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?

[jpch]

I just want to tell every one who complains how lucky you are you have AS.

That's exactly how I feel each month when I get my check! I also support my family with my income from my sites. Page Views is the key as you say and if you haven't done everything you can to increase that you are selling yourself short. I do get frustrated with AdSense every once in a while but just like I do with my kids...it's because I love them and have high expectations for them.

[Lame_Wolf]

Views is the key as you say and if you haven't done everything you can to increase that you are selling yourself short.

Me bad. About 80% of my site doesn't have advertising.

[jpch]

About 80% of my site doesn't have advertising.

What percent of your page views does that 80% generate and are you selling something on those pages that you produce yourself? Just curious.

[Lame_Wolf]

What percent of your page views does that 80% generate and are you selling something on those pages that you produce yourself? Just curious.

I have no specifics on that. They are busy sections of the site though. The reason why I do not have advertising on those pages is because... I just don't want to. Simple as that. Some of those pages i've had adverts on before. Some performed well, some not so good. But the pages looked better without them, and I see no reason why a site with adsense has to have it on every page.

The worse place I have ever seen adsense on was a mom 'n' pop site. They were selling their own products, and the page in question was their "add insurance" page.

Although this may not sound silly just be reading the above, but if you realize that anyone who would have clicked on that advert would have lost them a sale (and far more money for themselves).

To get to that page, a person would have to add an item to the cart, then proceed to the checkout. Whilst at checkout, you can "click here" to add insurance.

Just because you can, doesn't mean that you have to.

[jpch]

Yes, I understand completely...I'm actually smiling because I made that same mistake for about 15 minutes. Created a nice site for one of my small business's and added AdSense to it...almost like I was programmed to do it. Then as I was reviewing pages it occurred to me that I was going to be sending my potential customers somewhere else...dumb!

As a rule of thumb I don't put it on any page where I want the viewer to do something else...buy, share, subscribe, or just enjoy an ad free page.

[LavingRunatic]

I'm new to the forum, but would like to give my experience. It took me about 8 months to start making enough Adsense income to actually get a payment (i.e. over $100 per month). But it has steadily increased since then.

I have a full time job, but I work on my site about 2 hours per day. After 2 years now I make enough to cover my mortgage. My hope is that a few years from now I can start to work part time and I do think that eventually Adsense will fully replace my income.

It's awesome to be able to make money writing about the things I love.

What I've learned though is that there are no shortcuts...I see all kinds of forums where people talk about magically creating sites that make hundreds of dollars per day. And then at the end of those threads is an invite to buy an e-book to explain how you can do it too. Yeah right.

It's possible to make good money...but with good hard work.

[helleborine]

My content is largely free graphical content, and with the advent of user-fueled image scraping site like Pinterest, and the army of clones that will imitate their success, I expect to be completely out of this business model very soon.

I have to cut out the free content completely, because it's only going to be raped by Pinterest, and sell to my visitors.

So... in the long run, goodbye AdSense, hello PayPal.

[Play_Bach]

No.

[bsand715]

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

Me to. But the new Panda thief took it down 60% overnight.

IMO have something else to go along with Adsense.

[pixar24]

"The real key to AdSense is traffic, targeted traffic, traffic in a buying mood, and lots of it"

Couldn't say it better myself.

I have an income from Adsense, but my traffic is not targeted traffic, and not traffic in a buying mood. But I have a lot of visitors so that makes up for the other two.

[helleborine]

Looking into the long run, I think we've peaked, and we're not going to enjoy the ride down.

We've got a lot working against us. Smart pricing, popular ad-blocking browser add-ons, Google losing grounds to Facebook for traffic, Bing moving up in prominence, Google showing more ads on its home page, ad-blindness... but especially ad-blockers.

I hope I'm wrong, but five years down the road, the AdSense golden age is quite likely to be a memory.

[breeks]

No, at one time it was but google is doing its best to make sure it don't happen anymore.

[HuskyPup]

I hope I'm wrong, but five years down the road, the AdSense golden age is quite likely to be a memory.

It's a memory already for me. The UK's minimum wage is nearly $10.00 an hour, this month I may be lucky to earn 35% of that from AdSense...fubard for me.

[Lame_Wolf]

The UK's minimum wage is nearly $10.00 an hour, this month I may be lucky to earn 35% of that from AdSense...fubard for me.

What's that in real terms ? Minimum wage is max of 40 hours per week IIRC. Whereas Adsense is 24/7

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Lame_wolf: I think he meant that his weekly adsense would amount to 35% of the minimum wage paid on 40 hours. e.g. he stated the weekly total, not the hourly total.

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.

I agree with that 100%. example: 2500 visitors with a $15 RPM = $37.50 a day, or $1100+ a month. Some niches however may not be able to attain $15 RPM and much more traffic would be needed. Do some quick math with your RPM to see how many thousands of visitors you need to earn the living you want, and then be realistic about achieving that level of traffic.

In my experience it doesn't matter what you do to a website you will not see traffic grow by leaps and bounds, it will be a slow and steady rise over months and years, at best. More and more sites have no traffic growth but require daily maintenance and articles just to maintain current traffic. Other sites have glass ceilings in place because of already overly established 'big players' in the niche. In these cases there is probably more money to be had by offering non-contextual ads or single product affiliate links with review etc.

[hal12b]

No.

[IanCP]

No.

Concise. Very economical in language.

@LavingRunatic

over $100 per month

Huskey Pup, I, and a great many others here can remember when that was about an hour or so.

True.

[MrSavage]

This is a deep question of course. I was working towards having full time income up until let's say, 2012.

The question really should be whether you think you are going to acquire enough organic traffic to your sites in the future.

In the past few months and especially this month, my goals and aspirations regarding earning more money from Adsense to allow for less 9-5 work has pretty much ripened, fallen from the tree and dried up into a shriveled, rock hard, decaying, unrecognizable piece of fruit. Did I overstate that?

Adsense is really about monetizing free traffic. In a business sense that seems flawed. I'm going to give you free traffic and then I'm going to cut you a cheque on my ads that show up on your site? Why wouldn't I just show the ads and cut out the middle man? Bingo.

Adsense has been for me the best program ever. I'm just saying that for about 3 years things have been climbing higher and getting better. You know. Working toward being a full time income. And just like that, in a matter of months it's slid and tumbled to a point of where I was after about a year of doing this. Not trying be negative, but these are just facts.

[koan]

A few years ago, I was certain by now I would be doing this full time with a comfortable income, but I couldn't predict the likes of Panda, smart pricing, ad blindess & other adjustments to Adsense that made it less profitable. Now it feels like being on a treadmill, constant work to just stay afloat. Oh well, glad I still have other sources of income. And I do have other cards up my sleeves.. I just don't have that naive optimism anymore. Maybe it's a good thing.

[ThatsBoBo]

Yes.

Now, where did I put the keys to my Benz...