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.

[spainly]

If you want to make a living on adsense you would need to raise your eCPM or having tons of traffic. My eCPM is around 2,2US, and I know websites that are more profitable.

It depends on your niche and the way you show adsense.

[martinibuster]

Do you think I make a mistake in doing an adsense compaign?

No. Your mistake was in trying to monetize a tool. People use a tool and then leave. You can upsell the tool users to a more functional tool. But you cannot get them interested in clicking an ad for something unrelated to the reason why they are there.

You may benefit from reading this post [webmasterworld.com]. It is a selection of posts that describes the knowledge behind the entire process of making money on the web. It is a discussion of different things to keep in mind when trying to monetize something.

After you read that discussion I urge you to go to Commission Junction and look at the high paying niches and ask yourself why they are high paying. Then look at the competition. Then the low percentage programs. Why are those low paying? Study the different affiliate payouts and niches and study the competition. It will help you answer your question about why you are having a difficult time monetizing AdSense.

Also take a look at the AdSense library. There are many good threads there that will teach you the skills that will enable you to identify profitable niches, create profitable content, not waste time in unprofitable niches, and learn how to rank better for profitable niches, etc.

Good luck.
;)

[jetteroheller]

Salary for myself would be enough, but a little bit to less for my family, wife and 2 doughters.

My student is at liitle bit less than half of my income, but since his wife and one of his doughters work, it's enough for a simple life style

[maximillianos]

I think there are plenty of folks living very well off Adsense earnings. It is like any business, it takes time to build up and 90+ percent will fail within the first 5 years.

[johnnie]

I'm in the low four-figure range. I guess I could live off it in a less affluent country, but here... No way.

[mhale]

My page view impressions are far lower than yours, and (knock on wood) I consider my earnings to be a "nice part time job." (Some months, a person could almost live on what is earned--if they lived like a hermit.) Even when my earnings were at their lowest, they paid for hosting and also some nice goodies for me each month.

Edit: I was assuming that your page views were daily. If those are your monthly page views, then that's a different matter.

[incrediBILL]

It looks mission impossible to me now.

It appears you simply picked the wrong mission.

Sites about products or services that are aimed at people in the buying mood make lots of money.

I wouldn't call it "salary" since I'm "self-employed" for many years now and AdSense is a major contributor to that income.

[ecmedia]

zozzen something is terribly wrong with your approach to AdSense. It is designed primarily as a contextual network and that is revenue is directly related to content. Unfortunately, tools are simply devices to find an answer. I may use a tool to convert meters into inches if I see something on a European website or convert pounds/kilos but I don't care about the ads

As you might see here, there are literally tens of thousands of publishing businesses that earn all the way from thousands to millions of dollars a month from AdSense. As someone said, it is just like any business. If you sell hot dogs on a beach for a few hours in only summer months, you make only so much and if you turn it into a full fledged restaurant, revenue will likely go up. So if you want to make a living, do some research and build a business plan for Adsense and execute it.

[alika]

The key to success with Adsense: think of a topic/type of content where

(a) users are responsive to ads
(b) users view ads as an additional resource, not as intrusion that needs to be ignored

Then you can earn real salary from Adsense

[incrediBILL]

Then you can earn real salary from Adsense

Salary implies employment and AdSense isn't an employer.

It's earnings or income, not salary!

[Even_Steven]

I earn enough from AdSense that I could live off it full time, though I still earn the bulk of my income from affiliate programs.

To monetize effectively, you have to have traffic that is ready and willing to make purchases. What you have right now is general traffic, and that kind of traffic might click an ad once in awhile just out of curiosity, but they are not interested in following through with purchases.

And now that AdWords allows advertisers to set lower bids on lower-performing AdSense publishers (Smart Pricing), you're just going to suffer further.

And it's not about getting more traffic as "spainly" suggested. It's about attracting the right audience, and to do that you have to offer the right content (or tools).

[ember]

I have a corporation, and it owns the websites on which I have Adsense. Adsense revenue is paid to the corporation. I pay myself a salary every month. If you are really asking if people make a living with Adsense, the answer is yes. But it took 4 years of blood, sweat and tears to get to this point.

[Jane_Doe]

What you have right now is general traffic, and that kind of traffic might click an ad once in awhile just out of curiosity, but they are not interested in following through with purchases.

You can make decent money with general interest sites if you have enough traffic, like in the millions of page views per month. With high traffic you can always switch to or add banner ads as another revenue option.

[tangor]

As all above has said, it's in the numbers. In most cases REALLY large numbers.

It can be done but it does take work and content, in that order.

[memorygreetings]

Yes, I am make my living with adsense.I bought my first car recently from adsense. Things are way better then before of course since i started 4 years ago..
If you want to make living out of it, you need to consider this job your only and permanent one, only then it pays off well. You need to push your scary feeling away as if it will work or not..it will work if you work smartly over it.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Years of 12-16 hour days, and quite often dreams of code, aren't uncommon with many who earn a living online but they do it as a labor of love.

I can't tell you how many times I've solved a code issue in my head in a dream or while talking to someone about something unrelated, it's not easy to turn off at times.

[BillyS]

I have a corporation, and it owns the websites on which I have Adsense. Adsense revenue is paid to the corporation. I pay myself a salary every month. If you are really asking if people make a living with Adsense, the answer is yes. But it took 4 years of blood, sweat and tears to get to this point.

It took me five years.

I've posted this before, but it's to the point here again....

My wife would literally laugh at me when she saw how hard I was working and earning $0.25 a day the first year. In my second year, I think it was closer to $2.00 a day. In year three things were interesting, I could buy a modest vacation with the money I made by working hard for an entire year.

In year four, income started to look like a real business... my wife started saying "not bad" instead of laughing. By year five, she was interested in starting her own site.

If you give up, then you'll never know what could have been. I'm not the kind of person that gives up. I read stories here that told me it was possible.

It is.

[ken_b]

I already had around a million page views a month on my hobby site when I joined AdSense in 2003, so it was pretty much a decent part time wage from the start with AdSense for me.

A little tweaking, and keeping up with new features from AdSense, and it became a nice full time income for part time work.

I like to say I live in the land of te 5 and dime click (5 & 10 cent clicks). You can make a nice income without chasing the high value clicks if you have enough well targeted traffic.

I generally have 2 adblocks or 1 adblock and 1 adlink unit on each page.

.

[sutips]

I make a living with Adsense as well. Joined back in 2003 with a website I started in 1998.

Loved the income. I owe a lot to Google.

I've bought a house, bought luxury cars fully paid, and all my kids go to private schools. I live in DC, which is expensive. And if Google goes down the drain today, I've saved up enough to keep our lifestyles for at least a couple of years, enough to give me time to think of the next steps.

There are people earning good money from Adsense. We just don't post to complain much :o)

[wyweb]

I used to be able to make a living from adsense earnings. These days adsense pays most of the bills but that's about it. I'd have to cut a few things out if I had to rely on adsense entirely. Like food. Gas for the truck. Dog food. Stuff like that.

Fortunately I have several other sources of income.

[Edge]

Technically, I have made a living off AdSense for many years ~ 2003? I also provide other services and products as well that are much more predictable and sustainable BTW. At first my AdSense revenue was a healthy low five figures – today it is much, much less. I have worked in excess of ten hours days for years; however the relentless competition has eroded my share of the AdSense pie.

AdSense is a tough living and lots of work. What I think everybody should be aware of is that your websites competition is almost unlimited as the entry is inexpensive and does not require lots of talent (nothing personal). Also, AdSense competition is almost unlimited as well - Google is not doing any of us a favor by letting most anybody in. It is simply too easy to compete for AdSense revenue for any of us to sustain a high revenue without going and staying a viral resource.

In general, if you write a perfect webpage that attracts significant traffic and Adsense revenue, it will not last. Eventually, somebody else (or hundreds) will write a really good webpage as well and siphon off the revenue rendering the original webpage a low earner.

[wyweb]

Google is not doing any of us a favor by letting most anybody in

Absolutely. That's been one of my biggest complaints about this program for years.

[lammert]

No. Your mistake was in trying to monetize a tool. People use a tool and then leave.

Not in all cases. My best earning AdSense pages are tool pages. But it depends on the kind of tool and if there is a legion of AdWords advertisers in the market which the tool is targeted at.

Tools which do pre-processing for a buy action can be especially profitable.

[S S Computers Nangal]

Reply from martinibuster is very informative. Thank you.

[leadegroot]

I get 40-50% of my income from adsense - the rest is aff links and some internal offerings.
Took me years to get here and I started with adsense; its still the easiest way to start a new a new site and see if it is worthwhile putting work into the niche.
I remember saying to my husband 5 years ago "I made $5 today! ... oh, thats pathetic, isn't it... :( " ;)

[SevenCubed]

Sites with tools are about the only ones that I actually click through on ads. I think what's important is whether the tool you are offering is rather unique or are there many sources available. Also it is highly dependent, like any other type of traffic, on the demographic of the visitors.

For example I depend a lot on a highly specialized tool for maintaining information to input into my Linux iptables for my firewall. The site runs a few ads, 2 or 3, on the page. After I have gathered the info I need I casually scan the displayed AS ads. They are always highly relevant to my purpose to being there. Almost without fail it is an ad that is directly or indirectly leading to something useful. The only problem for that publisher is they are not attracting a great variety of advertisers so I don't see much variety and so therefore fewer ad clicks for me if I've seen it before.

Even if I know I'm not ready to make a purchase of whatever product or service the advertiser is offering I will often times, if I have not previously visited that advertisers site, click through to the site because I do know I am going there with genuine intention. I want to learn more about what they are offering. And in most cases, after thoroughly digesting multiple pages of the advertisers site I also bookmark them for future reference. Typically they are for products that I don't need immediately but may need as my own services grow and expand. So that advertiser has had an opportunity to establish their brand in my memory and the tool publisher gets rewarded for their helpful efforts through AS. Granted, the more highly specialized a tool is, there will probably be fewer visitors so I guess one would need to find a niche that balances them both.

On the other hand when I see AS ads of a generic nature, or the ones that chase me around, I rarely click them. If I notice one that piques my curiosity, but I know my only intention is simply curiosity, then I will usually just make note of the URL and visit it directly a while later after I have left the site it was displayed on. I don't want to force the advertiser to pay for my visit unless I had good intentions. But I know without a doubt that overall the average web user is not that aware of the the whole background process revolving around their visits.

And you pointed out that you placed it in a non-disturbing way -- those are the types of sites that I appreciate even more. When I finish using a useful tool online I actually scan the page to see if there is a way I can reward the publisher through an ad. But I'm probably in the minority. That's probably why you have the low CTR and why others here are correct to say that it will then take massive page views per moth to make it profitable.

So, in a nutshell, if you are offering a tool to an audience that the site visitor knows must have taken a lot of effort to provide I think they are more likely to thank you by visiting your sponsors. For me, the ones that fall into that category are tech tools. There must be others too.

[ThatsBoBo]

My rent and student loans are paid with my Adsense earnings.

I also work full time in the IT field. My income from my fulltime day job pays for the rest.

[ThatsBoBo]

It took me five years.

I've posted this before, but it's to the point here again....

My wife would literally laugh at me when she saw how hard I was working and earning $0.25 a day the first year. In my second year, I think it was closer to $2.00 a day. In year three things were interesting, I could buy a modest vacation with the money I made by working hard for an entire year.

In year four, income started to look like a real business... my wife started saying "not bad" instead of laughing. By year five, she was interested in starting her own site.

If you give up, then you'll never know what could have been. I'm not the kind of person that gives up. I read stories here that told me it was possible.

It is.

This is EXACTLY how it has happened for me.

The first year I was making less than $1 per day. Yet, I was working my butt off. It was a lot of fun. My girlfriend always laughed at me when I'd check my earnings and it would say $0.45

The second year that income was just over $2 per day. She would still laugh.

The third year I was making $5 - 10 a day. She didn't laugh anymore, but still thought I was wasting my time. Called me a "nerd" a lot. lol.

Now that I'm pulling in enough to pay my rent and student loans, she doesn’t laugh anymore. She contributes to the site and I pay her for her contributions.

Last month was a new record for me...

[incrediBILL]

She would still laugh

My wife never laughed back in 2004 when I put it on a test section of one website and it broke $1K the first month. Mind you, this was just on a small section of the site, only a fraction of the traffic. After letting AdSense sit in "beta" for a couple of months and seeing it was stable income, then I started optimizing AdSense for the site and expanding it's coverage.

Next thing you know it's making $5K/mo, tweak it to $6K/mo, tweak some more, $7K, $8K and up it went.

That's when I realized I had discovered webmaster welfare and coined that phrase.