Forum Moderators: martinibuster
As to making a living off a single source of income, your traffic would have to be very high to do that and depending on one source of income to meet all of your needs is an extremely risky proposition.
You should be able to get a feel for what level of income your site will generate once you've had the AdSense ads on your site for a few weeks.
How many pages are on your site? Does it target many popular search phrases? Do you have many repeat visitors? How often are you adding one good page of content?
I have found that my AdSense earnings are very consistent with the traffic of any given site. If you are getting 50,000 page views a day with a steady increase over the weeks, you certainly can make more than a living for yourself.
The better your content, the higher up in the SERPS you are, and the quality and price of ads paying on your site will give you great success. However, all of these (except maybe the content part) are kind of crap-shot. Some might say good content + backlinks = good SERP positioning, but you never know.
Blue_Fin- "You say that you don't anticipate selling anything as it would be for the most part unrelated, so I'm not sure why you would think that AdSense ads would be related. Maybe I'm missing something. "
I do not sell ANYTHING on any of my sites, they are all information / hobby sites and I make very VERY good money off of them with AdSense. Selling something has nothing at all to do with good, targeted AdSense ads, and I am surprised that any language hinting that AdSense is not a good idea if you are not selling something on your site is used. Perhaps his site has to do with something that is sold, but he is just not the one selling it.
Well, without being specific, the general premise of the business is to offer advice, product reviews, and so on, to my visitors. I do often think of opening a shop section to it, but it would be secondary to the focus of the site. I'm trying to think of it in terms of a magazine. Sure, they charge a small price for the actual publication, but they make the money from advertising. Does that make more sense? I think AdSense ads would be relevant for people searching for a specific item, but Im not quite sure a shop would do well?
ChrisKud5,
>I run AdSense on quite a few websites, and I always use the Overture "View Advertisers Max. Bids" feature when looking at what keywords are used for ads to be displayed. The results are usually pretty consistent with what Google uses as far as what pays for than the other. I would not look at the actual amount as much as I would look at what words pay MORE than others and so on. I have found this very consistent. <
I see what you're saying, makes perfect sense.
>How many pages are on your site? Does it target many popular search phrases? Do you have many repeat visitors? How often are you adding one good page of content? <
Currently I've got about 120 pages.
At this stage, I would have to say that, from looking at my referals, yes. But I've noticed that Im also competing (Search engine wise) with companies that sell products they're looking for, instead of providing the information I supply. Perhaps this has something to do with back-links?
I currently have about 17 pages waitting to go up as soon as the new site is launched (and everything that was there before will remain).
I also wonder if my target (16-26) is too young for ads to even be effective? I suppose I will have to wait and see what happens with the first few weeks of it actually being up and going on every page.
On the other hand they are much more switched on to the web and traffic generation is not that difficult.
You might also want to look into affiliate programs--not instead of AdSense, but in addition. For some topics (travel being one of the more obvious examples), affiliate commissions can generate even more revenue than AdSense. Put the two together, and you've got a winning combination (as long as you don't get carried away and emulate the corporate-owned sites like Travelandleisure.com and About.com where advertising and affiliate sales become the tail that wags the dog).
My site is closer to the "medieval French literature" category mentioned above than a saleable product like travel or computers, so that's part of the problem. (Of course, Google SHOULD be able to find ads related to France, French products, literature, history buffs etc. but at this time it does not try to match your content, only random words from your text.)
You may encounter the same problem with your site, or perhaps you'll be luckier, but you certainly don't want to rely on AdSense till you know for sure. I use affiliate programs and Fastclick ads with good results, and AdSense now appears on very few pages of my site.
AdSense is very hit-and-miss for content sites.
That's true of any kind of advertising or affiliate sales on a content site. The nice thing about AdSense is that you can try it easily and see the results quickly. Just stick the code in your top or side navbar and watch your Google reports. If it works, great; if not, yank the code and go back to whatever you were doing before.
or use alternate ads in your Adsense code that give you a second chance to make money.
You might also want to look into affiliate programs--not instead of AdSense, but in addition.
Yep, as EFV says. The must be some quality affiliate programs that pertain to the young adult audience, after all, they are the "audience of choice" for advertisers and marketers.
Mix it up a bit. Use whatever "quality" affiliate programs you find subtley yet effectively around your content (content, content, content). Keep fiddling with how you promote the affiliate programs as you get to know your visitors. Add more content, fiddle, etc...
As for AdSense, just keeep the basics in mind. Try to make sure each page is about a specific, well-defined topic. If you don't confuse AdSense you shouldn't have too much of a problem attracting targeted ads. (Sure, there are some targeting problems with the AdSense algo and there are AdWords advertisers that don't know what the heck they're doing; overall, targeting is okay.)
I'm trying to think of it in terms of a magazine.
Can't go too much wrong there. Good editorial attracts advertisers. Good editorial attracts "back of the book" ads (affilitate programs).
Just some thoughts.
Jim
I gotcha, I would agree that with less than 200 pages of content this site in question is unable to pull in enough traffic to make more than a couple bucks a day with adsense. However, if the owner continues to add a good page of content a day, starts up a forum with many active posters, or other way of generating good content, traffic may increase, and adsense revenue may pick up.
It truly is hit or miss on not only content sites, but product sites as well. Nothing is 100% guaranteed.
A site on French medieval literature probably wouldn't attract as many ads as a site on cruise travel or networking hardware
I've never had a shortage of ads for my medieval French literature reviews, but I think they're closer to the the 3c end than the $30 one - they're mostly academic ads, or for Questia or student essay services (ick) or other suchlike.
(An exception is my review of A Primer of Romance Philology, which I'm using as a test-case to see if Google can improve its contextual analysis - it's getting ads for dating services, of course!)
I've never had a shortage of ads for my medieval French literature reviews...
Danny:
By the way, I think your EPC will move up north with more non-fiction reviews :)
