I Have a Great Site but Dismal Earnings

Am I Missing Something?

[NewSkool]

OK!

people laugh at earnings such as 10 bucks or even $50 a day.

i have dedicated my life to running my sites, i know all the tricks etc from ad optimization to SEO.

i make $5-$10 if LUCKY!

you constantly brag about your $1400/day but say its crap. "normal" work... how much do they earn? $100 a day is a very highly paid job. not something you make as a pizza guy.

so how can this be? how can people be lucky enough to make these amounts? is it just that? pure luck? it's so damn unfair and i feel like crying when reading threads like [webmasterworld.com...]

people simply dont appreciate good sites. they just ignore them and go for these crappy ugly bloated commercial ones and click their ads.

what am i supposed to do? this is all i know and yet its going to hell .

[edited by: mack at 10:53 am (utc) on Mar. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] Lets be respectful. [/edit]

[woop01]

Luck is nothing but the result of hard work and "fair" is for fairy tales.

[StuntasticAudi]

People do appriciate good sites. Who says yours is the best? Do you advertise your sites?

[edited by: martinibuster at 6:55 am (utc) on Mar. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] Minor cleanup. ;) [/edit]

[Rodney]

i know all the tricks etc from ad optimization to SEO

Maybe it's time to step back and think maybe you don't know all the tricks.

That might give you some distance and allow you to read and realize the great tips that those threads offer.

Instead of focusing on the numbers and dollar signs, focus on the methods and determination it took.

$5-$10 per day is more than a lot of people make with Adsense. So consider yourself better of than those folks and just strive to get the traffic and content that it takes to go to the next step.

[NewSkool]

okay maybe i was a little harse. i appologize, but dont agree that i deserve this coming to me.

[NewSkool]

For StuntasticAudi: yes, i have tried Google AdWords to advertise my sites. however, that made me actually LOOSE money!

[Sweet Cognac]

You say you have dedicated your life to running your sites. Exactly how old are your sites?

[guru5571]

I think most of us know the feeling of exasperation at times, Newskool. All I can say is put you head back down and keep on plowing ahead. Two principles I focus on are 'user created content' and 'traffic'.

We all know that getting these is easier said than done, but this is what I concentrate on. It takes a lot of work, but if you continue with common sense and produce valuable content, the luck will eventually find you.

[NewSkool]

hmm... well.. the sites i run now are maybe one year. but i'm not a newbie!

[Zygoot]

Most of these people aren't lying. Instead of complaining it's better to carefully read what they say and learn from it. People like Markus have great skills, great ideas, they work very hard and they probably have lots of luck too.

There are always people that are better than you and earn
(lots) more money, unless your name is Bill Gates.

i appologize, but dont agree that i deserve this coming to me.

There's nothing coming to you. In fact many people earn even less than you with AdSense.

[roycerus]

On day1 I made $1.3. Today I am near a $100 average - I have worked 12 hours a day for the last eight months to get to that.
I would suggest on the service rather than the rewards. Ad optimization can get you some extra dollars [maybe double your earnings if you've placed the ads in the wrong position] but the real money comes when people start trusting you and start revisiting your site - or tell their friends about the useful service you provide.

[ogletree]

$100 a day is not easy. I don't think I would call it luck but I do make money on things I just found. I did a lot of work to find them. I had no idea what I was going to find when I started looking. If you are only making that amount then you just have not spent enough time trying. When I first joined I spent hours and hours reading WebmasterWorld. There are tons of little jewels hidden in the WebmasterWorld archives. I got to where I am by seeing what other people said what they do. I came up with ideas by reading hints other people have written. I learned the basics from here I applied them and learned new things on my own. WebmasterWorld is not going to give you an exact blueprint on what to do it is going to send you in a direction. It is up to you to follow that direction and put in a lot of hard work. There are so many awesome ideas mentions here just read some more and look for hints. Go to a conference and you will meets lots of people that make a very good living from adsense and affiliate income.

[martinibuster]

As someone mentioned above, getting people to tell their friends is a great way to induce word of mouth. A good way to encourage people to tell their friends and family is by placing a prominent Tell A Friend button is a good way to do it. Look for a script that generates a pop-up that a user can fill out and submit, as that is the least intrusive way to accomplish this task, and it doesn't whisk them away to another page thanking them for telling a friend.

Word of mouth is an incredible promotional method and it doesn't have to cost you a cent.

The other good advice I read here is to do extensive, and I mean extensive, A/B testing of different ad types, including

• the success of blending ad units
• different placements of ad units, removing/adding ad units and measuring earnings with one or two units, then measuring changes when adding an adlink unit. There are many combinations and some work better than others depending on your layout. Sometimes less is more.
• Add more pages to your website. then add more. Add pages all the time! :)
• As someone mentioned above, consider adding a user generated content section, like a forum for instance. Adding a forum to an already existing website with an installed user base is probably easier than setting up a standalone forum. The website can support and feed users to the forum.

Good luck!

[NewSkool]

well.. to be honest the real challenge is to get people visiting at all to begin with. :(

[martinibuster]

Ah well, get down to the Link Dev Library and the Search Engine Promotion Library and see if any of the tips there will help kickstart your traffic. Read as much as you can then ask questions for clarification.

There's likely plenty to be done for your site, as long as the visitors are out there. ;)

[frox]

$5-$10 a day can be a LOT or very little....

Everything depends on number of visitors, traffic, niche etc.

To put it VERY simply, we might say your income is:

income = visitors * type of visits * ads design * ads relevancy * cost per click (/ smartpricing)

So, if you don't go in a more detailed analisys about these factors no-one can help you, (and you won't be able to help yourself either)

[humblebeginnings]

"$100 a day is a very highly paid job"

Where I live, the plumber charges me $100 an hour to fix the toilet.
It's all a matter of perspective.

Anyway, I think 5-10 bucks a day is a very good start after being around for a year!
Read and learn, take advice from the folks in the forum, and let us know how you are doing.
I am sure you will be able to hit the $20 a day mark sooner than you think.
Best of luck!

[Nitrous]

>>> The real challenge is to get people visiting to begin with.

GOOD sites do this by themselves and pretty fast. You dont even need search traffic. If its truly a good and useful or interesting site you would have natural traffic and loads of links pointing towards your site by now from sites, forums etc. Not everyone can write a best seller.

[trillianjedi]

GOOD sites do this by themselves

Every site needs a kick-start - no matter how good it is.

MartiniBuster gives some very succinct advise at msg #15. That's the line to follow.

When you hit a certain level of traffic, then you'll start to get the benefit of viral marketing.

You dont even need search traffic.

I agree. Good topical inbound links is enough to start the ball rolling.

TJ

[Moosetick]

"$100 a day is a very highly paid job. not something you make as a pizza guy"

I know a pizza guy who makes about $150 a day. He makes minimum wage but tips bring most of the income. Best of all he doesn't even pay tax on the tips.

[ann]

Now there is a guy who cheats on his taxes....hope he don't get into adsense.

[G_Smitty]

It took me four years to establish a high earning website. I think many are looking for a get rich scheme which may or may not work. It to me over three years before I made my first $1.00.

[JoeS]

I haven't changed the design of my home page in years.

It's not a really pretty site, but the main page gets 10-15% click throughs, so I ain't touching that.

[StuntasticAudi]

Now there is a guy who cheats on his taxes....hope he don't get into adsense.

why not...paying taxes is over-rated! I try to write off as much as i can as my expenses. According to my expenses i go through 1 box of printer paper a day...lol

[fredw]

$150 in tips a day? At a couple of bucks per pizza, that means this guy is delivering 75 pizzas a day? That sounds like a lot to me... Approx. 16 hours in a pizza-eating day, that's a little more than 4 1/2 pizzas delivered per hour. This guy's hustling... oh, wait, maybe he really is... :-)

[LifeinAsia]

Best of all he doesn't even pay tax on the tips.

Bad move! The IRS is starting to crack down more on people in tip earning jobs. If he doesn't report any tips at all, then that's a big red flag. If he just under reports, he may continue to slip under the radar.

[ronburk]

so how can this be?

Is that really a hard question to answer? I mean, if you're a factor of 2 or 3 away from decent earnings, then by all means do lots of tweakings and twiddlings that have nothing to do with basic strategy or value proposition. But if you're an order of magnitude or two away from happiness, then the problem should not be hard to spot.

Let's go through the obvious:

• Can you generate traffic? Reading this forum regularly shows there are any number of ways to skin this cat. The question is, how are you going to do it? If you can't generate traffic, your great site is going to have dismal earnings.
  
• Have you chosen a well-paying market? Different markets have different general payouts (duh!). If you've decided to feature jokes for your content, then you would be just silly to expect to make much money compared to someone who decided to feature luxury automobiles for content. If you chose to feature content that few advertisers want to pay any money for, then your great site is going to have dismal earnings.
  
• Have you chosen a market with plenty of ad inventory for your traffic? This is more likely to be a problem if you're trying to make money with high traffic volumes off of low-paying ads, but you can also simply choose a market with so little money that you bump your head against the ceiling before your traffic levels rise very high. If you chose to feature content in an area where advertising budgets are quite small, then your great site is going to have dismal earnings.
  
• Are you delivering qualified traffic to your advertisers? Just as Google is determined to keep finding ways to give lower ranking to websites that are crap, they are also determined to keep finding ways to pay less to AdSense sites who deliver poorly qualified traffic to their advertisers. That money goes over to AdSense sites that are delivering better-than-average returns for their advertisers. So, your joke site might find a way to trick AdSense into featuring ads for the latest Lexus, but you may get a penny for that click when someone else with a website devoted to luxury automobiles may get a dollar for a click on the exact same ad. If you're delivering quite poorly qualified traffic to your advertisers, then your great site is going to have dismal earnings.
  

So, which of these obvious categories does your problem fall into, and what are you doing to focus on exactly what the problem is (as opposed to moaning about the effects of the problem :-)?

[incrediBILL]

people laugh at earnings such as 10 bucks or even $50 a day

Not really, that's serious beer money if nothing else.

you constantly brag about your $1400/day but say its crap.

Not me, working on it, when I hit that per day I sure as heck won't be sitting here typing, I'll be out shopping for a new ferrari.

how can people be lucky enough to make these amounts?

Luck has nothing to do with it.

Pick a topic where people are looking to buy goods and services, not hobby chat, humor or other less profitable topics. Anything can make money but when people are in a buying mood those ads are as good as gold and your topic can make or break you.

If you want a good thread with a lot of info you seek, try this:
[webmasterworld.com...]

At a couple of bucks per pizza, that means this guy is delivering 75 pizzas a day?

Or maybe you're a poor tipper?

Anyone willing to drive a pizza across town just so I can sit on my lazy butt and not even bother going after my own food at least deserves a $5 tip minimum.

Don't forget that some people order more than just one pizza so a delivery to an office meeting or a party could be $100 or more of pizza alone.

[danimal]

>>>what am i supposed to do? this is all i know and yet its going to hell.<<<

if you were breaking the numbers down like you should be, you'd know exactly where your program is lacking:

1)not enuf overall traffic
2)ctr too low
3)forum or content site?
4)the epc sucks
etc.

once you zero in on the weakest areas, post it out here, for specific info.

there is some excellent advice in this thread, just don't get lost applying it to your particular situation.

[pacman2]

EPC sucks in my case... lot of traffic, quality content, but extremely low CPC... most times getting $0.05 / click :(