Forum Moderators: martinibuster
When folks post questions about Adsense, we often, probably most of the time, don't know what their goals are for participating in the program.
Some folks are looking for a way to get rich quick, others just want to pay for hosting. Still others are somewhere in between.
Without some idea of what a posters goals are it can be difficult to give solid advice, or even make relevant comments.
For example, if getting rich is your goal, then placing adblocks in the hottest spots on your page and making them look like content might be the way to go. Suggesting that a poster with get rich quick goals place a small adblock at the end of an article probably isn't much help.
On the other, if you sre just looking for a few extra bucks to help pay hosting fees while you continue to build a site dedicated to your favorite cause or hobby, a lower key approach might work well for you. For this perosn, a small or medium adblock near the end of an interesting article might well be the way to go.
I'm in the middle group. I'm not in the get rich quick mode, but I want more than hosting fees. I also don't, and don't plan to spend an inordinate of time worrying about my Adsense income.
Like all of us, I want to find a way to make Adsense work as well as possible for me and my site, while using it to meet my goals for my site, without losing the focus of the sites original purpose.
Any thoughts?
What are your goals for participating in the Adsense program?
Right now I would rather spend my time building new sites than obsessing over ad placement. I basically put the ads where they fit and let 'em run.
Long term, I hope to someday have a bunch of user driven sites that allow me to just check the stats once a week and cash the checks once a month and not worry about anything else.
Long, long term I'd love to have my kids in the same situation.
Freq---
I want Adsense to pull their head out and go back to tougher quality control standards for who get's to participate, and to eliminate the rule of allowing "search engines" (scrapers mostly) to join adsense.
The problem of scrapers and Potemkin websites is not going to go away.
Advertisers #*$!ed long and hard enough to be able to filter out which publishers weren't converting, now they better listen to publishers (the lowest citizen on the totem pole) and go back to the quality control they gave up to pad profits for stockholders.
However, it became clear very quickly that adsense was going to do rather better than I dared hope. I then decided to use the surplus for a couple of treats for the family. I got a family card for the National Trust, a summer house for the garden and a couple of other small treats - incuding a decent mountain bike for me (second hand).
It's continued to increase, and is now paying for family holidays we would never otherwise have had. Going to Crete in three weeks time. I personally think that the income has reached a plateau now, and is unlikely to improve dramatically. There is no intention to give up my job. It's completely unrelated to my webmastering hobby.
I do try to maximise my earnings, and watch my stats very frequently. However, the purpose of the site and my enthusiasm for it is still the same as it was before I'd even heard of adsense. I do tend to view it slightly differently now it's making money, but I'm acutely aware that the reason it's making money is because it's remained true to it's purpose.
If Adsense can help make a site viable in the long term it would be a boone to many people.
>> pull their head out... <<
Another worthy goal, but one for another thread.
I'm hoping to explore here why publishers use adsense, and what their goals are for doing so. It isn't so much about Google, as about our own goals for our sites.
It took 5 months to reach that level.. Then thought I would go for something unreachable - $333 per day.
Now I don't know what the limit is. $3333 per day would be nice but I'm sure that is unreachable. So I'm going to try to gather every penny until Google messes it up or I mess it up.
Why? Because as long a Adsense works then I don't have to.
How Adsense use progresses for a publisher is an interesting aspect of the whole deal.
bnhall; Monetize? As in maximise? Yup, that can have it's good points! :)
sailorjwd;
>>$3333 per day would be nice but I'm sure that is unreachable. <<
I have no way of knowing for sure, but I'm not sure I'd use the word unreachable.
>>...as long a Adsense works then I don't have to. <<
Nice place to be.
The AdSense revenue helps me and my family tremendously. It's not my main source of revenue, but it's enough to make life better... that's for sure.
My one year goal is to get the revenue from both my sites to the point that I do not have to work at best buy or as a waitor while I am doing my PHD work ($150 a day should be fine). In one week I have 103 of complete freedom when I can dedicate everyday to working on my site to reach my goal.
My three year goal is to build the site on the topic I absolutely love to the point where I can live off that completely (and I can stop working on the other sight or sell it).
Since then my site has grown and income continued to grow.
But when I read the posts from rfung in September-October 2004 I realized I could earn much more. So now my goal is too make as much as possible, without doing evil.
My next goal is to reach $250/day continuously, then move to $333/day, and afterwards $500/day, and more.. My dream would be to reach a few thousands dollars a day with affiliate marketing, AdSense and maybe other things. I hope the money from AdSense will give me the opportunity to reach those levels ;-)
I know that $1000 a day is possible. There are people on Webmasterworld earnings 1000 a day and way up.
What Do You Want From Adsense?
To Get Rich, or Pay For Hosting?
The resources necessary to save the civilization on planet earth.
That's less than You think. Distributing new thoughts can have a big effect.
1) To diversify my revenues.
2) To earn money from pages on many different subtopics that were "loss leaders" until AdSense came along.
3) To spend less time thinking about revenue and more time thinking about content.
AdSense has been a valuable addition to a site that already existed, but it isn't essential to the site's current and future existence.
So far, none have been done. haha.
1) Like EFV I want to diversify revenues.
2) Like many others I want to pay site costs to support a topic I'd cover anyway as a labour of love and to "give something back" to the Net.
3) I want to have the funds to expand and improve what I do with the site(s) concerned.
I am not expecting to make big bucks. If I wanted that I'd be a financial trader rather than in IT which is the next row of desks over from where I sit on the trading floor: lots of people make the transition but the money does not interest me beyond having a comfortable house and money to support my pursuits.
Rgds
Damon
3) To spend less time thinking about revenue and more time thinking about content. "
same here...!
Ok. Now - it is a living for me and my family.
And I definetely want to buy 911 Porshe from Adsense revenue.;)
Good luck to all of us in or goals.
My goal is to double my current income with only 1/3 of it coming from AdSense.
A loghouse near Vancouver is paid already and will be rented out from next month for 150C$ per night to a Taiwanese Tour company (they rent it out for 235C$ per night) so even my Adsense money went down a little bit I still walk away with around 4500C$ per month in rental income and which we will invest in a small studio in Edinburgh to be rented out in the Scottish summers to Japanese tourist's and expat's from London.
From next month, I will save 45% of every payment Adsense sends to me and we will invest that money next year for a studio in Dubai.
Anyway, from my point if view with AdSense it isn't always easy to understand why a change in one of the metrics could invoke anything from fear and panic to outright jubilation. (OK, actually I do understand the jubilation - fat checks - even though I've not received one myself.) I'll just keep working on the site pages, and where AdSense makes Sense I'll use it. Just hoping I haven't completely missed this boat while waiting so long. My gut feeling is that AdSense revenue will cover our hosting for at least a couple of years.
<add> I suppose the next goal could be to cover the cost of Adwords. Then I could run my banners like the Purple Pill.</add>
Next goal is to consistently earn each and every day what I currently earn in a month so that I can quit my job. I hate my job and I'd much rather be working on my sites.
I have a dream.... and that dream is...
[dream] To use the money for a few holidays a year, or move to spain and give up 9 - 5:30 work[/dream]
Hmm, I want a route to never having to work again.
I worked long and hard for many years in all kinds of jobs. I've been in board level appointments that paid a lot of money. I've been unemployed and homeless too and had a taste of starvation and living in the gutter. I've learnt a lot of lessons through all that but the most important one is that the conventional wisdom of working hard to earn your crust is all wrong. Sorry, dad, if you are in the heavens watching me, but I don't believe in that philosophy anymore. You have to build assets that work hard to earn your crust and leave you to do things you enjoy - like spending time with your kids or flying/sailing/gardening, helping at the local hospice, writing a book, or breeding Koi and Carp.
You can't build assets unless you have something to build them with. My websites (original sites plus "assets" I've bought) earn me about 3-4 times what I need to live comfortably on. But I haven't changed the way I live. I still spend exactly the same amount per month that I always have. The rest of the Adsense money goes towards buying offline assets that don't need looking after like a website does. The plan is that Adsense will pay for enough of these offline assets for me to sell the sites and never have to work again. That's the plan anyway. And it's Adsense that got me out of thinking along the lines of getting paid by the hour.
That, and The Richest Man in Babylon. Read it if you haven't already.
I find that too many people here talk about the check and when it will arrive and how much Google will be paying them.
IMO - they are wasting too much time with activities over which they have no control. They should spend that time building and promoting their web sites and finding ways to drive traffic to the web sites because if you have a 2% CTR then it's a numbers game after that: double the traffic and double your income.
There was a polititian in the UK that said that if people spent as much time working as they trying to avoid paying taxes then the country would be in a much better state and they wouldn't have to pay higher taxes - or something like that.
The sentiment is right, but the sleezeball politicians smuggly spending our money while saying it, are all wrong!
(General election here in the UK tomorrow folks!)
Rgds
Damon
