Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Concentrate on building a web site that you will enjoy writing for and maintaining first, then learn how to drive traffic to your site, once you have a good number of daily visitors, you can then think of how to make money from ads.
Most of the highest earners here did not start their site with adsense in mind. After they realized theycould monetize their site with earnings from adsense then they proceeded...
When selecting a topic to start a site about, find one that interests you.
Do your own threads hopping, to point you to one is to deny you other vital info discovery pleasure.
As CainIV said, I started long before AdSense existed, and only joined when the program was one year old, I found frequent mediabot visits in my logs, checked it out, now I am doing it full time, forget AdSense, think good traffic first, then all else falls into place one way or the other.
I got quite high rank, but then, no money and traffic coming in. Perhaps I should try another topic, I guess.
PATIENCE! AdSense is (thankfully) not a 'Get rich quick' scheme. Stick with what you know best and keep working hard at it.
Most of the highest earners here did not start their site with adsense in mind. After they realized theycould monetize their site with earnings from adsense then they proceeded...
Is that so? I mean, most of the webmasters here do not have the intention to use adsense when they first started?
As for me, I started to build website with adsense in mind.
Yes, it's true. I started my site back in 1999 as a hobby site. I spent time and effort building it up. I put adsense on it back in 2004 hoping to cover hosting costs. Last year I used my income to take the family on a couple of good holidays, one to Crete and the other in the UK. This year we are going to Disneyland Paris for a week, and my wife no longer needs to do a crappy part time job to help us budget.
My site is very high in the serps, and on the basis of that I'm hoping to start direct selling of ad space to specific advertisers very soon.
So the best long term strategy is to find something you can be passionate about in order to put in the effort to make your site work (and pay!).
I've tried buying a couple of ready made sites, I've also tried knocking up a couple of sites on topics of minor interest to me. No luck on adsense with either tactic.
Another good resource for newbies:
<snip>
-ASA
[edited by: engine at 2:47 pm (utc) on Feb. 17, 2006]
[edit reason] No blogs, thanks. [/edit]
Research the markets you know something about, and find what you think are the niche markets. Then try writing and constructing useful content about those markets, and try a few AdSense pages.
You won't be success at first, but you'll gain data and a sense of what's good and bad about your ideas. Keep spread sheets right from Day 1, and you'll have a goldmine of data to help you plan your course 90 days out from the start.
Its a process of try, learn, shift your focus, try again, and so on over and over until you get the right picture. Perhaps even more important, you'll eventually learn what NOT to do; whats a waste of time.
Eventually it becomes a different road: Building on what you know will work.
Good luck. A decent income -comparable to a wellpaying job- is absolutly within reach via AdSense.
By the way, I hate the topic of my three best paying sites, but I couldn't care less. Its a business, and a good one. There's plenty of life to enjoy outside of AdSense.
I wouldn't put to much weight on the advice about making your site "something you enjoy". There's nothing wrong with enjoying something, or running a hobby site, but its hardly a critical business factor to making a success of AdSense.
There isn't any significance to the "enjoy" factor if you are running a business making websites. In that case, it's something you do for a living / are paid to do. The enjoyment / interest factor probably helps, but I agree is not critical.
However, if it's something you are doing as an addition to your regular income, then you need different motivations.
If you get to the point where the site makes good money, then you are motivated by that possibly more than enjoyment. That's the state I'm at. I keep my site up to date, but I'm not as quick, or keen as I was when building the site. I have to be honest here, I probably wouldn't update it much at all if it wasn't necessary for Adsense, and keeping the site high in the serps. The site is pretty comprehensive and there isn't much more to be said I don't think.
Now if you are just starting out, it may be a while before you see much in the way of returns, therefore the enjoyment factor is a deffinite requirement to motivate adding content, and promoting the site.
That's why we often make this point to people just starting out, as it's excellent advice that applies to them more than anybody!
Any idea?
Yes, read the forum, tons of good stuff already posted.
I wouldn't put to much weight on the advice about making your site "something you enjoy"
Actually there is both weight and significance in:
a) Having an interest in your chosen topic
b) Having some knowledge to build upon further
Anyway you cut it, success is proportional to the amount of passion and dedication put it, and it shows in the end product or service you offer. Emulating it with money as motivation - even if initially successful, can be short lived, and don't go quoting special cases as examples to the contrary, there are always extremes.
To advise a newb of their existence is very different than advising him/her to adopt the extreme ends of the spectrum. The sound advice is usually somewhere in the middle.
This is not to lessen dibbern2's advice on research and learning.
