Is it Still Possible to Make a Full-Time Income From Adsense?

working on adsense only

[wokka]

My ecom site has been hit with some sort of filter/penalty/panda - not quite sure what but, google has fallen out of love with it.

This problem means that my income is down, but my mortgage still needs paying!

I've played around a bit with adsense over the past 18 months or so, making a few dollars here and there.

Wondering if it is possible to do this full-time or is it something that I should just have has a small income stream?

If it is possible to make a living off it, does anyone have any best advice, or up to date course I could follow that still works, post panda etc etc?

[netmeg]

There's a helpful post pinned to the top of this forum called Want To Earn More With AdSense? - start by reading that.

Yea, lots of people live off AdSense. I wouldn't advocate it, because if one thing happens, boom goes your income. But it can certainly help.

[explorador]

Yes but I wouldn't bother on living only out of Adsense.

If I make a product and people don't like it, I loose business but still can ask what happened, what went wrong. With Adsense everything can go dead in a matter of minutes without someont to talk to. That's my opinion.

[Spyder_Cat]

I make a living from adsense. I was sick for years, learnt about web development and starting creating content for one website. It slowly took off. My income at the moment is not huge, but enough to cover living expenses and a holiday each year. Being sick for so long I could never understand how others could put so much time into their web work.

The great thing for me is that in recent times my health has improved and I can work for longer periods now.

Adsense is my only source of revenue and I am well aware that my eggs are in one basket. My plan is to just keep increasing traffic and adsense income for the moment. The panda update didn't affect me (phew) . I have certainly raised my game in terms of producing better content (which is how it should be). Having my eggs in one basket is actually a motivation for me to work harder; it's not ideal but is something I can with live at the moment. In the future I plan to create other streams of revenue.

[londrum]

i could make a living off of adsense as well, at the moment. although i do have other stuff that earns me money too.

i wouldn't worry too much about all these people who say it's a dumb idea just relying on adsense. okay, yeah, of course it IS a dumb idea to put all your eggs in one basket. in a perfect world you wouldn't do it. but you can say the same about loads of things -- most people get 90% of their traffic from google, for example (oh no, what happens if it dries up!). most people have just one website (oh no, what happens if it breaks down!). most people just write about one specific subject (oh no, what if a super site comes along and beats you!)...

what if a window cleaner breaks his leg... what's he going to do then? does he go out looking for extra income streams in case he falls off his ladder? nope.

you can spend all day finding things to worry about, if you want. but as long as you follow google's rules and keep your SEO white hat then i don't think there's as big a risk as people make out.

but... trying to make a decent income with adsense, and then actually doing it, are two different things, of course. you need a decent subject and you need to put the work in. it's not as easy as it was a few years ago.

[netmeg]

And in most cases, it doesn't happen overnight. To make money, you need traffic, and that usually takes a little time to build (if it's legitimate traffic, anyway)

[IanCP]

Lots of people made substantial income off AdSense over the years.

The smart ones didn't use it to live off but rather to get rid of mortgages, make sound investments for an AdSense-less future.

Other people will of course have different opinions.

[ken_b]

Is it Still Possible to Make a Full-Time Income From Adsense?

Sure. Might take more work than 6 - 7 years ago, especially if starting from zero.
.

[wokka]

Sure. Might take more work than 6 - 7 years ago, especially if starting from zero.

Yes, but if the sites are actually well written and useful, then surely the income and ranking will be more stable?

[Lame_Wolf]

Sure. Might take more work than 6 - 7 years ago, especially if starting from zero.

Yes, but if the sites are actually well written and useful, then surely the income and ranking will be more stable?

Yes, but your ecom site has been hit with some sort of filter/penalty/panda.

[wokka]

I know - but my thinking is this:-

1. I won't use any SEO company on the adsense sites

2. The ecom site is in such a very dry niche its difficult for me to write articles around it, so I outsourced the seo to a trusted company.

3. I was thinking of developing the ecom site with a forum based around helping people with problems relating to what I'm selling.
But, I'm thinking that it would be difficult for me to moderate it properly in an un-biased way. Also, I've heard that forums can become a nightmare to keep control of.

[Lame_Wolf]

1. I won't use any SEO company on the adsense sites

SEO and Adsense are completely different. It's like saying that you will ask you car mechanic to do SEO.

2. The ecom site is in such a very dry niche its difficult for me to write articles around it, so I outsourced the seo to a trusted company.

hmmm. So trusted that they managed to get you penalized. :/

3. I was thinking of developing the ecom site with a forum based around helping people with problems relating to what I'm selling.
But, I'm thinking that it would be difficult for me to moderate it properly in an un-biased way. Also, I've heard that forums can become a nightmare to keep control of.

You are wasting your time with Adsense on a forum. They are well known not to generate a lot of income. Plus, as you said, difficult to moderate, esp if they are going to swear a lot, or post copyrighted material.

[wokka]

SEO and Adsense are completely different. It's like saying that you will ask you car mechanic to do SEO.

Yep, they are different things obviously, an adsense website is a website that is monetised via adsense adverts it displays.
SEO is something completely different - but, you could use SEO to promote an adsense website.

hmmm. So trusted that they managed to get you penalized. :/

The site isn't necessarily penalised - the company working on the SEO are saying that its an algo update. They could be correct, all I know is that my main KW's have been demoted down a page or two. I don't know what's happened as I don't know the google secret sauce recipe.

You are wasting your time with Adsense on a forum. They are well known not to generate a lot of income. Plus, as you said, difficult to moderate, esp if they are going to swear a lot, or post copyrighted material.

I wasn't looking to make adsense income from this - just thinking of how to engage more with the current customer base and potential new ones.
But, I don't want to spend all day moderating posts etc. as we are only a very small company. Which is why I'm looking at trying to make some passive income.

[netmeg]

Unfortunately, I don't think you're going to make very much. As I said - user intent.

But good luck to you. Prove me wrong.

[ember]

I make a nice living with Adsense, but I know it won't last forever so I am adding other income streams just in case. It took 5 years to get to the point where my Adsense income is nearly on auto-pilot, freeing me up to develop other revenue streams.

[wokka]

Yes, it's always good to have multiple income streams for when problems may occur in one area.

@ember - did you go down the authority site route or the many smaller niche site model?

[ember]

@ember - did you go down the authority site route or the many smaller niche site model?

I have 5 sites that earn revenue but two are authority sites, and 3 were spun off from them. I've never thought having just one site was a good idea.

[zdgn]

people who say it's a dumb idea just relying on adsense.

Ditto!

Been webmastering since '98. And haven't seen *any* thing as remotely effective and rewarding until AdSense for such little effort as putting some silly little code on your pages.

Sure it would be lovely not relying on AdSense completely and instead opening gas stations or McD franchs on busy intersections... but I don't know how! :D

[Zivush]

Adsense count on 40% of my web incomes. I make a good living out of: Adsense, direct ads, other CMP networks and eBooks. I am a one-man business (since last year it is a company).
As a decent business, make sure to diversify your incomes and traffic sources.
Being diversified is the A B C of any business.

[zarathustra2011]

Adsense was always my nice little bit on the side, but since my main business has taken a big turn south in the past year, I've been fortunate that Adsense earnings have increased monthly. I'm now putting my time and energy into Adsense to increase it further. I sure don't like being reliant on Adsense as a form of income, and am hoping my other activity picks up in the mean time.
Adsense counts for about 50% of my monthly income - I'm not quite able to live from it entirely, but I'm not a million miles off, which is why I'm putting more effort into it this year.

[wokka]

I have only really dabbled in adsense and made a few hundred $ over the past 18 months.

But, I'm sure that this can be increased if some concerted positive effort is put into it.

My problem is that I've read a lot of peoples journey to freedom blogs where they are basically feeling around in the dark, some things work and most don't. Then they give up.

I would love to cut out the learning curve or at least the biggest blunders and be able to focus my efforts on what works long term.

There are two schools of thought with adsense income - make many micro niche sites or make a few authority sites.

From you guys that make a living or a good chunk of a living what would be your advice in terms of model to follow, authority or micro?

[zarathustra2011]

That's a difficult one to answer wokka - people have good results with both. I have one main website that brings in about 90% of my earnings. It got hacked around a month back, and I lost most my earnings for four or five days. If I'd had a number of micro niche websites, it wouldn't have hurt so much.

I personally do like working and expanding on my one main website, because it follows something I'm passionate about. I'd be hard pressed to find the time to create more websites. I guess it just depends on personal circumstances. Ideally I'd have two main, big earning websites.

[wokka]

Thanks for that, yes diversification is key in all of this even within adsense itself!

Maybe I should start off with micro sites and the ones that do well expand into larger authority type ones.

[netmeg]

I would love to cut out the learning curve or at least the biggest blunders and be able to focus my efforts on what works long term.

Er, so would everyone. If it were that easy, everyone would be making piles of money.

Start by reading the item I mentioned that is pinned to the top of this forum. Then just start browsing the forum, looking at post titles, and pick out the ones that sound helpful. Pretty much everything good, bad, or indifferent about AdSense has been journaled here over the years.

But there's no magic bullet (at least none that you can count on to keep working and not get you kicked out) It's still *work*

[njstangers]

Very true points....I have a good friend who runs a successful website for many years and is doing well off this so yes it's possible, but I know he went through alot of work to get there.....he's my role model and I hope to oneday live a nice comfortable life like him and support my friends/family......getting rich quick is bs.

Like many said, it will take time and try to build up several different websites. I currently have about 5-6 including a Forum which is one of my biggest current money makers in terms of Adsense.....hopefully some of my niche-designed High CTR blogs and other sites will over-power it since I know they can make much more than a forum with the right amount of traffic......real content, not b.s. fake content --- that's a bad idea to start with.....you need to "intrigue" people to come to your site over and over.

I'm also an SEO specialist so I have done lots of white hat seo linkbuilding as well as adding tons of good quality fresh content......fresh & unique content is key....if you have that integrated with social media marketing, you are on the right path.

[londrum]

I would love to cut out the learning curve or at least the biggest blunders and be able to focus my efforts on what works long term.

i think the worst mistake that people make is that they think of a subject, before they think about the ads.

you need to pick a subject where you know there's going to be plenty of advertisers. and then you've got to think about what the ads are saying.
if you want to make a living out of it then it pays to avoid the seasonal stuff too. because you dont want your earnings dipping for 6 months of the year.

if all the ads are selling flowers (for example), then its no good just sticking up a load of pictures of flowers, thinking that will make the ads appear -- because that is only half the battle. the advertisers want people who are actually going to BUY flowers. not just people who like looking at pictures of them. so your site has got to be focused on trying to pre-sell the flowers.

that is the secret to making money with adsense, i reckon. you have to focus on pre-selling what the ads are selling, in such a way that makes the user want to visit your site first before they make the purchase (to research the purchase).

it's all got to be worthwhile info though -- useful and original stuff. otherwise you'll just end up as an MFA.

[StoutFiles]

It's not a path I would recommend to anyone. I would say keep your day job, and work on your website(s) in your free time. The future of the internet will not be small websites making money off of AdSense; have an escape plan prepared if this is your only source of income.

[superclown2]

I used to make a good income from Adsense until (a) I started to make too much and (b) my click-through rate got to be too big after which Google turfed me out, no discussions, no second chance. I now make a better living dealing directly with companies that once bought Adwords but either got kicked out (again no explanations, notice or discussions) or got fed up with paying a fortune for phantom clicks (You every tried querying these?).

So sure, go with Adsense if you're happy dealing with a company like Google. You'll read enough experiences of other people who trusted them to make your own decision.

[wokka]

"Don't be evil"

I used to spend >£5000/mth on adwords to boost sales in 2006 and I'm sure a high %age were phantoms!

[incrediBILL]

This problem means that my income is down, but my mortgage still needs paying!

Yes, you could still make a living from it, but I wouldn't base a business model solely on AdSense unless I wanted to risk that mortgage payment yet again. I always sold my own advertising, plus augmented that with affiliate income, and added AdSense along to supplement my advertisers. When AdSense takes a dump, I still have a steady cash flow, just not as wide a diversity of advertisers as I solicit because I don't solicit.

BTW, if you're trying to pay the mortgage with AdSense, and looking for a mentor, you'll need to learn to sort out the real earners from the rest. Seek out publishers that actually make thousands a month and still bother posting, there are still a couple out there.

If you don't know how to spot real earners, I'll give you some hints. They typically don't participate in threads about daily fluctuations in income because they know it's going to be a bunch at the end of the month regardless of the periodic ups and downs. You also won't ever hear them use words like "glass ceiling" without a smiley face attached to the end of a sentence. They're also the publishers that tend to answer questions about the AdSense T&Cs because another reason they still have an AdSense account is they read them and actually abide by them, mainly because the mortgage is at risk. Real earners are typically too busy building and maintaining their sites, not complaining about AdSense.

In other words, just look for anyone being derisively calling a 'fanboy' and do whatever they're doing and you'll probably make some serious coin with AdSense.

The real key to AdSense is traffic, targeted traffic, traffic in a buying mood, and lots of it, from 1K-10K visitors a day for starters will usually generate some cash.

The best place to learn how to earn with AdSense is actually the Google SEO forum [webmasterworld.com] because if your SEO is done properly you tend to get better traffic and AdSense also tends to deliver better targeted ads.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 5:13 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2012]