Forum Moderators: martinibuster
How much did you earn through Adsense in the last 12 months?
Let's see how the next few days pan out since I have this funny feeling that it will actually hit Adsense!
Between all of these sites (and sources of income), I make what might be the equivalent to a crummy, low-paying job. But I don't have to work a crummy, low-paying job to get the money. That's the nice part. ;-)
As a matter of interest how many hours a week do you average? Could you, would you, do more hours?
Are there any ways you can see of reasonably easily increasing your earnings or have you hit the buffers in your sector whereby only a radical re-think/restructuring or some free mass exposure would drive things forward?
I'm not being intrusive, it would be interesting to know the methods some of the more successful have used to get to their levels.
Whether they decided to use Adwords or whatever other method?
Personally I can see whenever I've made major differences to the sites and they are reflected immediately, and most significantly in my spread sheets.
The problem I have now is that I can't rank any higher, and apart from experimenting with ad colours etc, I'm stumped as what to do next.
One thing I do not want to do, and this may surprise many of you, is to generate more "physical" business! We're flat out now and just could not cope with any extra demand for several months.
Anyone with any "light blub" pointers:-)
$230 a day on 7000 impressions.... is a piece of cake. There are many sectors that can earn you this kind of money. And you can get there in a week. Just buy the right sites.
As a general rule avoid forums, teenie sites, P2P, gaming, freebie type sites. And the obviously "hgh risk" above-the-radar, mesothelioma type sites. Hey, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out what areas and visitor profiles are likely to generate better paying ads. Do some research if you don't know.
Buy your site, do a bit of optimising, testing, a bit more optimising, save the earnings and move on to the next purchase. It's money for old rope. Need finance for your first purchase? Haven't you read "The richest man in Babylon"? Read it NOW. The first lesson is to "pay yourself first". You'll have to read it to appreciate the concept. You don't need to be a fantastic webmaster to get to UPS - you just need to think like a businessman.
No, I'm not taking sticky questions about anything in this post.Sorry.
1 EFV is the only senior webmaster on this board who has the belief in his site and his ability to post his website
2 I have never seen EFV give any indication of his earnings or success on this board
3 Alexa works slightly differently to your assumption from 100,000 upwards it is a steep expodential curve ie. 100,000 Alexa ranking may equal 6,000 visitors per day 20,000 Alexa ranking closer to 50,000 visitors per day
We may not like the style of some members posts but we should respect their knowledge as many are far more successfull in thier business than we are
Mt suggestion to you is to learn from the senior members on this board and learn not to let your jealousy show in your posts
Best of luck to you i am sure in a few years time you will gain the knowledge to help others by adding your help to this board
steve
1 - Doesn't (and cannot) work as intended
2 - Was devised as a short term vehicle to appease shareholders and advertisers (in that order).
EFV takes issue with at least some of my opinions. That's fine. We can engage in spritied debate until the cows come home about that issue.
All of that being said, his travel site is quite simply one of the highest quality sites on the entire Internet. His articles are interesting and extremely useful for most anyone who wishes to vacation in Europe. The content is such that his affiliate links likely enjoy among the highest conversion rates of all the travel sites. And then there is AdSense to help monetize the lower performing pages.
EFV is certainly not shy about expressing his opinion, but his opinions are based upon years of experience in mutilple fields, including advertising.
IMO it would serve us all well to read his posts carefully and learn from his experience. I know that over the past couple of years his insights have helped me tremendously in my business.
My primary website is considerably larger than his and most likely receives a good deal more unique visitors and page views. I owe a lot of that success to reading his posts, among others on WebmasterWorld. But my guess is I'm nowhere near his level in total income even though I make about 15 times as much as I ever made on a regular job. I chalk that disparity up to his experience and professionalism.
Yes, we do disagree from time to time, but EFV has my utmost respect. Respect for the way he handles his business, respect for his unique insight into the business world, and respect for him as an elder.
maybe you should be reading a little bit more and talking a little bit less...
- Advertisers don't want to pay full retail for all (most?) content clicks, so smart pricing is a way for Google to entice them into using the content network.
- As long as advertisers aren't complaining, Google has no compelling reason to do away with smart pricing.
- Smart pricing may well be imperfect (and Google may realize that it's imperfect), but it's likely to become less imperfect over time.
- To some extent, smart pricing may be a stopgap measure to keep advertisers happy until new AdSense options and controls become available. (It may always be around, but it should become less of a factor in the overall scheme of things if advertisers have more choices at different price levels.)
May 31, 2004 Earnings... $621.70
Jun 30, 2004 Earnings... $1,047.16
Jul 31, 2004 Earnings... $1,082.53
Aug 31, 2004 Earnings... $1,031.60
Sep 30, 2004 Earnings... $990.98
Oct 31, 2004 Earnings... $1,233.55
Nov 30, 2004 Earnings... $2,022.46
Dec 31, 2004 Earnings... $2,820.41
Jan 31, 2005 Earnings... $5,785.15
Feb 28, 2005 Earnings... $5,532.48
March earnings $4300 so far (On pace for $8,000)
Over the last 7 months I have consistantly increased my earnings per day. My goal is to continue this trend. I would like to get to a point where I am earning $20K per month. Then i can relax a bit. :)
Fantastic work there. Congrats
In theme with the thread, my pet and travel websites brings in a steady $1K per month.
This Adsense revenue, along with other bits of webwork, advertising and affiliate commission, has allowed me to leave employment and start off on my own, working on my PC from home. The freedom is just so good!
I was so pissed to see a company adsense check (less than 10k) arrive before mine!
The freedom is just so good!
That's why I chose my nick name. Economic Freedom is a great feeling.
interesting jump in revenue from Dec to Jan :) almost doubled!
Something you did, or was adsense just extremely generous to you?:)
I'm trying to shoot for $30k/month, then I can relax a bit too ;)
I'm trying to shoot for $30k/month, then I can relax a bit too ;)
Are you sure?
Be happy at what you have.
I started my site for fun, and didn't try to make money until a year later. Now that I'm trying to make it pay, I like my site a lot less, but dread the thought of starting a new one.
Humor sites aren't money-makers.
Humor sites aren't money-makers.
I know one humor site that makes over $3,000/day.
Humor sites aren't money-makers
Move into new areas. Stop developing blonde jokes and develop some about network administrators. Or lawyers. Review humourous books. Award prizes for funny stories readers send in - use those stories as "content". Think, brainstorm, get third parties to contribute ideas. Develop, develop, develop.
I like my site a lot less
It may have started off as a hobby but think of it now as a business. Sure you can do it. The question is: do you want to invest the time and effort, and would you enjoy it? Anybody can become the new onion.com if they set their minds to it.
I know one humor site that makes over $3,000/day.
From AdSense, from CPM ads, or...?
And how much traffic does it take for a humor site to earn that kind of revenue? The PVs must be huge.
This thread is very discouraging, since I make less than a dollar a day
I took a quick peek and I'm shocked you even make a dollar to be perfectly honest. AdSense is nonsense on your site as it offered me everything from a "sermon assistant" to "Create RSS feeds". However, your biggest problem is you're suffering from Blogitis - you click on a topic and everything downloads on a single page.
You would probably be better off tossing AdSense and going all affiliate programs with Amazon humor books, cds, movies, etc., Art.com humorous posters, sell something on Cafe Press, etc.. Basically, keep it on theme, keep 'em chuckling and offer them links to buy funny stuff or something.
It's all in the marketing.
Don't let the big numbers you see in this thread discourage you. Money can cloud the issue.
To begin with, those big numbers are most likely not being generated by "Hobby Sites", they could be, but I doubt many are.
Adsense has been a real boon to many hobby site owners though. The income can be a real help, and maybe eevn ecourage one to keep the site going.
But if it's a hobby site with Adsense on it the webmaster could easily come to a point where they ask themselves if they are running a hobby site anymore.
Well, if you took adsense off the site, would you keep building the site?
If so, then can you look at the money, however much or little, and see it as a sort of bonus?
Don't let the money cloud the issue if the hobby is something you really enjoy building a website about.
I started my site as a hobby site almost 5 years ago. The only income I get from it at the moment is from Adsense.
Putting Adsense on the site did change the way I see the site. I'm not making the kind of money some have posted about here, and that's fine by me. I wouldn't mind being in the UPS Club, but that's not my motivation, or goal, for building the site. Sometimes I struggle with keeping my focus on why I'm doing this.
The money has made it possible for me to plan changes that I never would have thought about making to the site though.
My own skills are pretty limited. So my site is just static HTML pages. Adding some dynamic database driven functions would make the project a lot more webmaster, and maybe even more user friendly. Now I can afford to pay someone to do build those sections for me, if I choose to do that, without taking money I'd rather use for other purposes.
Anther thing to consider is the sector your site is in.
I'm in a sector (antique cars) that doesn't seem to generate a lot of high dollar clicks, if any. They may be out there, but I haven't seen them. In fact, Adsense often has a hard time coming up with 4 low value ads to fill an adblock with.
Such is life.
I do have 1300+ pages, and that makes a difference in my case. Even low value clicks add up if you get enough of them. I'm not going to reveal my income here, but I will say that a hobby site can be well worth doing from an adsense point of view.
but instead graphs AdSense earnings vs. traffic
Alexa claims a relationship between ranking and traffic. There is no known relationship between Adsense earnings and traffic. You may as well compare earnings against the webmaster's zodiac sign.
I live in the south, and make more money than most people in my area... running a hobby site. I'm happy making an average of $500+ a week, working whenever I feel like it. I'm a stay at home mom just looking to make a few extra bucks, I have plenty of extra buck to spend.
I grew up in Red Bank, South Carolina. It's not even a city, they added a red light about 5 years ago, when I last visited. I moved to Florida about 10 years ago.
I teach people how to crochet, for example, and Google sells them the yarn.
As a matter of interest how many hours a week do you average? Could you, would you, do more hours?Are there any ways you can see of reasonably easily increasing your earnings or have you hit the buffers in your sector whereby only a radical re-think/restructuring or some free mass exposure would drive things forward?
Would I work more hours updating sites? I guess so, but my schedule right now does not allow for it. I do know that there is a lot more I could add (web visitors make requests regularly), but I think there's a limit to everything, including the amount of junk I can spew out on the keyboard. ;-)
With all that said, I believe that adding new content is the best way to earn more money. The main focus on my sites is hobby/craft, and to a lesser extent, travel. But I've covered other topics, including entertainment-related things and even touched upon computer-related subjects. I simply write about things that interest me, and I think it's good that I "stretch out" my subject matter so it's not always 100% focused on one area. Some things I write about go over well and bring in money, others don't. But overall, the time I put into my sites is well spent, and the effort pays off in the end.
