Forum Moderators: martinibuster
The wonderful people at G already EFT the payments to me, so I don’t even need to bank the cheques. I just need good quality sites with long term stable income. I already have a couple of such sites which are popular, but they are living at the low end of the income market, as they are mostly hobby sites.
I was wondering what everyone’s advice would be? In particular for building sustainable adsense income. Also does anyone else have the same idea?
Some things I already think (please let me know if you disagree)
- Less ads on a page is better to make happy, returning visitors, who might even promote the site because they like it so much. (I hate over advertised sites).
- Quality, in depth, content is king.
- Stuffing my pages with keywords is useless if the visitors don’t like the writing style.
- Unique sites are king. Even if its only a lightly different angle on a common topic.
Any other idea, thoughts?
(Oh, and for 2 years time, “Bon Voyage!”).
Personally, I think it would be too risky to rely on Google for my main income. It sure would be nice, though.
Well simply google earns me the most. (except in once small niche where an affilate wins) They also EFT payments. (most other advertisers don't EFT outside the US.) Pretty hard to bank checques when I'm not home.
Like all webmasters I'm still a little worried by the all the reports of getting kicked for doing nothing. But, I have designed sites quite well so advertising fits all in the same module. If the dooms day ever, I could quickly switch advertisers. But I love the G, and I'm ultra, ultra careful about such things. (I even keep my web address secret from friends).
I used to think 10k a month was a lot of money and it would make me financially free. Now that only covers my budget.
Land payment 2k/month
nanny 1,200/month
food 1k/month
cell phone and lights 1k
rent 1k
personal assist 1k
office 1k
emergency fund 1k
other stuff i cant remember 1k
It sucks!
The funny thing is, I didnt have all these bills when I was broke and I got by just fine without them!
The travel + write + money model already has some adherents in this very forum. Read well and you will pick up who they are!
South east Asia is great... when I was there for a few months I envisioned exactly what you are talking about... I am thinking of spending winters in Thailand with my laptop. And the beauty is, my business requires very little attention so I can work as little as I choose.
So I say go for it. Like vince says, some places are very cheap to live so why wait 2 years? Best wishes!
My traffic is more repeat visitor what ads should i use i don know much mre thn adsense help and suggest my average are like this 342 page impression 62 unique 34 new 28 repeat
Yesterday i made my top in a day 2.98
What more ads i can do and what i can hope to earn frm this site thanks in advance to all
I would try and get more traffic... So keep blogging and creating new posts three or four a day and see what happends!
RJ
2739 page views 495 unique, 275 first time, 220 repeat, i made 6.53$ yet
What, exactly, do you expect from Adsense?
$6.53 for 2,739 page views = eCPM of $2.38
which is not bad at all, especially considering that your blog is *cough* just ten days old. Personally, I would just pray that your success will hold.
Just out of curiosity, what are you blogging about?
[edited by: Reno_Chris at 3:21 am (utc) on June 20, 2007]
I travelled last year for 10 weeks, and kept my site up to date by using cybercafes, and uploading pics and writing my adventures (cycled from Turkey to Germany).
However even in that short time period I found I lost track of what was happening on the net, and in webdesign and google. You also have to be very careful on other people's machines, in case of keyloggers etc.
Google and the net is so volatile, that you are making a huge gamble. As soon as you relax something may bowl your site over, or google may change its aligorthmns etc.
If you want to live off google you have to treat it as a real job, and keep doing the work to stay on top of things.
Less ads on a page is better to make happy, returning visitors, who might even promote the site because they like it so much. (I hate over advertised sites).
I hate to disagree with this, but it works out to be the contrary from my experience. I am not saying you should clutter your entire site with ads, but do not be afraid to put "enough" ads on your content pages. Yes, you'll piss off some visitors for sure, but the extra income you make, you could spend on more advertising, which will in return bring you more visitors. Trust me, normal users don't really care if a page contains a good amount of advertisements as long as you have the content they want. It is usually the "webmasters" that are being anal about it, so unless your sites are targeting webmasters, you shouldn't have a problem.
Good luck on your journey! I wish I have the guts to just dump everything and go travel.
[edited by: Raymond at 6:39 am (utc) on June 20, 2007]
So what I'm asking is: How can I overcome this volitility?
I read a story here by a guy here the other day who said he had sites he hasn't changed for years, and they make good cash. What does it take to generate such site? Sites that work well with adsense and stand the test of time?
However I already have a good 'real job'.
I think that's your biggest obstacle. When I read your first post earlier, my initial thought was that it would take alot more than $2000 of AdSense revenue to pry me away from my 'real job.' It's hard to give up the stability of a real job for the uncertainty of AdSense.
I do place ads on the site where possible. And I'm not afraid to use them. But I am careful not to interupt my site natural flow/layout.
A link unit. Plus 2 adsense blocks seems to work for me. Interestinly, my site converts very well at the very bottom of an article.
Some site support the full 3 units quite well actually. But there seems to be a big difference between over advertising interupting the user, and well placed use of ads (that convert, as well as letting the user make the most of the site.)
I am forever trying to find this balance.
Also, my income from current site is constant, slightly improving each month (without site maintenance or link-building). My users tend to build links for me. However my sites are quite niche (low paying niches with little competition), but they are quite popular with my users and still receive quite good trafic.
I'm currently in the sub-5c click world, but I do get a few clicks. Before I attempt to enter the big world, I was hoping to get some more advice...
Ohh, the risk factor for me is low. If all else fails, I can get a normal job when I return home. I am building these sites so I can build up to travel freely (also hobby). Need to take a risk sometimes :-)
[edited by: jatar_k at 1:02 pm (utc) on June 22, 2007]
[edit reason] no urls thanks [/edit]
p/g
If the dooms day ever, I could quickly switch advertisers.
Poor risk management, since a doomsday switchover might reveal that your revenue from other advertisers is a tiny fraction of your Google revenue.
Instead, maintain a percentage of your ads with other advertisers, so that you know all along how bad it's going to be if Google drops you. Stuff enough cash in your shoe lining to buy a ticket home :-).
That is exactly what I did two years ago and now my income is such that I no longer live in Thailand or Bali but I am actually moving to Barcelona and working on my sites from there.
When I was made redundant two years ago from my regular job my web income was n't too great, around $200 a week, but in many countries you can live like a king on that.
This also gave me the opportunity to work full time on my sites as my main source of income.
If you have few responsibilities at home and a curiosity to see other parts of the World then there is no better way to grow your own web business.
[edited by: workingNOMAD at 5:00 pm (utc) on June 23, 2007]
Keep saving until you are 60 and you'll be able to retire and pay for the $20 per gallon milk and gasoline.
Have google pay you $2K per month for savings and get a real job that pays $4K per month - work while you can. That's what I'm doing but I started at 50 so I can never retire :(
Keep saving until you are 60 and you'll be able to retire and pay for the $20 per gallon milk and gasoline.
Who will be so strange to drive with $20 per gallon gasoline?!?
We will have in the future plug-in-hybrid cars, driving most of the time with cheap solar energy from the photovoltaic on the roof of our houses
[google.org...]
The problem is travelling is fun, partying is fun, my old regimen of all day everyday website building - not so much fun, my web income slowly but steadily declined until now it pays for treats, and im working for someone else which sucks.
Even in SE Asia $2000 is pretty easy to blow in a month especially if your travelling about.
I still say go for it, but make sure you have a couple of months of living expenses and a ticket home.
Good luck.
added: what netchicken1 said is very true.
Any other idea, thoughts?
I think there may be a big shakeout (with a growing spread between the "haves" and the "have-not") in the coming year, as advertisers get better statistics from Google and are given the ability to target contextual (CPC) ads by site.
Having multiple revenue streams has always been a good idea, but it may be even more important in the future.
Adsense can be good, but all you need To Do Is look at the latest SERPS/950 penalty etc thread And you can see a lot of people who have been hit no matter how much they play by the rules.
I'd get into the following aspects
- build more niche sites with unique content And concentrate some Link building For these, Then wait For the Next PR update. If you can Get PR4+ For Each of them, sign up To some textlink advertising sites. Niches ones are always In demand And you can easily pull In $50 a month Each site For these.
- Get an adwords voucher And play around In some affiliate stuff. Stay away from arbitrage stuff but look at pushing ebooks Or similar. Try MSN adcenter as well For this.
- look into creating some online games, myspace codes,cool videos, tutorials type of sites. Even though theres a lot of these around you can still Get very good traffic, especially from tutorial sites. For these sites try more traditional CPM advertising as adsense never works too well For these sites.
