a lot of congratulatory traffic. I just hope he's put aside enough money to cover the taxes he'll have due on his earnings, which are sure to increase after all this fuss! (See Rick's posting How to Grow the Business for a list of the blogs and sites he runs. Remember what I said recently about traffic volume being the key to making a fortune?)

Here's what I bought with my earnings:

The house? No. (Have you seen the prices of houses in Waterloo lately?) My daughter? No. (She's priceless.) My glasses? No. (Covered by health insurance.) My smile? Yes!

Alright, that's a bit of a joke, I admit. It's great to see Rick and others get so excited, though, and by sharing their stories they inspire others to do the same.

What's lost in all the excitement over Rick's car, however, are these two important facts:

• It takes time and effort to make serious money. Look at how many sites Rick has, how much work it was to set them up. If you've been following along with my AdSense case study it should be obvious to you how much time is involved in setting up a site, and that's without any complicated programming. (Yes, I've been dragging it a lot because I'm using it as a teaching case, but it would still take you a week or two on a part-time basis to set up a good site like that.)
• You make your money from a combination of things, not just AdSense. Rick has money coming in from AdSense, Chitika and Amazon. Probably from other places, too. Experts always say that you should diversify your income, and AdSense publishers are no exception to the rule. This is why Rick states he bought his car from his blogging earnings, not his AdSense earnings. I don't know what the breakdown is among his different income sources, but I'm sure that on some of his sites the other sources are more significant — it really depends what the site's about and where your traffic's coming from.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that most people don't put in the necessary time and effort to make themselves rich using AdSense and other online systems. This is exactly what The Rich Jerk asserts in his e-book. Like I say in my own book, I do think it's easy to make some money with AdSense, but you can't make lots of money without working at it. Run away from anyone who tells you otherwise! Yes, you can read books like Joel Comm's Google AdSense Secrets for more tips on what you can do, but you can't make your earnings increase just by reading a book. You have to get out there and do it.

Here's hoping that Rick gets to buy more cars with his earnings!

Eric Giguere is the author of Make Easy Money with Google, a real (printed!) introductory AdSense book for non-technical people, available at all fine bookstores. Be sure to download the free sample chapter for more information about the book. Or add it directly to your Amazon shopping cart!

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