Questions for those making > $1000/month from advertising

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Question for those making over $1000 in ad revenue

BitShift

5:37 pm on Aug 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

At what point did you start making that amount and how long did it take you to get the targeted traffic with enough of a click-through rate to start making some decent return on your effort?

If you have been using advertising for over 2 years, how much is revenue down today compared to last year, if any.

If you run both advertising AND affiliate sales, which has turned to be more profitable?

dbcooper

5:42 pm on Aug 12, 2009 (gmt 0)

>At what point

I've been doing this since 1994. The first year was spent thrashing around. 2nd year recorded a profit of about 3k/month.

>how much is revenue down today compared to last year

Approx 35%

>If you run both advertising AND affiliate sales, which has turned to be more profitable?

Ads

tigger

7:07 am on Sep 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

I've been playing the affiliate game for ten years and make enough to have a comfortable lifestyle and moved to spain 2 years ago off the back of affiliate sales

like all sales online / offline mine are down around 25% but they will bounce back when punters start spending again, the trick when every your running your own business is to make sure when things are going well you save some of the cash

BillyS

11:39 am on Sep 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

>>At what point did you start making that amount and how long did it take you to get the targeted traffic with enough of a click-through rate to start making some decent return on your effort?

Eighteen months

>>If you have been using advertising for over 2 years, how much is revenue down today compared to last year, if any.

We passed last year's net income value back in August

>>If you run both advertising AND affiliate sales, which has turned to be more profitable?

We only run advertising.

maximillianos

11:42 am on Sep 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

3 years.

Revenues are consistant with last year.

Ads have faired better for us.

leadegroot

12:37 pm on Sep 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

I have one site where only adsense makes money - affiliate offers just don't work.
I have another where I have completely removed adsense in favour of affiliate offers - they make much more in that niche.
So - its very site & niche dependant.

wyweb

12:43 pm on Sep 20, 2009 (gmt 0)

3 years.

Down appx 30%. The drop in advertising revenue accounts for most of this. Affiliate sales are down but only slightly.

Advertising at first. These days it's affiliate sales.

usedagain

1:29 am on Oct 4, 2009 (gmt 0)

I starting earning 1k per month around January. My personal experience was that as my knowledge grew, so did my income. So year over year I have been up, month over month. Only difference is my income hasn't grown since January due to several projects I am working on and not yet working on increasing revenue generation.

BitShift

12:00 pm on Oct 4, 2009 (gmt 0)

Does anyone mind taking a look at the website in my profile and offering up some suggestions? Send me a "sticky mail" via this website.

I think some of the things Im missing can be boiled down to SEO issues. Probably the key among them is getting some linkbacks on other sites.

usedagain

6:44 pm on Oct 4, 2009 (gmt 0)

I think some of the things Im missing can be boiled down to SEO issues

You should start a thread, but there are two big problems:
Meta desc is missing so google just grabs the first line of text
Title should be more descriptive, appending your domain name at the end doesn't really get people's or google's attention.

onlineleben

8:47 am on Oct 5, 2009 (gmt 0)

@BitShift
regarding importance of Meta desc also check following support page at google:
[google.com...]

BitShift

10:40 am on Oct 5, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks both of you, i will look at these things.

idolw

10:44 am on Oct 5, 2009 (gmt 0)

BitShift - the site: operator in Google does not show much in terms of content. I guess that is what your website needs mostly. Once it is full of content you should start making some money

Geronimo

7:39 am on Oct 11, 2009 (gmt 0)

I am similarly frustrated, I have 2 sites in the software tutorial sector, between both seeing about 900 unique visitors per day. Adsense makes me around 10 dollars per month, and I think it makes the site look cheap. Affiliate programs get clicks, but no sales.

For advertising I think BSA is only accepting bigger sites, so I am not sure how or where to get my advertisers from. Any tips?

I think there are a lot of people like us around Bitshift. Look forward to hearing more tips.

Geronimo

8:14 am on Oct 11, 2009 (gmt 0)

Bitshift, checked your site, here are my tips for SEO. I have tested for Northwest Dallas as a keyword.

1. Your Title tag is not the first tag in the <HEAD> area of your page! this is confusing for search engines

2. Your Title tag has stop words! (and, or, to, etc.) The less the better

3. The META Description tag is missing! This gets used for your page description by search engines. It should be keyword rich!

4. Body area:

None of your keywords are in bold

Your keyword is not present at the end of your page! Get your main keyword in last 50 words (not sure what keywords you are aiming for of course)

5. Text in links including ALTs

Your keyword rarely appears in the ALT / TITLE attributes of text and graphical links on this page! Aim to get it in over 6 times.

6. ALT image attributes

Your keyword is not present in the first 3 ALT image attributes on your page. Make sure you name your images with your keywords, not just a random file name.

Well that is most of what I found for now. Hope this helps. I know that changing these things make a difference, but with all SEO, can take a while before you notice the change.