Why Starting With Adsense Is A Smart Move For Newbies

[mattmoo]

Contrary to the headline, my own internet marketing career began quite a few years back building websites to promote software downloads and making a commission. It worked well for awhile when ranking high in Google was simply a matter of keyword stuffing and having a listing in DMOZ. Then my earnings seemed to disappear over night when Google introduced 'supplemental listings'.

I had to start again. Here's what i did.

I removed the affiliate links. I took my websites that were no longer ranking that well and simply began adding content. I searched goarticles for similar content and rewrote articles and added them to the sites.

I used the overture keyword tool for finding searched keywords - these are the days before keyword elite etc.

I started to get some backlinks through directory submissions. The sites began to rise. I added some 'professional' page navigation to make the site look like a proper content based mini site without any monetisation.

I then discovered Adsense in 2004. I manually began adding adsense code to all the pages. Over the course of 2 months, my earnings rose to the level where they had been back in 2002 / 2003 when i was promoting software.

I then added wordpress to each site. Nothing fancy back then, but a good way to add content - which was mainly rehashed relevant press releases i collated through my yahoo RSS reader. Every morning i would spend an hour going through my RSS reader looking for stories and then often cutting and pasting them into the appropriate blog.

Here's What I Learnt And The Reasons Why I say Adsense Is A Good Way To Start.

Content is King. It's a cliche but its a FACT. That means you need your own domain with a niche specific website that has mainly unique content. It can take you less than 2 hours to rewrite 5 articles and put them into a very simple looking website. I do create web2.0 sites but only as linkwheels, they are not my money sites.

Doing the above process is the best way to learn a niche. You need to know the niche to such an extent that you find you are a 'know it all' in many conversations you have with family and friends.

For example, i can bore the pants off my mates talking about muscle building and belly fat loss, whilst i enamor myself to their girlfriends talking about cellulite creams and anti wrinkle creams, weight loss and colon cleansers. I know the niches that well after just putting up a few websites and articles. If you are an offliner, the same applies. When i meet my offline clients after working on some SEO for them, i usually add value with the additional knowledge i have learnt specific to their product or business or competition. This is seriously 'sticky' in terms of them keeping on giving me business.

Now, Google works in the same way. It wants me to the bore the pants off it, telling it things its heard before, but in a new way, supported by links to the content.

If you can create a niche specific minisite, get some 1 way links in, and then add adsense you will start to make money quicker than if you were pressurizing yourself to presell a $35 or $50 product, even if it is just an opt-in offer. Dont you feel the pressure with the CPA stuff ? With adsense monetising your site, and if the site is built correctly, you can easily be making $3 to $5 a day per niche on very little traffic, in my case i hit those numbers with just 40 or 50 visitors.

Now, so you have been doing adsense. What do you do? Here's how i then move things forward. 6 simple steps:

1. Your goal should be 100 UNIQUE VISITORS PER DAY. For me 100 is a magic number. It can move my adsense earnings per site to the $10 a day mark. BUT it also gives me a shot at getting at least one conversion to a CPA or making an affiliate sale from CB. I dont waste too much time adding new content, i build more links through bookmarks, backlinks, video distribution, RSS feeds. Standard stuff which can take you to 1000+ back links in a couple of weeks. If your niche keyword research is right, this should be fine to get you topping Google SERPS. Find the method that works for you to get a minimum 100 visits per day, then repeat in other niches.

2. So, If i am getting AT LEAST 100 uniques a day, i add in a relevant CPA offer. I keep the adsense ads as well. I check my stats for adsense and at the CPA network and see what is happening with conversions and revenue. What i am tracking here is AVERAGE REVENUES. If this reduces average revenues after you have had 3000 visitors, you then drop the adsense. You see what happens with the CPA offer after 3000 visitors. If your average revenue increases over the adsense only revenues, you leave adsense off. You can do the same if the adsense with cpa increases, you still do the test with CPA only and then compare back. YOU PICK THE WINNER.

So you are testing 3 methods - adsense only / adsense with CPA / CPA only.

***a quick sidebar about the picking the winner. This is purely a method which is the same as stock dealers and real estate flippers do. You are looking for incremental average increases in your portfolio. After a period of time you then check which parts of the portfolio are underperforming and get rid of them to re-invest in the ones which are higher performing. In our business, we sell the underperforming sites to invest in creating more of the ones which perform better. In this way you get HIGHER increases in average revenues***

3. From your analytics package you will see a treasure trove of keyword information. Collate 3 months of keywords. Check the most popular and see where you are ranking. You can use Google Webmaster Tools to help with this. Boost your ranking of inner pages by more linking. Add content specific to keywords that people are using to find your site.

4. Now if you have the funds to risk it, take some of your analytics keywords and test with ad buys such as Adwords. build a landing page with same keywords in the title tag and url and promote your CPA or CB product on that page. If you are losing cash, stop. If this article is meaning anything to you, you wont have the funds for a long term period of hit and miss on Adwords.

5. If some of the keywords show potential to be their own mini sites, create them and repeat the process from the start - building traffic and monetising with adsense.

6. With the data you can create your own product. In one niche i took all my profits and created my own product. I did this as soon as i could. The best bit was the amount of information i could provide my affiliates with - and it was already stored on my hardrive. I chose to create a separate domain and sales page for the product and the previous money site simply became a source of backlinks pointing to the new money site (my own product).


So in a roundabout way, that is why i always start monetisation with adsense. I get my money back quicker and the data it provides helps me understand how i am performing in the niche. The process as well means i end up with sites that Google likes and ranks well. With this foundation i can then test CPA and affiliate offers. I can then also have confidence in creating and selling my own product in the niche. I am able to sell the site easily as it makes money and has a ranking. Providing the test data to interested buyers shows you are a serious seller and know what you are doing, but in actual fact it only takes a few minutes to do and doesn't cost you anything. In the last 12 months i made over $10,000 selling just 2 of my lowest performing sites.

Try not to get your head turned by all the different ways to 'make money online'. The above is my strategy and my method. It works for me and provides me the basis to monetise my content, sell services offline and cash out if i want to.

Merry Christmas And Happy New Year!

[Chris Kent]

Y'know, out of all the people, myself included, who have been working on IM for a few years now - if all we had done was add a page of content to an Adsense site every day then we'd all be on minimum 200 bucks per day solely from Adsense by now, and seeing increased earnings the whole time.

No distractions, just focus on content, content and content.

[Selena85]

This info is very true and pure gold! I've tried promoting clickbank products through article marketing for months and made no money. I know lots of people do, but that's just not for me.

When I switched to adsense, I started to make some money right away. I also began to understand my niche better by observing the type of ads that were shown in my blog. Than I signed up for shareasale and found some of the physical products those ads were promoting and my earnings increased drastically.

I haven't tried CPA yet, but I'll probably do now. Thank you for the tip.

[Agnel]

So you have tried most of the black hat techniques or almost black hat. isn't it?

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by Agnel

So you have tried most of the black hat techniques or almost black hat. isn't it?

Hi. I'm not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate?

[gregbanks]

nice post

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by ProductCreator

Y'know, out of all the people, myself included, who have been working on IM for a few years now - if all we had done was add a page of content to an Adsense site every day then we'd all be on minimum 200 bucks per day solely from Adsense by now, and seeing increased earnings the whole time.

No distractions, just focus on content, content and content.

Yep it is true, though the temptation is always to move onto something new, often the cheapest and most profitable activity is going back to old sites and adding content.

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by gregbanks

nice post

thanks Greg.

[ocon9316]

Wow. Copied this thread into notepad to look back on. Great post...thanks!!

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by ocon9316

Wow. Copied this thread into notepad to look back on. Great post...thanks!!

no worries mate. good luck.

[Glassjaw009]

Matt. I always love taking the time to read these stories of when people first started out with Adsense to where they are now. It seems like you either make it with Adsense or you don't. This was a very entertaining post!

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by Selena85

This info is very true and pure gold! I've tried promoting clickbank products through article marketing for months and made no money. I know lots of people do, but that's just not for me.

When I switched to adsense, I started to make some money right away. I also began to understand my niche better by observing the type of ads that were shown in my blog. Than I signed up for shareasale and found some of the physical products those ads were promoting and my earnings increased drastically.

I haven't tried CPA yet, but I'll probably do now. Thank you for the tip.

Thanks Selena. You are on the same strategy as me. I find article marketing is something i cannot control too well. Tho of course some people do well with it. There is plenty of room for all of us - the people who focus on niche mini sites, and those who look to make money through article submissions and free landing pages. Good luck.

[billionareHuman]

thanks so much for this. After making some money in CPA then trying to build more sites focusing on CPA I made nothing for months! I recently stuck adsense on their and start earning immediately. Small earnings add up in the end, a $20/day adsense site is $600/month that's nothing to laugh at, because it is highly achievable for anyone! Even if you only make $10/a day that's $300 a month, 10 niches sites earning that is $3000 a month which is not hard!

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by Glassjaw009

Matt. I always love taking the time to read these stories of when people first started out with Adsense to where they are now. It seems like you either make it with Adsense or you don't. This was a very entertaining post!

A pleasure GlassJaw I think everyone can make it with Adsense, that's why i think it's where anyone should first head when they wondering how to make money online.

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by billionareHuman

thanks so much for this. After making some money in CPA then trying to build more sites focusing on CPA I made nothing for months! I recently stuck adsense on their and start earning immediately. Small earnings add up in the end, a $20/day adsense site is $600/month that's nothing to laugh at, because it is highly achievable for anyone! Even if you only make $10/a day that's $300 a month, 10 niches sites earning that is $3000 a month which is not hard!

Billionare Human. Thanks for your comment. I was a $20 a day guy and i can tell you that the money saved my ass in a number of ways! There was a buzz word in late 2007 and 2008 called 'the long tail', and a long tail of adsense sites can be very lucrative. The key is to remember the traffic and keep doing the things we know to get those 100 visits a day. I 'stock-take' my sites every month. Every site not doing 100 visitors is put into 'rehabilitation' the following month.

[pinoytutorial]

Thanks again for such a great post.
Just one question, how many individual "mini" sites do you handle at this moment?

[2d0k]

Thank you for this post.. I already bookmarked this thread for future reading.. I've been having difficulty adding contents to my site because of time constraints.. Perhaps, content is really king.. If I do 2 pages per day, that would amount to 60 pages per month.. 60 pages earn decent income if properly optimized..

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by pinoytutorial

Thanks again for such a great post.
Just one question, how many individual "mini" sites do you handle at this moment?

No worries, hope it was useful I try to keep it to 100. Over the years i have handled far more than that but i sell off the ones that don't make so much money.

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by 2d0k

Thank you for this post.. I already bookmarked this thread for future reading.. I've been having difficulty adding contents to my site because of time constraints.. Perhaps, content is really king.. If I do 2 pages per day, that would amount to 60 pages per month.. 60 pages earns decent income if properly optimized..

Hi 2d0k. You dont need to create a site with 60 pages. You want to build mini sites that start out with 5 pages including the homepage. Only add content if your traffic drops.

[Hemal Patel]

Great post, so true that content is really king!

I tend to create adsense sites with 1 or 2 affiliate links at the bottom of each unique article and I find that the best way to make the biggest income.

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by Hemal Patel

Great post, so true that content is really king!

I tend to create adsense sites with 1 or 2 affiliate links at the bottom of each unique article and I find that the best way to make the biggest income.

Thanks Hemal Interesting idea to place affiliate links at the bottom. I usually place an adsense link unit there.

[ajldomains]

About how much time do you spend initially building your adsense sites before moving on to the next? How often to you revisit them to add new content? I have what seems a very quick way to build wordpress blogs, etc - I've gotten pretty good at using a Wordpress blog builder and can crank out templates in about 30 minutes. My initial costs will be about $60 per site for my unique header to make it look like more than just an "adsense site" and the domain name. I currently have quite a few decent domain names names I want to monetize with adsense. My portfolio contains over 300 right now - about 100 I purchased so competitors in my brick and mortar biz could not get. I used to sell 100+ domains per month on eBay but it got tiring.

My goal for 2010 is to monetize my domain names instead of just parking them which is getting me NOWHERE.

I just don't know where to start.

Jim

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by ajldomains

About how much time do you spend initially building your adsense sites before moving on to the next? How often to you revisit them to add new content? I have what seems a very quick way to build wordpress blogs, etc - I've gotten pretty good at using a Wordpress blog builder and can crank out templates in about 30 minutes. My initial costs will be about $60 per site for my unique header to make it look like more than just an "adsense site" and the domain name. I currently have quite a few decent domain names names I want to monetize with adsense. My portfolio contains over 300 right now - about 100 I purchased so competitors in my brick and mortar biz could not get. I used to sell 100+ domains per month on eBay but it got tiring.

My goal for 2010 is to monetize my domain names instead of just parking them which is getting me NOWHERE.

I just don't know where to start.

Jim

Hi Jim, thanks for your question. I try to maximise my initial time investment to 2 or 3 hours per site. I do one session of niche research a month to try and find 10 niches then over the course of one month i get the content together and build the sites. I have found using wordpress to not give me the level of clicks i get from a simple HTML site that's optimised for adsense. I am looking for a minimum 20 - 30% CTR.

IMO, for sure you should be using your 100 'firewall' domains to refer business to your bricks and mortar biz, and any others you should be using for adsense with a simple 5 pages.

[ajldomains]

So you are saying it's better to build an HTML site and add pages that way? What about the theory that google likes fresh content (IE a blog post). I had the idea of checking google news periodically and commenting on a story with a 200 word post would keep my niche sites fresh with food to feed the search engines. It does not matter to me because I do use XsitePro and Artisteer and I can crank out pages rather quickly with either. I do like wordpress because all I have to do is log in and post & tag. On the flipside my HTML sites built with Xsite ranks well and does not take too long to get my subpages indexed if I link to them from the home page and submit my sitemaps, etc. These are my B&M biz and not monetized. It happens to rank #1 on google for most of my keywords and top 10 for a lot others.

This is a critical decision as I finish up my plan for 2010. I am writing out my goals and actually want to get serious about implementing them. I want to have milestones I reach every month, be it 2 sites, 5 sites or whatever it is I come up with. I just want to start building steady online adsense revenue in 2010.

Jim

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by ajldomains

So you are saying it's better to build an HTML site and add pages that way? What about the theory that google likes fresh content (IE a blog post). I had that idea that checking google news periodically and commenting on a story with a 200 word post would keep my niche sites fresh with food to feed the search engines. It does not matter to me because I do use XsitePro and Artisteer and I can crank out pages rather quickly with either. I do like wordpress because all I have to do is log in and post & tag. On the flipside my HTML sites built with Xsite ranks well and does not take too long to get my subpages indexed if I link to them from the home page and submit my sitemaps, etc. These are my B&M biz and not monetized. It happens to rank #1 on google for most of my keywords and top 10 for a lot others.

This is a critical decision as I finish up my plan for 2010. I am writing out my goals and actually want to get serious about implementing them. I want to have milestones I reach every month, be it 2 sites, 5 sites or whatever it is I come up with. I just want to start building steady online adsense revenue in 2010.

Jim

Hi Jim,

For sure you could attach a blog to the main mini site. I have done that and used a autolinking plugin to link keywords on the blog to content pages on the mini site. That can boost the position in serps.

It sounds like you have the right tools and knowledge...find some niches and go for it

[sweetrock82]

its less expensive and it makes you believe in long term income

[mattmoo]

Originally Posted by sweetrock82

its less expensive and it makes you believe in long term income

yep that is very true sweetrock.