I've Lost My Incentive For Creating New Pages!

Is Anyone Feeling the Same? How Do I Get My Mojo Back?

[HuskyPup]

Firstly, my B&M business sales are doing fine however my secondary beer income, i.e. AdSense, has taken such a pounding that I'm finding it hard to concentrate and create new B&M pages.

I've a new 320 page site that requires a further 80 pages of unique content to complete, all the images have been done, but I just don't seem to be able to raise my enthusiasm and I know it's entirely due to extremely poor AdSense returns and a fubard Google SERPs.

Is anyone else feeling the same?

How do I get my mojo back?

[rollinj]

What!? One man writing hundreds of pages and placing adsense on them isn't a viable business model!?

Mind != blown

[ember]

I hit a wall 4 months ago, on December 21 to be exact. Woke up and could not write another word of content. So I started looking for other ways to earn revenue online. Hibernated for about 2 months looking at every idea I could find. It paid off. Today I have 4 additional revenue streams. It gave me a much needed break from writing, and it's made me that much less dependent on Adsense. So, if you've hit a wall, use it to your advantage.

[docbird]

Beware of Maya

- Hey, that's my wife you're talking about! (really)

Tho also led me to google, find info on a George Harrison song inc this line, and someone posting about it:

Maya means "that which is not." He meant beware of trying to be lords of material nature, while actually we are under the grip of her stringent laws. When a servant artificially tries to imitate the all-powerful master God, this is called illusion.

There's grist for many a webmaster's post right here; even whether in quote above you could almost replace "material laws" with "SERPS" and "all-powerful master God" with "Google".

[bwnbwn]

I took a break myself just so tired of the same old song so I started posting on things I enjoy the most. Planting a garden and doing content related around that. Crap I just might have me How to site at this rate. It gives you a break and keeps your focus on creating content. Who said it has to be on the site topic.

[Leosghost]

Nearer [en.wikipedia.org...] ,or further ;-)..and of relevant elephants..whom I have likened Google to, in the past, here..

so I started posting on things I enjoy the most

:))

The forum does not allow the correct accents on the two examples of the letter a, as it appears in Maya, your wife will have probably already commented upon this..

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

"Build for your visitors not for Google"

That's ALMOST exactly what I always say, except my saying ends in
"... and you'll never be found by either." lol

Touche!

But seriously, Google is by far not the only source of traffic available and since they profess to change some 500 times a year it's not viable to attempt to change with them. They've become the ECCENTRIC white elephant in the room and those are never happy with you.

What a roller coaster ride it's been but I feel it in my gut that Google's gone and done too much damage to their own reputation over the past few years to remain a primary source of dependable traffic much longer.

Hey, if you want to count on a company that is currently facing anti-trust suits in multiple countries, has a bullseye on their back from some very capable search competitors, is always trying to play catchup by launching services that COPY OTHER EXISTING SERVICES(only to shut them down when they fail) and has less and less influence on webmasters with every new shenanigan that's your choice :)

Ask yourself if you're in it for the long haul. If the answer is yes forget about Google and go write what your visitors want and you'll be much further ahead later on. (This isn't an anti Google rant, it applies to any company you deal with).

The biggest problem with Google is Google.

[anallawalla]

HuskyPup,

Does your B&M business have any online angle that would allow customers to order online, to get support, to discuss in a forum etc? I have a friend who has a law firm but a separate 100-person staff that does nothing but manage his forum, do SEO and create content for that forum. Although the forum has its own free-standing goals, it also helps to get leads for his law firm. A large user community keeps the forum busy, regardless of Google rankings. It has AdSense (added much later), so that helps Google as well as the forum's expenses. If the rankings went away, his law firm would continue as his primary B&M business and would need to get leads from traditional sources.

[Jane_Doe]

Huskypup - Why do you need to write so many pages initially for one site? Why not make a 5 - 10 page site with really high quality, well researched articles, get it ranking and then add pages if it is working out? And if not then move on to something else.

Why don't you try breaking your work into much smaller pieces? Write, get rankings and traffic, tweak, repeat.

[hal12b]

I think switching to mobile will help... more and more people are on their smart phones, which is taking time away from their "desktop" computers. Kids today are all about the Ipad, Droid device, etc... I'd look into monetizing with mobile devices or at least creating scripts to display your websites mobile friendly to the masses.

[HuskyPup]

Does your B&M business have any online angle that would allow customers to order online, to get support, to discuss in a forum etc?

For construction projects most orders are bespoke taking many months, sometimes years, of negotiation and production time. For small projects and domestic orders they are completed by their local wholesaler or trade-focused retailer.

All my products are very heavy, we ship in container loads, dealers deliver by trucks, even our lightest, simplest and cheapest product is delivered by one tonne pallet loads.

I list all 16 global forum boards on my trade directory site, the busiest ones may get three or four postings a day, some one a month! I keep feeling there is an angle I am missing however discussing ideas amongst staff and customers has resulted in nothing sustainable.

We've tried social stuff however either we're useless at it, probably, or no one could give a damn.

Why do you need to write so many pages initially for one site?

320 pages already exist on this site which I wrote last summer/autumn, these 80 pages are from an Italian trade association who have requested me to include all their products on this specific site to which they and their members can refer potential customers for images, technical information and sales enquiries.

The good thing is that after my whinge I've managed to construct 65 of the pages therefore, hopefully, I'll get them all completed and uploaded by this weekend.

I agree with some of the posts here, I reckon I need a couple of weeks break and disappear to my factory in India and have some fun and sun, take my cameras and get some decent new factory shots and videos etc:-)

[HuskyPup]

I think switching to mobile will help...

We already have .mobi sites, iPads and Tablets are fine for my products, we do get some mobile visitors, less than 1%, looking at images, but for most users they are either DIYers, people considering major home refurbishment, trade buyers or project specifiers/architects requiring technical specifications etc.

[netmeg]

I dunno, it just seems to me, HP, your business is tailor made for something far more lucrative than AdSense.

[HuskyPup]

your business is tailor made for something far more lucrative than AdSense.

The B&M side is fine, diversifying into being a publisher happened with AdSense and when you consider my highest-ever cheque was for USD 18,000+, you can probably understand why I've complained about the ever-decreasing earnings.

[zett]

Husky,

you are not alone. However, the solution may not be within the Adsense system (i.e. tweaking, tweaking, and then some more tweaking of the untweakable) but rather outside.

When I quit Adsense more than two years ago, I was wondering where revenues from the site would be heading (like you, I run a successful B&M business). I was frustrated, and I was not eager to produce new pages.

But guess what? At the same time I was pleased to see that the constant loss of visitors (which I attributed to the Adsense ads) could be stopped. And suddenly inquiries for direct advertising came in. These have been better paid and less intrusive than the Adsense ads, so that was a positive development.

Then I introduced an affiliate program for my niche to my pages, and now the revenues are almost back to levels of the best Adsense times. And this motivated me to create new pages again.

So there is hope. You just need to overcome the Adsense trauma.

[HuskyPup]

It's amazing how much can be achieved with an uninterrupted couple of days, yay, I've got it completed, uploaded and all working well. It'll be interesting to see just how long Google takes to pick them up.

[cliffud]

Zett, I totally agree with the direction you went.

I have done the same with my own project. Before, it was an adsense laden monstrosity. I added a lead generation component to it and after seeing the number of leads coming through, I have now stripped out the adsense because I don't want to give visitors more options to simply click off the page when there's a chance they could turn into a lead that I could turn around and sell for a helluva lot more than what Google is going to pay me for the click.

The number of leads it generates now makes me question whether or not I should get into the business to actually sell the product these leads are oriented around. :)

HuskyPup - wow man, ONLY $18k in adsense revenue no wonder you lost the incentive for creating new pages. :) All kidding aside, glad to hear you got all your pages cranked out. I read this post earlier and was going to suggest hiring an intern to crank out content and pay him/her $2-3k per month but meh, looks like you just needed to spend less time on facebook and webmasterworld. :) jk.