Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I am without a doubt the top individual adsense publisher in terms of pageviews. Me talking about how I did it won't help you, but here is what i found you need to be successful in adsense.
1. Get a database of IP's so you know where your traffic is coming from. Then create channels for each country. Its not uncommon to see US traffic with a CPM of $5.00 and a CDN traffic at 20 cents and vice versa. If you have access to the hints option, give different hints based on IP. ie if your page is about 401k plans, that won't get you anything outside of the USA.
2. You have to create sites that will bring in repeat traffic. If you think you will get rich off SEO think again. If you create a Free jobs site you could net 30 million + a year if you got big. Club listings site, free religious personals etc would all be big money makers. Look for established markets and offer a service for free and support it with adsense.
3. Have your users create content and lots of it. User reviews of night clubs, Resorts, golf courses etc. Build your site around your users and make them part of your site, don't build your site for consumption.
4. Do not enter markets with a lot of competition monitized via adsense. Try and undercut paid content markets by offering a free service, or better yet create your own market.
5. Keep your site dead simple, it has to load fast and have no more then 2 ads and 1 or 2 pictures other then your logo. Do not confuse your user, give them what they want and give it to them fast.
6. Troll around various forums and if people are not talking about your market, there is a good chance you will make money.
I make less than 80 grand a month but believe it can be done. It is quite easy for me to extrapolate what I make to the traffic that exists elsewhere. Even with significant downward adjustments, I believe these numbers.
[edited by: martinibuster at 11:12 pm (utc) on Mar. 27, 2006]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com]. [/edit]
As long as people want to continue a civil discussion, this thread will remain open.
Thanks everyone! :)
[edited by: martinibuster at 11:43 pm (utc) on Mar. 27, 2006]
[edit reason] Cleanup. [/edit]
BUT...even though he says it is run 99% by ai and the rest is 1 hour per day by him // or moderators on his forum...
I CANNOT see how this is possible.
The more users a site has ....the more potential problems and issues a site has.....
I reckon more like 23 hours per day :)
a) Drive new traffic to your site. However I think you also stated that the influx you got from being slashdotted/dugg/etc. was fairly trivial compared to your existing organic growth - - so assuming you're being truthful that doesn't make much sense as a motivation.
Was markus007's site slashdotted? I did some searches for him and his site there, and got no results. Also tried searching for him and his site using site:slashdot.org at three well-known SEs and also got no results.
has anyone tried to build a massive community sites in Spanish, french, german etc? Those are all huge markets and they are a good 3 or 4 years behind in terms of how much competition there is for each market.
too much generalization. europe is in many economical areas a few years behind north america. one example is internet advertising. and then came google with adsense and entered the european market pretty shortly after introducing it to the american market - unlike msn and yahoo who not only took years to come out but take a comparatively very long time to go international with their competitive products.
especially in terms of adwords adoption and ad inventory i think there is a time gap.
but with your product.. i was wondering not exactly about your earnings, but i was surprised that almost all of your competitors seem to charge for dating service (otherwise you wouldn't attract this huge amount of visitors, it's your usp). that is to say, we have quite a few free dating platforms here in germany for many years. anyway, for some time past i'm thinking about integrating something like your approach into my platform on a smaller scale.
I'm told that Brett has not fixed this bug in BestBBS. Unfortunately, you picked a very popular thread to discover this bug.
Btw, could someone send me the url in question with this thread? Quite interested to have a look. :-)
The english market is pretty hard to crack now in any major subject, has anyone tried to build a massive community sites in Spanish, french, german etc? Those are all huge markets and they are a good 3 or 4 years behind in terms of how much competition there is for each market.
Correct me if I am wrong Markus however I believe you are Swiss?
When was the last time you were in Europe? Germany, Netherlands, UK, Scandinavia or Italy, 3 to 4 years behind? You must be joking...
What many webmasters in the US do not comprehend is that many in Europe have no desire for the community sites. We have social lives, we do not need the umbilical cord security of the Internet to have a life.
We simply do not need them and any attempt to force them down people's throats will have the opposite effect.
It's each to their own market, just because something works in one country one should not automatically assume that it will work in another.
Btw, could someone send me the url in question with this thread? Quite interested to have a look. :-)
Just a friendly heads up:* Please do not solicit the URL.
The community sites would not earn big money in europe.
For example very few people in europe know about Markus's site or craigslist. We just dont go for that sort of thing. We meet girls in bars and sell all our gear on ebay.
What many webmasters in the US do not comprehend is that many in Europe have no desire for the community sites. We have social lives, we do not need the umbilical cord security of the Internet to have a life.
Say what?
But just like there was no Orkut before, perhaps there's no dating site now. Maybe it's a matter of the "right site" appearing.
So, I don't necessarily agree that online communities would not do that well in Europe (Germany at least).
The reason people in Europe haven't heard of Markus' site or Craigslist is mainly because it has no relevance to them. Craigslist mainly covers the US market, and Markus' site is also for the enlish speaking market, so not particular interesting for people in Germany.
In europe people have a more fixed view of the Web. Americans Google for things like dating, auctions, personals etc. We dont as much. We know the sites already.
Europe is much harder to break when relying on Google traffic.
What many webmasters in the US do not comprehend is that many in Europe have no desire for the community sites. We have social lives, we do not need the umbilical cord security of the Internet to have a life.
Whoa. That's out of line and offensive.
Time to shut the thread down.
Although rude some of his comments were valid.
In europe people have a more fixed view of the Web
From my UK perspective, I don't recognise the caricatured comparison that is being painted between Europe and North America. What I do recognise is that, although there are 3 times as many people in Europe as in North America, the latter has a much more homogenous culture. The language and cultural differences in Europe would make it more difficult to achieve the same type of mass-market penetration that can be achieved in North America (in fact, I know that to be the case from personal experience). But even so, discussion of such differences seems to me to be a rather academic tangent. The relative sizes of the markets may influence the size of the opportunity, but there are still opportunities to be had.
I think we all have a choice. We could debate why 97% of Markus' approach can't be repeated or won't work for us. Or we can work out how to extract the 3% that will work and exploit it. As I posted earlier, about 934 messages ago, Markus' experience has given me some ideas that I can try on my website. Perhaps I'll only make an extra $50/day as a result, but if I do I'll say thank you to Markus for sparking the idea.
What many webmasters in the US do not comprehend is that many in Europe have no desire for the community sites. We have social lives, we do not need the umbilical cord security of the Internet to have a life.
Yeah, there's not one single old lonely male internet user in Europe. Not a single one!
Europeans don't look at pornography either.
// Hehe...thats about my luck at the moment....I will have to wait this thread out it seems! (1000 emails later)
Thanks
I wonder if this concept can work with those other high paying industries...
There is a site like myspace in denmark and another in estoninia that have a good 20%+ of the population signed up, that is more then myspace will ever get. Dating traffic is doubling every year in europe and community sites are just gaining a foothold. There are conferences every couple of months for big companies wanting to get a food hold in the exploding european market. Job travel extra sites are also exploding as more and more of the population goes online. All you need to do is look at the number of people coming online, the european market is growing like the american ones was 4 years ago.
Shall I make it simpler?
Just because something works on-line in the USA does not necessarily mean that it will work in other areas of the world.
My own industry is a perfect example of that in that we supply different products for each market since that is what they require, not what someone else has told then they will have.
The fact that a webmaster could seriously attempt to speak for 750 million people in Europe, and assert that there's no place for online communities there, is the clearest indication of how immature that particular market is.
And surely this is as preposterous a statment that I supposedly made? I did not speak for Europe, I made the statement that many do not need to be constantly connected to the Net.
Heavens above, I, and many others, do have other other things to do other than click Adsense ads all day long.
I just want to say thank you to your post. Sometimes you get comfortable in your little niche and don't maximize all your potential. After I read the start of this post last week it got me thinking and I pulled out my yellow legal pad where I had recorded some of my ideas quite awhile back.
All of a sudden one of them popped out at me and I thought why the hell haven't we been working on this for the past year.
Maybe we will make a million, maybe not. But we are now enthusiastically adding another basket to put our eggs in, which can only be a good thing.
And hey with a little luck and a lot of hard work maybe I can make a post like marcus's in a couple years and inspire someone else to go for it. Either way I will know that I went for it and tried it. The idea wasn't doing any good gathering dust in my filing cabinet.
Anyway for whatever reason you made your post or if you really made that much money, it matters not to me. I am just glad you got me thinking and motivated.
