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martinibuster - 5:14 am on Jul 26, 2012 (gmt 0)
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:52 am (utc) on Jul 26, 2012]
After reading of Tim Carter's experience with his Ask the Builder site...
Tim Carter is a building contractor and a journalist. Not an Internet marketing expert.
Random anecdote: I was at the first Google Zeitgeist conference waiting for Malcolm Gladwell to speak and Tim Carter was sitting behind me giddily bragging loudly to the stranger seated beside him that he was making ten thousand dollars per month from AdSense, then telling him the name of the site. I turned around to look at him and wanted to tell him to STFU but decided to leave him be.
My impression of Tim Carter at that time was that he was a newb, a lucky newb, that didn't know jack. Personally I'm weary of seeing his name invoked as an example of an innocent guy who got hosed for unknown reasons. No one gets hosed for unknown reasons. There is always a reason.
On the AdSense side it relates to the type of content, who the site visitors are, nuances in the way the ads are displayed and where. On the traffic side it relates to the ways a site was promoted. No one gets hosed without a reason. Even if it's a false positive, you can still go back and point at the reason for the false positive.
Regarding mobile, fifty percent or more of traffic for many sites are coming from devices other than desktops and laptops. It's like back in the old days when web publishers had to decide how much effort to devote to Netscape 4.7.
The other thing was that staying home all the time to work on my site, I really found that I'd narrowed my world in a BIG way. I really failed to appreciate how small my circle would become when I was no longer out circulating in the world every day -- it was a non-financial cost, but it's a very real one.
That's a quality of life issue and I support you 100% on that. It is tough to stay at home with limited contact with people. I have to make an effort to create social circles that are not based around work, as well as social circles related to work. Back in San Francisco I even put together dinners for local web workers.