)ver 50 sites running AdSense and so far ELEVEN CENTS earned today

[toivo]

I have AdSense on all these sites. This is my flagship site. So far today, a whopping eleven cents. Yesterday, I think I earned a whopping three bucks, a couple the day before etc. I have tweaked many of these sites (note, many are decent niche sites like insecticide related / medieval info related / dreaming etc.) and am wondering if any AdSense aficionados can see something wrong. My flagship has had AdSense running over 3 years, near 4 I think. The others a couple years.....11 of them I acquired earlier this year. But overall, I have blended ads, repositioned ads, listed ALL these in many many directories, (including DMOZ who never listed most), commented in many blogs about most of them, acquired backlinks from associates and emailed other like-minded sites directly asking for reciprocal links, put reciprocal links on many many of these....wrote articles for a few of them in GoArticles, EzineArticles blah blah etc etc. Even instituted Google Analytics but not sure what the hell is going on.
Feedback, comments, constructive criticism, insights, suggestions and opinions are welcome. In fact, email me direct if you wish at address on my flagship.

[Biggy Fat]

First tip off the bat: Never show off your sites that have Adsense as your sole or primary source of income. Too risky.

Now judging by your comments, there are a multitude of reasons why you're not seeing that much Adsense income with your fifty sites. Let me break down a few for you:

1. Search count for your targeted phrases is too low or non existent.
2. Your sites aren't SEOed properly.
3. Ad placement isn't optimal.
4. Ads don't blend in with the site (as I can see with your cartoon site).
5. CPC on your targeted phrases is too low (i.e., advertisers aren't really paying for the phrases).
6. Too much competition on your keyword phrases (and searchers can't find your sites).
7. Sites are unattractive (as I can see from the sites you've shown off).
8. Sites are hard to navigate through.
9. Sites load up too slow.
10. Domain name isn't targeted (which requires you to gain backlinks to get it to the top).
11. Wrong domain layout and/or TLD (some of your domains have .infos and some of them have dashes).
12. You're just not building enough backlinks for Google to notice.

Well, those are some things I could think off of the top of my head. Take those into consideration and maybe your Adsense income can shoot upwards.

[ok123]

ok friend, i have just 4 sites, each targeting niche keyword, properly researched . one site makes a $1 a day. you need to start reading the thread by xfactor and internet marketer on selection of niches. and just to clarify .info and sites with dashes are just as good as .com's . so no need to worry there. choose your keywords correctly. do good backlinking and you will be rolling in cash in no time. i assume u r already putting in some effort there.

[ok123]

o and i forgot to add one thing. your adsense placement is useless. take down all the images and give visitors far lesser reasons to click on your page other than the adsense ad.
have only one adsense block at the start. and hide your site navigation make it difficult for the visitor to find any other link other than the ads.

[Black Hat Cat]

Originally Posted by toivo

I have AdSense on all these sites. This is my flagship site. So far today, a whopping eleven cents. Yesterday, I think I earned a whopping three bucks, a couple the day before etc. I have tweaked many of these sites (note, many are decent niche sites like insecticide related / medieval info related / dreaming etc.) and am wondering if any AdSense aficionados can see something wrong. My flagship has had AdSense running over 3 years, near 4 I think. The others a couple years.....11 of them I acquired earlier this year. But overall, I have blended ads, repositioned ads, listed ALL these in many many directories, (including DMOZ who never listed most), commented in many blogs about most of them, acquired backlinks from associates and emailed other like-minded sites directly asking for reciprocal links, put reciprocal links on many many of these....wrote articles for a few of them in GoArticles, EzineArticles blah blah etc etc. Even instituted Google Analytics but not sure what the hell is going on.
Feedback, comments, constructive criticism, insights, suggestions and opinions are welcome. In fact, email me direct if you wish at address on my flagship.

Well, first and foremost, do the sites even get any traffic? You could have a million sites with adsense, and it won't matter one bit if none of them have any visitors.

Second, about 5 of the 8 sites I clicked on weren't even up and running. Visitors can't click on your adsense ads when your site isn't even there.

[WareTime]

With the sites I looked at I'm not surprised. Ready made adsens sites sold in packages to every one, PHP errors on the page, Rss feeds being half the content, off topic cartoons, content pasted form word or something that messes up all words with apostrophes,spammy looking links.

You seriously don't expect to earn with adsense in 2009 with these sites do you? These could serve as an example of what not to do.

Best bet with these is to use javascript to break the back button, so they'll have to click a link out. (just kidding)

The only hope for these is massive links or redo them one at a time with unique content.

[Fernando Veloso]

Toivo,

Better focus on ONE site and work from there.

There's no point having 10 sites IF none of them is properly developed.

[toivo]

Hi BlackHatCat: which of the 5 or 8 sites are not opening? It woud be good to know. I don't know . . . after hearing all this, I may just completely close it down. I have spent HOURS backlinking these, listing in directories, trying different blending. I.e., it was mentioned on my www.danscartoons.com that the ads weren't blended but I matched the background in my code + omotted the borders (like they say to do for optimum blend) and so forth.
As for the .info extension, I wasn't sure that even had an effect. I actually built 17 of these myself....in fact, for a while the www.coloring-booksforkids.com was doing OK and the niche site Natural Insecticide Resources had made $5 in one day but now for whatever reason....ALL COMBINED are just dribbling in the earnings. One day I made almost $20 but hearing all this is relatively depressing after spending so much time and after researching others I liked that were up for sale and bought. Kind of sad but I learned my lesson anyway. Thanks for your input.

[css]

I agree with WareTime, I see errors on some page and that damn cartoon on every one of them. Get rid of the toons. You have a wide range of layouts, some good and some useless. You're choice of longtails does nothing for me for the most part. Did you just guess at them? Put more effort into it next time.

#1. Pick you're top 10 sites and work them harder. Let the losers flounder while you build you're $ sites up.

#2. If you're going to have 50 sites then for God's sake work with 50 sites. Asking someone else which ones are throwing errors is stupid. You should have the answer already.

You have a good base to work with here, now make it happen.

PS- I was really digging the breast cancer page. I would work that one harder for sure.

[entrepenerd]

You've gotten some good advice here already, but I wanted to share a bit of my opinion.

Like mentioned above, the first and foremost thing to making money with Adsense is TRAFFIC. If your sites aren't getting much traffic, you won't be making much money.

The second thing is optimization. You don't even need to worry about optimization until you're getting good traffic. But, once you're getting traffic you should be optimizing your sites for the best CTR.

The one tip that I can give you here that I think will benefit you most is to look at your primary heat map for ad placement. Many, many studies have been done on websites and ad placement. It has been concluded that in most cases your best ad placement is somewhere in the triangle that has it's upper point in the upper left corner of your main content area.

Check out this link.

https://www.google.com/adsense/suppo...n&answer=17954

Your target areas should be in those areas that are darkest orange.

Of all the sites I reviewed from your links, not a single one has ads in the target area.

[verbose]

Move Adsense on the bottom higher. Move block on the right to left hand side. Change Title in ads to black also. You want your ads to as blended as possible

[toivo]

I have to save this thread on my desktop. And why when I addressed black hat cat it came out spelled differently in my previous post. I went back to correct it in EDIT and it STILL did that! Sorry "Cat"! I have SO much work to do.....input here is invaluable.

[toivo]

Verbose: Changing color of title in ads to black....YES, I see what you mean.....someone previous said NO - keep it blue as people see blue and click to see......truth be told, adsense has me mixed up as a fart in a fan factory!

[toivo]

BTW all, SPYFU has been a favorite and Cartoonstock is a similar site like mine (offers images) - so why then, when I type them in SpyFu , I see they use AdWords? I thought this is against AdSense TOS (arbitrage?) . . . like I said, I'm in a fan factory .. . . . .

[entrepenerd]

Originally Posted by toivo

Verbose: Changing color of title in ads to black....YES, I see what you mean.....someone previous said NO - keep it blue as people see blue and click to see......truth be told, adsense has me mixed up as a fart in a fan factory!

I think you're original thought was right here. People need to know that your ads are links that can be clicked. Keeping them blue is the only way they're going to know that. If you're wanting to make money of these sites, then you don't want people spending forever looking at your content trying to find the links out. You want them to find your Adsense ads link quickly, which means keeping them easily recognizable as links.

That said, if you have a site where you have other links in the content and those link were magenta, then you may want to make your Adsense links magenta also, so that people think they're just another link on your site. But, you'd never want to change your Adsense links to black because then they'll just look like more text, which will never get clicked.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

11. Wrong domain layout and/or TLD (some of your domains have .infos and some of them have dashes).

This doesn't matter at all.

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

12. You're just not building enough backlinks for Google to notice.

This does matter a whole lot.

[simonheng82]

I think you need to redesign your template, it looks awful for me (sorry about that).

If you are targeting to earn money from adsense, like one of the folk mentioned, you need to have traffic, what i mean is organic traffic with well researched keywords. If you have a site with PR5 or so but no search available, you will get 0 traffic and zero money.

Simon

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by entrepenerd

the first and foremost thing to making money with Adsense is TRAFFIC. If your sites aren't getting much traffic, you won't be making much money..

End of thread. Traffic is king in adsense.

[Marhelper]

I was blown away by the traffic you are getting to your flagship site: 36,000 links and a total of approx. 9,000 uniques a day. Here take a look:

Comprehensive Website Analysis for webmasters

[lukyjoe]

I only checked your flagship site with the idea that if the flagship isn't good then there is no need to go any further. and here is what I think:
1) if you want to pursue the adsense game you need to put some time and energy or even maybe money to study it very well and understand the mechanics behind it.
In simple terms what it is adsense? basiclly somebody has to pay money to google in exchange google will send them some traffic so they can make money. in turn google will allow you to put those ads in your site and give you a small share of that money if you generate quality targeted clicks.
from this we understand that the keywords that people are paying for they have to be some kind of money generating keywords. and cartooning for me is a hobby where people are looking for free tips and tricks, they are not buying. not the kind of the customer you really want. so far you started with the wrong research in the first place.

I checked your source page and it has some 84 metatag keywords in it. I took those keywords and run them in google keyword tool and all of them are bad keywords (either too much competition or low to no searches and very low CPC)
BOTTOM LINE: DO YOUR HOMEWORK FIRST.
2)beside that take in consideration everything mentioned by other worriors above.
3)last thing you still need about us and contact us pages to comply with google TOS.

[Biggy Fat]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

This doesn't matter at all.

Yes it does. Believe me.

[Marhelper]

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

Yes it does. Believe me.

.info = does matter

dashes = doesn't matter

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

Yes it does. Believe me.

Sorry, but you are incorrect.

[Biggy Fat]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Sorry, but you are incorrect.

Sorry, but YOU are incorrect. If it didn't matter then why is Google frowning upon it? .infos and dashes are loathed by domainers, marketers, and the big G because of the reputation of those being used by spammers.

No need for me to state my case more, I know I'm right, just prove me wrong and I'll apologize.

[Marhelper]

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

Sorry, but YOU are incorrect. If it didn't matter then why is Google frowning upon it? .infos and dashes are loathed by domainers, marketers, and the big G because of the reputation of those being used by spammers.

No need for me to state my case more, I know I'm right, just prove me wrong and I'll apologize.

If that were so then why would so many high ranking sites have dashes? I do agree with you on the .infos as they clearly do not rank as well as .com, .net and .org.

[J smith]

Adsense revenue (well, not just adsense, every revenue) follow the equation of: Traffic * ctr% * cpc.

1) Traffic is obviously key since 100% ctr + 100$/click will still leave you with 0$ if you have no traffic. Traffic is also the only thing you can control directly (somewhat) backlinks for seo ranking, articles, blog comments, bookmarks and forum posts as well as videos for visitors (and backlinks)

2) ctr% have to test this, placement, colors etc. However you want your ads to be in the content not somewhere to the side where people have no need to look or click. Also as has been mentioned and shown by the heat map from googleadsense, left side gets more clicks (since people auto look there for navigation)

3) cpc - you have a bit of control here. Some people suggest having fewer ads - less ad spots = less ads displayed = higher cpc to get in = more money to you for clicks.

4) The last and main thing however is initial keyword research! It's the most important thing, more important than anything else really. Your research will show if your targeted keywords get any searches and how easy it is to rank for them. It will give you an idea of the cost per click, especially compared to other keywords. In a way it will even give you an idea of how good your ctr will be (comperably) would people searching for this keywrd be interested in clicking on ads?

Get #4 right and the rest will fall in place, get it wrong and your efforts will get mild results at best.

Look at your flagship site, cartoons isn't really a money niche. (advertisers need to be making money for cpc to be high) your keywords are bad (going by what someone said in this thread) ad placement is pretty bad (there is nothing useful for me to look at on the right side, and the bottom ad is clearly below anything useful as well.) and the ads themselves don't really inspire me to click on them.

You have to do better research and target sites better.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

Sorry, but YOU are incorrect. If it didn't matter then why is Google frowning upon it? .infos and dashes are loathed by domainers, marketers, and the big G because of the reputation of those being used by spammers.

Google doesn't "frown" on .info's. I have around 100 active .infos and they get search traffic and they make money. Google doesn't have a problem with dashes in the domain name either. .infos and dashed domains generally aren't that great for creating a brand for yourself or a company, which is why they aren't favored by domainers, but do just fine for search traffic.

It appears that you're practicing what I call "Cargo Cult SEO", relying on what the SEO medicine men say without giving it any thought or testing to it yourself.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Marhelper

I do agree with you on the .infos as they clearly do not rank as well as .com, .net and .org.

Do a search for regular expressions and related long tails.

The only reason that sites don't rank is that they don't have the links to beat their competition.

[mojo13]

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

Sorry, but YOU are incorrect. If it didn't matter then why is Google frowning upon it? .infos and dashes are loathed by domainers, marketers, and the big G because of the reputation of those being used by spammers.

No need for me to state my case more, I know I'm right, just prove me wrong and I'll apologize.

How do you know G frowns upon it?

I have several domains with dashes and they do fine..

[askloz]

to OP...the main thing that biggy fat did not say, which is your main cause, is all your adsense niches pay crap per click.

start creating sites based on power jobs, ie, dentists, lawyers, etc, etc, then you'll start seeing clicks in the $1-$8 range

tip, run a good search for "Jobs paying $150k or more per year" and start researching those niches

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

First tip off the bat: Never show off your sites that have Adsense as your sole or primary source of income. Too risky.

Now judging by your comments, there are a multitude of reasons why you're not seeing that much Adsense income with your fifty sites. Let me break down a few for you:

1. Search count for your targeted phrases is too low or non existent.
2. Your sites aren't SEOed properly.
3. Ad placement isn't optimal.
4. Ads don't blend in with the site (as I can see with your cartoon site).
5. CPC on your targeted phrases is too low (i.e., advertisers aren't really paying for the phrases).
6. Too much competition on your keyword phrases (and searchers can't find your sites).
7. Sites are unattractive (as I can see from the sites you've shown off).
8. Sites are hard to navigate through.
9. Sites load up too slow.
10. Domain name isn't targeted (which requires you to gain backlinks to get it to the top).
11. Wrong domain layout and/or TLD (some of your domains have .infos and some of them have dashes).
12. You're just not building enough backlinks for Google to notice.

Well, those are some things I could think off of the top of my head. Take those into consideration and maybe your Adsense income can shoot upwards.

[askloz]

Well, Matt Cutts talked about domain name extensions, as being last on the list as being favored as the preferred domain extension to use.

Originally Posted by mojo13

How do you know G frowns upon it?

I have several domains with dashes and they do fine..

[askloz]

Sorry, but you're taking things too literal.

Google does NOT frown on .info domains, or domains that use hypens in them. And that is a FACT!

Matt Cutts, as vague has he says in some video the other month, about domain name extensions in regards to domain name extensions weight, ie, .gov, & .edu, having more weight over .com's, .net's, etc... he said they all hold the same weight.

And he was also very vague about .info's, if you want a .info to be looked upon as a authority site and be up in the class of .com's, etc, then one has to prove to google that the site is of good nature, just like any other site really.

Originally Posted by Biggy Fat

Sorry, but YOU are incorrect. If it didn't matter then why is Google frowning upon it? .infos and dashes are loathed by domainers, marketers, and the big G because of the reputation of those being used by spammers.

No need for me to state my case more, I know I'm right, just prove me wrong and I'll apologize.

[paulgl]

bgmacaw, askloz, keep going around in circles but nobody
listens the first time. I had a similar thread, askloz said it
was all about keywords, etc. I could do not much, but
after much consternation, tweaked the keywords a little.
Also, I have stated a zillion times, websites get ranked, not
domains. xyx.com can rank #1 for whatever you wish.

Now here's where my 2 cents turns into 10 cents. I used
to have a joke and cartoon page. I feel that adsense is very
iffy on joke and cartoon pages. Why? because people are
looking for jokes and cartoons. Because of this, I had to
think what else I could do. Then it hit me. I need to make
the ads appealing to be clicked. This meant changing the top
one to image only. Incorporate a text only in your links, then
have another image only on the bottom. If you go to other
joke and cartoon sites, you will see ads that are only images.
They are enticing for a cartoon or joke searcher to click on.
Or, they have clear text ads on top that stand out!

If you insist on text ads, try at least one image only
block. And I am also not a big fan of background and link blends.
The adsense literally disappears. I know some people love this,
but I can't see how making adsense invisible can help. Use a white
background, blue links and gray urls. In my book, nothing beats it.
You want it to stand out!

Paul

[online4cash]

3 best tips....

Maximize Genuine content on your website
Use only .com domains
Avoid Images on your sites and post

[toivo]

I hope the "powers-that-be" do not eliminate this thread....I have actually been reading, re-reading and trying to digest and understand what is working best. Some conflicting things of course....that is expected to be on a forum. No problems there. I appreciate the candor on here and in all certainty, I feel I'm on the right track....I just need to experiement....this is where my patience runs out because I have too many other irons in the fire....based on my main business, as evidence in my flagship site which keeps me busy.
Paul, your info about other joke sites is appreciated...wish you could forward some sample URLs to reflect upon , so I could get an idea. I certainly hope this thread is not deleted so I can go backwards through and readall of your info and input.
Thanks for all of your input! I hope that EXAMINEURL is a reliable reference sie for info! I did like it!

[Judge Groovyman]

toivo - I'm impressed with all the hard work you've put into your business, and with the grace with which you are accepting this criticism. I've learned a lot from this thread. Thanks for the post and all the replies.

Good Luck.

[kevinw1]

Dan, your cartoon site probably has some of the same problems as LEGO sites - adsense can't really tell what the site is about, and the ads are all over the place subject-wise. For example, on a page with a LEGO model of a barn, I was getting ads for full-size pole barn kits . Of course, I wasn't making any adsense money off that page! Even when you do get cartoon-relevant ads, it doesn't sound like they pay well, and your visitors aren't ad clickers.

It sounds like you have plenty of traffic, at least to the cartoon site. You might find that your time is better spent monetizing in a completely different way rather than tweaking adsense in an effort to MAKE it work. What are people who visit your site looking for? What can you earn money off that meets that need? Amazon links to cartoon books? I don't know, but you should know what your visitor demographic is.

If you really don't know, you can try a brute force approach. Pick two Clickbank products you think might work, and run ads for them both (pictures and text). Test - which does better? Keep that one and switch out the other one for a different product. Repeat the test. Keep testing until you find a few products that your visitors like.

[Heidi White]

Originally Posted by ok123

o and i forgot to add one thing. your adsense placement is useless. take down all the images and give visitors far lesser reasons to click on your page other than the adsense ad.
have only one adsense block at the start. and hide your site navigation make it difficult for the visitor to find any other link other than the ads.

How do you hide your site navigation in Wordpress?