6 Figures?

[Fuzzyfish1000]

Sorry if this has been asked before - I used to come here quite a lot, but haven't been in a few years... Does anyone on the boards generate a 6 figure ($ / £) monthly adsense revenue? If so, what sort of traffic supports it? CTRs? Average CPC? Just interested, as I like to have something to aim for.

Cheers!

Fuzzy

[Chris topher]

Six figures *monthly*?

If there are individuals making over a million dollars a year on AdSense I'd think they're exceedingly rare.

[maximillianos]

I believe a few folks do. But they are probably not likely to share any details just for the heck if it.

Just know you need a lot of traffic to pull that off. Probably 100k visitors a day or more I would guess?

[sid786]

Look into the Adsense case studies. Some of the folks (or all of them?) live completely on Adsense.

They are just too busy to share anything.

[Chris topher]

100K uniques a day (3M per month) with 1% CTR is 1000 clicks a day. Even if every one of those clicks paid $1, your monthly income wouldn't even crack the mid-5 figures. =)

If you had the degree of traffic that could generate six figures a month in JUST AdSense revenue, you'd have enormous leverage in many, many other ways.

This is the beyond-elite level!

[briggidere]

yeah, I know sites that make closer to 7 figures monthly. They do have "employees" to pay though. They are not working from their bedrooms, they have a business structure with offices etc.

[farmboy]

Look into the Adsense case studies. Some of the folks (or all of them?) live completely on Adsense.

They are just too busy to share anything.

Or too smart to share anything.

On the other hand, anyone who lets AdSense identify their successful site in a case study isn't all that smart IMO. That's just an invitation for lots of leeches to put up a competing site on the topic, copy the layout, copy the content, etc.


FarmBoy

[maximillianos]

On the other hand, anyone who lets AdSense identify their successful site in a case study isn't all that smart IMO

Totally agree! I always wondered why folks would submit their sites to be featured in those case studies. An open invitation for copy-cats from all over the globe.

[HuskyPup]

This is the beyond-elite level!

Noooo...One just has to be in the right place at the right time with the right idea and product.

Those of us here who have been around under various guises know the older threads such as:

[webmasterworld.com...]

And if you want to know how to do it from the master himself:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Fuzzyfish1000]

Thanks chaps for the replies - and thanks Husky for the links. I do remember when Marcus first posted that; makes me feel old.

I've been a bit 'absent' from AdSense for a while - just left it on one of my sites while the site grew, and now it's the biggest rev stream. Site gets just short of 1M page views per day, and I just wondered what other people were doing with that sort of size traffic.

I'm not doing 6 figs per month, but I'd like to be ;-)

[HuskyPup]

Site gets just short of 1M page views per day

That used to be Premium Publisher territory didn't it?

[alika]

But are you doing at least 6 figures annually?

With that kind of traffic, you should be, at least on an annual basis

[NickandSara]

As has been rightly pointed out, those who make a good living from Adsense "keep it to themselves".

Right place at the right time, how true. I would suggest that if you attempted to start a free jobs site or free dating site today, you might just realise that Google Local would make it near on impossible. Surely jobs and dating are location based and this means that even being number 1 in the organic results would put you below the fold in many many cases today.

Personally I feel Googles' "omnipotent" stance today makes them a very dangerous force indeed. They can make and break businesses in seconds, without a care in the world, and they do. The principles that the 2 founders believed in are all but gone, and a once great idea and concept has been turned into a corporate money making monster.

Google does not want to make you rich, it wants it all to itself. If you make money it wants to get rid of you and make it for itself. So here's to worlds big scrapper site, cheers Google. Quickly becoming the "Jack of all trades, master of none".

[alika]

Those who make a good living from Adsense "keep it to themselves".

Well, not all of them. But they may just not do it here on WebmasterWorld.

I've met a guy who created a highly successful site by himself. He's been featured in Adsense case studies, his site for several months was on the homepage of Chitika, and he's basically the poster boy of the IAB Long Tail Alliance. He is soooo willing to share what he did to anyone who'd listen -- except that he prefers to do in via conferences, seminars, and personal networking activities, not on forums. I've met him in several conferences, and he tells anyone and everyone who'd ask him how he did it.

So to say that these mega successful folks just keep it to themselves is not totally true. You just have to find where they share their secrets.

[netmeg]

Personally I feel Googles' "omnipotent" stance today makes them a very dangerous force indeed. They can make and break businesses in seconds, without a care in the world, and they do.

Only if the businesses let them.

(I don't expect Google to have a care in the world about whether or not my businesses succeed or fail. That's MY job)

[Fuzzyfish1000]

I'm not sure I'd put Google down as an omnipotent monster type organisation - although they certainly don't feel as happy/friendly/touchy-feely as they used to. I guess do-no-evil doesn't always cut it with the shareholders.

That said, my contacts with Google have mostly been helpful; but as others have said, the idea of relying on Google entirely for your business is not a sensible idea; that's just common sense (ie, not all eggs in one basket).

I don't think we're *super-successful* with Google, and I know we could do better, hence the opening question. We have built up a 6 fig annual turnover with them, but that said, they are just one of several revenue generators, and our costs per year (mostly hosting & development) are truly terrifying.

If anyone ever asks what we do/how we did it - the answer is pretty much the same as most other companies that has done something similar; good content, site designed with the users in mind, sticky content, lots of user-generated-content, etc.

Certainly in our niche, Google is not the biggest payer by any stretch; but it can deal with the volumes, so we use it as remnant 'overflow', and it's nice and consistent, scaled inline with the site traffic.

I haven't read through the case studies in any detail recently, but it was my understanding they never discussed figures anyway... Ho hum.

[ecmedia]

There are a whole bunch of folks here who make 6-figure AdSense income annually but I would expect that websites like the New York Times are making six-figure incomes weekly but I don't expect them to hang out here answering questions or sharing their secrets. They literally have huge teams of people working on their ad programs and maybe they occasionally visit here to learn something but most likely Google AdSense team members are on their speed dial and probably do conference calls with them daily to answer any questions.

[farmboy]

I think another part of this equation is whether you're discussing gross income, after tax income, etc.

For example, I know someone who has revenue of $40K/month from an affiliate program. But he's sweating right now because he's spending about $40K/month on AdWords.


FarmBoy

[Jane_Doe]

But he's sweating right now because he's spending about $40K/month on AdWords.

Besides Photoshop, that is one of the reason why the "I Make 20K a Month" from my web sites and here is the check to prove it sites are so dubious. It is pretty easy to make 20K a month if you are spending 40K in expenses on banner ads, Adwords, radio and TV ads, etc.

At least one of the "I make zillions" from Adsense posters here spends a lot on advertising that he fails to ever mention in his posts.

[ken_b]

Yeah, we seldom see anyone bragging about how they "made a bunch" of money with AdSense by spending as much or more on AdWords.

Now why would that be?

:)

[maximillianos]

Hey doesn't Marcus from PoF make like 6 figures a month in Adsense?

That guy earns crazy cash.

[HuskyPup]

That's for Markus to know:-)

[azn romeo 4u]

100K uniques a day (3M per month) with 1% CTR is 1000 clicks a day. Even if every one of those clicks paid $1, your monthly income wouldn't even crack the mid-5 figures. =)

If you had the degree of traffic that could generate six figures a month in JUST AdSense revenue, you'd have enormous leverage in many, many other ways.

This is the beyond-elite level!

If you get 100k uniques a day and only get 1000 clicks, you need to leave the internet at once.

I get around those numbers (the clicks, not the visitors) with 5% of that traffic.

If I had 100k a day, I would definitely be in the 6-figure group.

During the myspace resource days (those sites that provide layouts, and graphics), quite a few sites were making 100k a month. They were getting 100k-1million visitors a day. They didn't spend one dime on advertising. Most were 16 year olds, having thier mom sign up for Adsense for them.

[piatkow]

If you get 100k uniques a day and only get 1000 clicks, you need to leave the internet at once.

I get around those numbers (the clicks, not the visitors) with 5% of that traffic.

OK you get 1K clicks from 5% of 100K uniques. Thats 1K clicks from 5K uniques according to my arithmatic which works out as a 20% CTR. In my personal experience and from figures that others have quoted here that seems like an abnormally high CTR.

[Bddmed]

If you get 100k uniques a day and only get 1000 clicks, you need to leave the internet at once.

Please elaborate. As I don't quite understand why I should leave the internet. From the feedback I know my visitors quite like the site. Hell, they even liked my (dial-in) BBS back in the time. And still with a CTR of 'only' 1% it still pays the bills.

[netmeg]

OK you get 1K clicks from 5% of 100K uniques. Thats 1K clicks from 5K uniques according to my arithmatic which works out as a 20% CTR. In my personal experience and from figures that others have quoted here that seems like an abnormally high CTR.

I would have said that too, except last month I actually approached that number myself across a number of sites.

[BillyS]

If so, what sort of traffic supports it? CTRs? Average CPC? Just interested, as I like to have something to aim for.

Anyone earning 6 figures a month from Adsense isn't going to answer questions that break their TOS with Google.

Making that kind of money only takes one thing: A great idea that hasn't been done before. That's what you need to aim for, it's really that simple.

[sid786]

Making that kind of money only takes one thing: A great idea that hasn't been done before. That's what you need to aim for, it's really that simple.

What is the most resilient parasite? A bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm?

NO! It's an "idea". The smallest seed of an idea can grow exponentially. And once an idea has taken hold of the brain, it's almost impossible to eradicate.

Ideas make 6-figure income.

From the movie: Inception.

[wyweb]

Ideas and a little bit of perseverance. A little patience. Even the best ideas don't always take off right from the start. Sometimes you have to stick with them and give them time to fly on their own.

[SlimKim]

I make over 6 figures per month gross without adsense. Years ago i had Adsense and was banned without warning and near as i could tell, it might have been from the use of spammy-looking-multi-hyphenated domain names. I had some like blue--widget.com for high value financial terms and should have known better.

I also tested some low quality traffic sources and that might have figured in. Either way (or both) i tried to plead my case, but just got some form letter with no real explanation nor help.

Adsense never was half of our earnings and usually 20 to 25% but i wouldn't mind testing it again if i could gain a sympathetic ear from a rep. I have some high value exact match non-hyphenated domain names for popular financial keywords, but they OK elsewhere.

If i told you many facts you would think i was fibbing. Just for fun i will tell one anyways. Last month i made over $50k in sub-penny priced clicks - actually $0.002 cpc to be exact and then i have some clicks that pay over $9.00 without Adsense.

Adsense is just one of hundreds of cpc programs and it's not as everyone suggest, even the best one. Google Adsense and Google Feed are different animals and the latter will generally be superior to the former.

If you can implement an xml feed instead of only using the javascript Adsense test ads, then you are in position to work with hundreds of different cpc companies. Only a few dozen of them are worth consideration but there really are hundreds and probably thousands if you counted all the smallest ones.

Not every publisher / web property is a good fit for every feed in regards to quality (not considering geo) as i consider 4 levels of quality that i work in and i could expand into another to make it 5.

So not every site fits every network and then reach is always a factor. Even if you have good TQ Scores, without decent volume better feeds won't always be interested.

There are lots of variations. I know one network that will drop you for less than 1% ctr and i know another who won't consider you if you're not a top 500 site, but those are extremes.

Some feeds offer both javascript and xml versions of their feeds, but most only offer xml feeds to their publishers.

Took me 11 years to learn what little i know but i had no mentor and just had to go on trial and error, but i think we all have to go through those "error" times to get to good places and find something that will work for us.

Among my colleagues I'm a small time player ...... and most make far far more. I seen the above mention of Marcus at POF and last time i looked he wasn't running Adsense, and it's been maybe a year or so, so he might be now, but i would guess he makes way more than 6 figures a month. I talked with him once a few years ago by email and don't recall what numbers he revealed, but that's a well-oiled machine or appears to me to be. He might net that per week.

And someone brought up the question about gross / net. It's true that gross don't mean much. Most years my taxable will be from 20% to 35% of gross and usually about 25%. Seems like the more volume we do, the lower than number goes, but greater volume generally enables you to negotiate better rev shares, but i never was worth a hoot at negotiating.