Ecommerce vs. Adsense

advice needed from experienced adsense/e-tail entrepreneurs

[kujoe]

Here’s my dilemma. Starting out, should I focus on adsense or an ecommerce business? If I start with an e-tail store I will be utilizing a drop-shipper until I become familiar with the shopping cart (Zen-Cart). Then if my marketing efforts are successful and I have enough traffic I can move onto sourcing my products from US wholesalers/distributors then eventually overseas suppliers.

My other option is to start niche websites with content to capitalize on adsense.

Not sure which I should focus most of my time on in the beginning as I will still have the day job and only be able to work on the web business in the evenings and weekends.

Let me know what you think. Is there anybody who is successful at both?

[curlykarl]

If I were you, I would do both :)

[kujoe]

Well I also posted this same question under the Adsense forum and it seems they are winning. If I were to go off feedback alone, I should focus on adsense. Of course, this may be due to the fact that the adsense business model is easier to get started with.

Those who do this fulltime have suggested to diversify your income sources once you are able to replace your day job. I agree with this. I believe my plan will be to focus on adsense, then an e-tail operation and finally offline investments such as real estate.

Let the fun begin!

[Wi11]

Starting out, should I focus on adsense or an ecommerce business?

Maybe whichever you think you can do best?

I'm doing both (started with just adsense), but I'm now putting far more effort into e-commerce as I see it as a more reliable, more stable and hopefully more profitable site than my adsense one.

When it's ticking over nicely, or should it not work out as planned, I will turn back to Adsense.

[hfwd]

It's probably easier to start getting revenue w/ Adsense, however, e-commerce is a better long-term investment. The potential return is far greater than Adsense.

How many people are in the UPS club in Adsense? Probably not as many as those earning much more running their own stores.

[tolachi]

I agree with hfwd, the long term up side and potential stability from an e-commerce site is much better. I can't imagine that there are that many adsense operators making half a million a year profit that have huge amounts of potential growth left. Of course I could be very wrong.

[sebura]

I think an ecommerce model helps you with a more predictable revenue stream. It's difficult at times to gauge your Adsense income. I am seasoned at one and a rookie at the other, so I would focus on your strengths and get that going then branch out with more focus on adsense.

[derekwong28]

I agree with the above comments. With e-commerce you can start getting a decent income straightaway with PPC if you are lucky, whereas with Adsense you have to wait for your pages to be indexed and rank. Morover, since you are almost completely dependent on free SERPS for traffic, your income can you wiped out overnight with a change in the algorithm (read Google Bourbon and Allegra updates)

I do both ecommerce and Adsense/AM/Ads. However, sites in the latter category were bought. There are a total of 60 sites (about half of which are PR6 and half are PR5) with over 200,000 pages indexed. Yet the Adsense earning are less than US$20 a day (it used to be over $40 before Allegra). However, the network still makes good money since the bulk of the income comes from selling adspace. Since I do not know much about that part of the operation, I subcontracted the running of this part to a partner for a 30% fee.

[sebura]

Can you elaborate on Google Bourbon and Allegra? I've got a small, barely any content on my site. I was given this advice of creating 10 sites and generate $10/per day in ad sense and you would have a good income stream.

Any advice.

[derekwong28]

Bourbon and Allegra are nicknames of recent Google updates where there had been a substantial change in the algorithm. The Allergra update occurred in early February and the Bourbon update around May 21st. A lot of well-established were affected to the extent that they lost their traffic completely.

The technicalities behind the drastic shift is unclear. What is probably clear is that Google is trying to clamp down on Made for Adsense Scrapper sites i.e. search engine optimized sites built automatically by software/scripts that gets its content from the Interent e.g. SERPS, Free Articles or RSS feeds. But the end result was that many proper well-established sites were hit as well either because they were confused as scrapper sites or were seen to be colluding with them.

My point is that it is very dangerous to built a business that completely relies on free traffic. It is better to have a business in which you can fall back on advertsing should there be a disaster from Google. Obviously being a merchant would give you a higher margin to Maneuver

As far as Adsense and scrapper sites are concerned, it is getting near to the point of "If you can't beat them, join them!"

[sebura]

That's amazing. I can see some of this happening more and more;specifically with sites that are using free content and RSS feeds. But if the money is there it's tough to not try and do it yourself. I am building three sites right now, all of which will be copyrighted content but some of the news feeds will automatically carry adsense. Do you recommend not including feeds in your site, especially if it's for business and not adsens rev gen?

Thanks.

[edited by: rogerd at 1:12 am (utc) on May 31, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLs please per TOS... [/edit]