how many of you can really earn "salary" from adsense?

[zozzen]

I've made a simple tool on my website. In recent months, I placed adsense on it again in a non-disturbing way.

The earning is really minimal:
CTR : 0.3 - 0.5%
eCPM: US$0.3-0.5
Ads shows: 60,000-100,000 times.

The income can cover the hosting cost without problems because I only use a very basic plan with only 100MB storage. It can buy me one or two cups of starbucks, but when I think of, as per users' request, to spend more time on enhancing the functions on my website, I really feel hesitated.

Even if I spent tremendous effort in boosting up the traffic by 10 times, the money would still be too minimal compared to the efforts.

Do you think I make a mistake in doing an adsense compaign?
I'm really curious how you guys can earn big money from adsense. It looks mission impossible to me now.

[BillyS]

TBH, I almost puke every time I see someone talking about "articles".

The question was around skills needed. That's my answer. I never said it was the right answer for everyone. Besides, isn't this forum about Adsense and aren't we Adsense PUBLISHERS? I publish articles.

Besides, my list of 5 important factors doesn't even include writing skills.

My initial success was in the ecommerce space. Then I happened to start to write about a topic I know. That worked too. I have a third idea that will depend on user generated content. I think that will be my most successful venture yet (and it doesn't depend on Adsense).

[zdgn]

I don't think you have to be a particularly good writer to have a successful site.

TBH, I almost puke every time I see someone talking about "articles".

I'd say I don't think our own preconceived ideas of what's "good" have anything to do with having a successful site.

Some of the most rewarding sections/pages on my sites seem so ridiculous to me that I at times wonder what AdSense sees in them. But then I have long since subscribed to the view that what I may not appreciate or buy can be very very appealing to so many.

[explorador]

The problem is (talking about money), you can tell somebody "I worked very hard for 4, 5, 20 years and that paid a family vacation with my savings" because most people get the wrong idea, most people just read the word "money".

I make very little because of my own limitations but I can't afford quitting my full time job (fear?), I cannot just go and hire people or share this with friends to grow the network (not confident enough?). Some people are just better than others on this or that. That doesn't mean is impossible but it doesn't implies it is easy to accomplish or that you will get there from one week to the next. Still many try for years and never make it.

I've found it is extremely difficult to make lightning strike twice since one person can only do so much. Once you have large successful site, keeping it on top is work... work that takes away from your time to build and promote new sites.

True. I'm a one man band and also have a long way to go, very much to learn still.

I tried to make a team with some close friends but the ambition for money that some people have along with the very little commitment to actually work taught me a hard lesson. That's why I'm still a one man band. I love what I do and also have sites with no Adsense on it, call me crazy but I rather be working on my own than having some jerk talking about money all the time.

I could go on and on with this but experienced members see the point and have also made it clear previous times on their posts.

[maximillianos]

I had trouble getting a team together as well. Of course this was back 10 years ago before my site was making any money. A few friends said they were on board. Then I would not hear from them for weeks at a time. Eventually it was just easier to go it alone.

[Pepito]

I am developing a new site, and meanwhile I am testing it by splitting into three independent ones, more or less. If that works I prefers to have a big site, rather that three medium ones, even I could earn more money.

I do not care about the thousand of hours I spent on my sites, I enjoy doing it, and I will continue doing it independently of the G monthly income amount.

If one day all this give the enough money to live without clocking-in and clocking-out, that day I will even more happy.

While that day came I will continue publishing more and more of my "visual articles"

[Jane_Doe]

I've found it is extremely difficult to make lightning strike twice since one person can only do so much. Once you have large successful site, keeping it on top is work... work that takes away from your time to build and promote new sites.

If you get good at making sites, it isn't a random event like a lightning strike. Making lots of sites helps you learn what you need to know to make a successful site on almost any topic. Plus it is a learnable skill to make sites that require very little ongoing maintenance.

For me there have been too many stories here of people with one site that lost its rankings and they lost all of their income.

So I guess if you want to become a billionaire with a Facebook or Google type site you should probably only work on one site. But if you have more modest goals like paying off your mortgage, retiring early or quitting your day job then having multiple sites helps to hedge your bets a little bit.

[maximillianos]

If you get good at making sites, it isn't a random event like a lightning strike.

You are right. Making a bunch of smaller sites that earn decent is definitely doable. I think making (and maintaining) multiple larger sites is much more difficult.

[wlongacre]

I see there are 2 points of view here, that's cool, just depends on how you want to roll. But still there must be 5 - 10 things that you have to do on a site to make it adsense successful. Things like ad location, color, size, type, etc. Anyone have any tips on the best practice/method for using adsense on a site?

[vivalasvegas]

I use an ancient version of Dreamweaver to build my pages.

I thought I was the only one:-)

I do make a decent income from my Internet "ventures" and Adsense represents about 50% of this income.

One thing I have learned over the years is that monetizating a site to its full potential is a very important/tricky part of this business. An example:

Info site makes a certain amount from Adsense alone; I carefully choose an affiliate program that offers a complimentary product to the helpful info my website provides and nicely integrate their ad within the website. Result: site starts to produce extra income from affiliate program and Adsense EPC goes up because the site now looks more commercial to the Adsense bot.

As for building one big site vs. several smaller ones - I'd say you really don't know how big/profitable a website will become. The important thing is to get the job done or take the website as high as you can in terms of traffic/popularity. Sure we all want to run a website that becomes so popular we no longer need to keep building other websites. And I think this is possible. But it's unlikely you will achieve this with the first website you build.

[yaix2]

I always thought being flexible and skilled in programming would factor in more.

@incrediBILL: How do you make sure the quality of the user content is okay for Adsense?

I am much more programmer than writer and have a few sites with user content, but I never dare to put Adsense. I don't want to get banned because some user uploads some "inappropriate" content (whatever that might be).

[ember]

I started with one site, grew to 30 and couldn't keep up, sold most or let them go and now have 3 sites. And I write articles, reviews, etc. and consider myself foremost a writer. But I've always been a writer. This is just the first time I've made a decent living from it.

[BillyS]

Sure we all want to run a website that becomes so popular we no longer need to keep building other websites. And I think this is possible. But it's unlikely you will achieve this with the first website you build.

Disagree. People fail because they don't treat this like a business from the very start. They build sites to make a quick buck and guess what? That's about all it will ever earn.

[dataguy]

I earn my salary from a 7-figure site that I started about 10 years ago, now employing 6 others besides myself.

On the surface, it would appear obvious that for the best return on investment of my time, I should spend all my time on this one site. The problem is that this narrow focus isn't what's best in the long run. Not because of the need for diversification, but because as the sole programmer and visionary for the site, I need to keep an eye on the bigger picture which can't be seen while I'm buried deep in programming to add new features to this one site.

I routinely make mistakes that cost hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars in lost revenue. If I have a broader picture of what's hot and what's not on the Internet, I make fewer mistakes. And the best way for me to keep a broad view is to regularly work on new sites with new ideas.

I grew up as a farmer and I often view my sites like a farmer would view crops. I sow a lot of seed, and some seeds never produce. The thing is, once the seed is sown, it grows while I'm busy working on something else. This is an efficiency which is often overlooked.

It's great advice to start each site with the end-game in mind. We should all be aware that the end game isn't a fully-producing website. The end-game is when you're done with the site and you sell it to someone else.

Often webmasters overlook the fact that a domain name just sitting there pointing to a simple web page could easily appreciate in value, even if the web page doesn't earn enough money to pay for domain registration fees. I once had a web site that I could never get to earn more than $35 per month, but because it was aged and the website was popular, I was able to sell it for $40,000. This was about 10 years worth of revenue, which breaks all the conventional wisdom about a website's worth.

If you can produce sites which cover their domain registration fees, you've got gold. Figure out how to make it scale, and you'll be rich someday. It really is a much better investment than real estate. Donald Trump, watch out!

We still are in the era where a person can come up with an idea at 9 pm, have a domain name registered and a website built by midnight, and have the website become profitable by 7 am the next morning. The thing is, you can't be afraid to fail. I've awakened at 7 am many mornings, hungover from the previous night's brainstorm, and wondered, "what could I have possibly been thinking?" If I only told you about my failures, you'd think I was a pathetic loser. Fortunately, most people know me by my successes.

Sometimes when I talk about my successes, people think I'm bragging. To me, I'm just saying that if I can do it, certainly you can too. I guess I should have been a motivational speaker.

[sutips]

Sometimes when I talk about my successes, people think I'm bragging. To me, I'm just saying that if I can do it, certainly you can too.

That just happened to me here on WebmasterWorld, even though my goal was to show others here that it can be done with Adsense.

I thought I was bringing inspiration (considering I read a lot about people highly skeptical that Adsense can work), but apparently they view it and my subsequent questions that I am just bragging.

I'll be the first to acknowledge that I don't fully understand how to succeed in Adsense. I think I just got lucky with my main site that it's a great fit.

If your site is not well suited to Adsense, testing and optimization techniques can only help a little but your site will not be the raging success that you want it to be. It has to start with the right type of site.

I've seen that with my other site. I try to compare my sites why one is working and what elements of it are working; and then look at the other site that I think I have optimized to death but still doesn't bring anything close to the main site. I have launched a new site that has a few of my main site's elements and it looks very promising, though still early to tell.

Adsense to me remains an enigma; just when you thought you're on a trajectory growth then boom, something happens that sets you back. The policy changes. Your ECPM falls and you can't really pinpoint why, whats the factor that brought the decline. I sometimes even ask if there's really a ceiling for every site, and why would Google want that if such a myth actually exists.

So I don't stop learning about Adsense, while trying other monetization strategies for my websites.

[kd454]

I make 90% of my income from adsense. I have big goals, I cannot see why in a few years 30k/month just from adsense should not be out of the question.

Left my career of 10 years, last year now doing internet full time.

I just never quit, once I get something in my mind I make it happen. Go big or go home.

I also got real lucky with my first site as a newb, it really added fuel to the fire.

[epmaniac]

how many of you have top 100,000 alexa ranked sites?

[nomis5]

Great post Dataguy, and I guess you are correct. Some sites win and some sites lose. As long as you learn lessons from the failures (and the successes) then you will be remembered by your successes.

Don't let those failures freak you out, learn from them and then move on to better things is what I have learned.

[wlongacre]

I find in the adsense/website biz it is very difficult to understand why one site performs well yet another does not. I have duplicated what has proven to work yet for some sites fails. This is difficult to understand since Goog offers no explanation. In my case I can't figure out why my failed sites fail. I love the advice dataguy provides " some plants grow and some don't ". I think I'll keep planting crops, plow under the seeds that die and harvest the seeds that bloom.

[maximillianos]

I'm at the "should I sell my site" cross road. It has provided a nice salary for my family for years. I now have two competing offers on the table.

What would it take for some of you to sell if your site is your livelihood?

[Swanny007]

What would it take for some of you to sell if your site is your livelihood?

I've been approached by two different companies in the last year inquiring about a sale (maybe the same two). I'd need 10+ years of profit to sell. Why? Because the site has been around 10 years and posts more profit every year than the last.

[Jane_Doe]

I've been approached by two different companies in the last year inquiring about a sale (maybe the same two). I'd need 10+ years of profit to sell. Why? Because the site has been around 10 years and posts more profit every year than the last.

Most offers I have gotten have been less then I would most likely make if I stopped updating my sites and left them on autopilot. Of course that could change in the future but in general it seems stupid to sell them for even 2 - 3 years earnings based on their past history.

In hind sight, I would not have come out ahead had I ever taken any of the 1 - 2 years earnings type offers that were made in the past for my sites.

[nomis5]

It all depends on what use you can make of the lump sum from selling your site. If you can use it to generate more money than the sold site will generate in a shortish period of time then financially it's best to sell. The actual amount or income multiple is only one factor from a purely financial perspective.

But then again, we aren't all financial automatons. Some people become almost emotionally attached to their sites. Others get frightened if they become too successful. There is a whole spectrum of non-financial factors which come into play when selling a site.

[koan]

One of the few reason why I would sell one of my sites is to be able to live off that money while I develop another, greater, web site ;)

[zdgn]

I've grown more and more reluctant to even entertain the idea of selling sites... for now at least.

I've been approached repeatedly over the years about various established sites by different buyers. But almost all of them in their introductory emails appeared to be pure number-based acquiring types who I think just go on a buying spree based on a site's domain name, age, pagerank, traffic etc without having any interest in what the site actually is about and its very reason for existence.

A couple of buyers were as audacious as to state as-a-matter-of-factly their intentions to "assimilate" the sites within their "network".

As someone who loves designing and creating individual sites from scratch, these Borg-like parties just creep me out.

Or may be I'm just too old fashioned and idealistic, and will sell when things don't matter at all.

[maximillianos]

Yeah I'm stuck in this sell decision. My sites provide a growing income with very little maintenance and almost no overhead. Pure profit in my pocket.

The idea of a nice lump sum is appealing though. But what then? There is a reason these companies are looking to acquire sites like ours. It is a good place to put your money right now. I'm looking at a 5x annual earning evaluation. It seems fair, but it still does not excite me. I guess my gut is telling me something.

[dataguy]

I've sold plenty of sites because I wanted to move on to the next idea, but right now I'm at the place where I'd need enough $$$ to retire before I'd sell my main site, and I'm only 43.

A lot of good can come from entertaining potential buyers, especially if it is regarding a high-dollar site. There's really no playbook for selling Internet properties so gaining this experience can be crucial when you finally do decide to sell. Just make sure the potential buyer understands you are not agreeing to sell until you have a final agreement.

Things like when to require a non-disclosure agreement, what to make of non-compete clauses, how payments are paid out, if or how long you will work for or consult with the company after the purchase, even your financial structure for accepting large lump-sums with the greatest tax advantage. These can be crucial, and making a mistake can be very, very costly.

[maximillianos]

Excellent points dataguy. I actually called the IRS directly to inquire about tax implications of selling my site. Even they were unsure and said I would need to file for a case review to get a proper answer. There is a lot at stake in the tax game. If sold improperly you can end up paying twice the taxes.

[Jane_Doe]

It is a good place to put your money right now.

Web sites can be good investments these days compared to CDs and money markets if you know what you are doing. But I think most of the stuff for sale on the web site for sale forums these days are over priced or pretty sketch.

[maximillianos]

Very true. There is a lot of garbage for sale out there. Your best bet is to find a site you like that is not for sale. Then make the owner an offer.

Most sites I see in for-sale forums are templates, pipe dreams and empty promises of vast fortunes.

[graeme_p]

Yeah I'm stuck in this sell decision. My sites provide a growing income with very little maintenance and almost no overhead.

Same as my established site, although I am putting work into it again to (hopefully!) boost growth.

I do not see a good case for selling these. What are you going to do with the money that will replace the income? To put it another way, how much would you have to sell it for in order to be able to reinvest the money in a way that will provide the same income?

I'm looking at a 5x annual earning evaluation

Have you been offered that? Every discussion I have seen about suggests about 1x annual revenues, and for a low maintenance Adsense site earnings/profits will be almost equal to revenues.