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.
But how scary is it to try to compete with big sites and big money, and to do it by switching your site to a free site? Has anyone made a switch to free, and how did it go?
I have played with making my e-com site a free service, but the corporate competition has recently raised their prices. It's a freaky thing to go and make your site FREE while your competition is raising prices and still gaining clients.
I understand if you started out free, and I can see a HUGE marketing opportunity by announcing that your site is going "free", but is it a good move to make your site free after charging for years?
you talked about net profit of 1M, but I'd be curious if you're willing to share a little more insight - how much bigger is the marketing budget now over the 11k you started with in year 1.
Congratulations on a heckuva milestone
So, Markus - what did you do with your million?
too much information: Perhaps we can introduce 'premium services'? Take yahoo/msn for an example. They were offering the same services for 29$/year which eventually ended up as 'free' after the arrival of Gmail.
Reminds me of making snowballs as a kid; much effort when just starting, then a bit of progress, and - all of a sudden it seemed - big and growing so fast, maybe needed help to push.
'course, depended on characteristics and amount of snow in chosen area
heads off to write eBook (move over, cheese moving metaphors)
That it's free?
Sure I understand that. But generally it seems that people won't signup for this type of a site unless there is already a huge existing user base, otherwise why would they spend the time?
markus007 said:
I spent a grand total of 11 grand for the first year. I ran my site off my home computer, spent 1 grand on adwords to start it off, 2 grand on link buying, and the rest on a server and a few ads on high traffic cheap sites. I then had some hosting costs later in the year to when i moved to a data center.
Your story is inconsistent. Now you say you spent only 11 grand, and previously you said you spend over a million dollars running servers. Your story is BS, but thank you anyways for motivating us.
I hope that you are going to buy a Ferrari ;)
I put my cash into a cashable GIC, till i figure out how much the taxman gets. As for marketing savy that goes with the territory, but it was a lot harder on the technical side of things. I wrote every line of code on the site, and i custom built every single server. Man did i ever learn a lot about running high performance sites.
As for doubters, nothing you can say will really convince them. But in the grand scheme of things earning 330k/month on 14 million pageviews a day isn't all that impressive. Now ad supported ivillage earned 10 million a month on 13 million pageviews/day now that is impressive.
Sure I understand that. But generally it seems that people won't signup for this type of a site unless there is already a huge existing user base, otherwise why would they spend the time?
I put my cash into a cashable GIC, till i figure out how much the taxman gets
Assuming a BC Inc is at play - anything over 17.62% of the net would be a waste...
I think you owe Markus an apology. Where do you get the 40 dollars a day to a million in 3 months from?
The 40 dollar a day quote is from this timestamp:
7:57 pm on Aug 27, 2003
located within this message:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Aug 27 2003 is 2 1/2 years ago, not 3 months.
Markus did everyone a favor by posting some good advice, please refrain from asking him to tell you his URL because site reviews and URL drops are against the TOS [webmasterworld.com].
Additionally, if he wanted to show you his website he'd have it in his profile.
Outing is prohibited, thanks.
;)
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:10 am (utc) on Mar. 17, 2006]
Its basically selling traffic and rankings. Matters not if you are free of paid for listings, if you are the industry leader, have the rankings and the traffic, peoplen will pay you.
You must make more getting 100%, than the 65% of so you can get from google.
Listings after all, can be sold 1000's, but a page with google adds can only have 3 revenue areas.
The maths, jsut does not add up.
By my maths, you are not making a million a quarter, you are losing 250 million a quarter in lost direct revenue, or capital gains if you sold the site to a full fee charging competitor.
Not taking anything away from the work that Markus did, but I think many of us could generate $300K+/month with millions of pageviews a day.
Of course it helps if your website has good content, and provides some type of interaction from the users.
Sell to the masses, live with the classes.
Sell to the classes, live with the masses.
I think a lot of people get too caught up in niche this, niche that. The truth is that most small operations that make a lot of money online do it by offering products and services to huge target markets.
I think you're right. That's what I do, but still have a long way to go.
Markus007 wrote:I said my competitors spend a million a month on servers/staff. Obviously i don't spend that much, as losing 700k a month wouldn't be a good business. (...) I wrote every line of code on the site, and i custom built every single server. Man did i ever learn a lot about running high performance sites.
But your search is also extremely fast. Can you share some technical tips on this? Thank you!
Any threads you wanted to start on that subject I'm sure would be well supported....
TJ
[Admin Note - Technical Discussion moved here [webmasterworld.com].]
[edited by: Woz at 10:33 pm (utc) on Mar. 17, 2006]
[edit reason] Added Admin Note [/edit]
Anyway, all the relevant points you might see on his site are already discussed on this thread. For example, his "big secret" is simple: in his popular niche, he gives what users want, and in the way they want (as said: free, simple, fast, localized, user-focused), and therefore he gets high traffic.
That's it.
I am not sure if the dating site is the site you got most of your adsense from. or you meant to get adsense on all of your 7 major sites.
and my time spent working on the site stays at about a hour a day.
i have done without any bigger involvement of my visitors, mainly because i find myself regularly cleaning up the dirt for the most part, if i let it go without review.
seems you have kind of a community site with huge interaction and user generated content.
what i don't understand, how the heck do you only spend one hour a day on your site, when quality control is proved to take up a huge amout of time (especially forums, guestbooks, comments, profiles)? i know from dating platforms for example, that they have to provide manpower for the only job to prevent the site from being swamped with fakes and spam and remain site quality each day. how do you do that?
I am not sure if the ********* site is the site you got most of your adsense from. or you meant to get adsense on all of your 7 major sites.
A little bit of research will show you that he has one main earning site, the others are obviously experimental running up to the success site, however there is one recurring theme running through Markus' sites which, I feel, drove him to create what he has done through sheer exasperation of what he had personally been frustrated.
The site, to me, has all the hallmarks of a labour of love and in creating it is providing others for free, similar opportunities.
The beauty of it all, notwithstanding the incredible technical expertise, is that it conforms to the KISS principle.
prevent the site from being swamped with fakes and spam and remain site quality each day. how do you do that?
I feel for many webmasters this is an excellent question since many sites can become clogged with "rubbish" of all kinds. Your "Code of Conduct" is of the expected kind therefore do you have some kind of filtering alert system and this is what occupies your hour a day?
I have attempted precisely such a site, for a different subject, for the past seven years, but have always fallen foul of this problem and never been able to resolve it relatively easily.
Maybe there's a great opportunity for you to sell your expertise in this?
I'll be the first in the queue, everyone else line-up behind me:-))
