1 year, 5 sites, not hit $100 with adsense

[Frank Steele]

What am I doing wrong?

[NiallR]

Hi Frank,

I take it you mean you haven't hit your first $100 day with Adsense?

If so then here's my take.

You have 5 very interesting sites there but none of them really seem to be targetting a profitable Adsense niche as such. They'll attract visitors sure but will these visitors be in a buying/clicking frame of mind?

Interesting/cool sites are great distractions but I've never found them to be money earners.

What I'd suggest is having a niche site based on an evergreen topic that is a proven market. The topics your sites are based around are ones that you figured would be interesting? Or did you research their profitability first?

You seem to like the DIY topic? If so then PM me and I'll give you a theme for an evergreen site and a few keywords to get you started :-)

Niall

[Frank Steele]

As pathetic as it is to admit I meant $100 in a year. I have never seen a check yet.

Evergreen site?

[JDSalinger]

Hi Frank,

I am a relatively new marketer as well so I know where you are coming from. I had struggled with the same thing; however, I am now doing better. I would suggest you get the report put together by Josh Spaulding, I think it will help start you in the right direction. His blog is at Internet Marketing with Josh Spaulding, just give your name and email to get the free reports. The $5 dollar report will give you a plan you can use to start making some money. If you follow it, you should be able after a few months to get up to $5 a day or more per site. Best of luck to you and don't give up. It can be done.

Best,
JDSalinger

[UcheO]

If its an adsense site, you want to make sure that you are able to monetize it well. Then you have to bring in targetted traffic. If your content is good enough - it will convert.

[tim_buchalka]

Originally Posted by Frank Steele

What am I doing wrong?

Biggest question for me, is what are you doing to drive traffic to your websites?

[John Rowe]

I wish the board showed IP addresses for all members.

[tim_buchalka]

Originally Posted by John Rowe

I wish the board showed IP addresses for all members.

I'm curious to know why you want this feature?

[Kay King]

John -

Great minds, same circles? I was just thinking the same thing.

kay

[tim_buchalka]

Hmmm... Slap me sideways guys, but I have no idea why you are thinking that.

Care to fill me in?

Originally Posted by Kay King

John -

Great minds, same circles? I was just thinking the same thing.

kay

[Good News Now]

Frank,

I have read Joel Comm book on adsence. (fogot the the name) there are some helpful tips.

you have really cool sites...maybe the issue of traffic is the problem. do you know what traffic are you getting?

Vadimus

[tim_buchalka]

Originally Posted by Good News Now

Frank,

I have read Joel Comm book on adsence. (fogot the the name) there are some helpful tips.

you have really cool sites...maybe the issue of traffic is the problem. do you know what traffic are you getting?

Vadimus

Actually you may want to google for Joel Comm's book. I got an email yesterday about it where he is offering you his book for free (ebook not the physical one) if you try out his new membership site. I believe you can try it out for 30 days, and so long as you cancel before the time is up, will get the ebook for free and pay nothing.

Worth looking into I reckon.

Cheers



Tim

[angilina]

In order to make some good money via adsense, you need to get lot of traffic, as traffic = $$$.

Try to improve your SERPs.

Also try to improve the CTR. Try different ad units like, 336*280 or 250*250 etc, and put them in different ad placements. Try different combinations of ad units and ad placements to see which one gives you the best CTR.

[Kay King]

OK, I'll bite.

What are you doing wrong with those sites?

You say you developed them in the past year but the oldest thing I found with a quick search on them was a May post on a very "quiet" forum.

The "star" site doesn't load - and with the possible exception of "DIY" (which is too general on your forum) I don't see evidence of keyword research before choosing a niche...let alone any niche research.

The blog sites seem to be a couple months old at most. They look OK but is there a market for "critters" or "star"?

Adsense isn't magic money - it's a long term strategy that yields some income once a site is well placed and getting targeted traffic. Four years ago, it was easy to make money with adsense - but that has changed with changes in the program itself. It is NOT a high paying strategy for new sites.

Starting a site just to make money from adsense won't work unless you learn niche and keyword research and keep at it for a while. Two months isn't enough and a site that doesn't load at all (star site) gets nothing.

You clearly know how to build a decent blog so why not focus on blogs in good niches and work on them for a few months instead of worrying about a few cents in adsense clicks.

kay

[USEO]

Hi Frank,

I know a bunch of world class affiliates both in the UK & US.

My honest findings? Adsense is a waste of time unless you know what you are doing.

Its far easier to convert visits to cash by sending the traffic to places like Amazon.

You can put Amazon adds on ANYTHING especially in the run up to Xmas and it will convert far more than $100 from 5 sites x 1 year in adsense - especially at Christmas...

If the sites are getting some traffic - stick an Amazon search box on the pages or self optimizing banners...

Regards

Aaron

[jacstone193]

In my opinion adsense should be viewed as a bonus to other methods of monetising a highly targeted niche website or blog. With valuable content that supplies real solutions to real problems.

[johnsamuels]

Telling us about time and amount of domains doesn't help much.

What kind of traffic are you getting? Depending on traffic you either have a problem with ad placement, or traffic generation. I am guessing traffic is your problem.

Learn about SEO, get your site out there. You need people to visit your site to click on the ads, you need to go out and get them. They won't magically appear.

[steveweber]

AdSense is just my hobby, but it is all about keyword research and SEO. You have to have plenty of free search engine traffic to make it work. I see too many people slapping up sites with no thought of how they will get traffic.

Making the site is the easy part. Knowing how to get traffic is the real trick.

[XFactor]

Originally Posted by steveweber

AdSense is just my hobby, but it is all about keyword research and SEO. You have to have plenty of free search engine traffic to make it work. I see too many people slapping up sites with no thought of how they will get traffic.

Making the site is the easy part. Knowing how to get traffic is the real trick.

Care to share? I'm sure the original poster would appreciate your tips.

- John

[xilvenkat]

Hi Frank,
You can use Web CEO to boost your PR. Its FREE and fully functional.
Thanks,
venkat

[WL_Marketing]

Entertainment type sites are unfortunately, just really hard to monetize. It's mostly the same people over and over again and they're not really looking to buy stuff. We have some sites that have over 1 million pageviews per month but at a .10cpm, it just doesn't make much money.

[Tech Girl]

I agree that traffic equates to $$$ when it comes to adsense.

[markanthony04]

Ok, I'm fairly new to all of this buy today I reached $100 after 9 days of my blog launching. I know its not $100 a day but I am well pleased with my efforts so far.
The guys on here know far more than I do but if I can give you one word of advice it is to....
Build your site so it looks like it has value and credibility. If you build it just to show adsense then I dont think it has any long term future. As long as the information is valid, researched, coherant and easy to navigate, then that is half the battle in my humble opinion.

[GeorgR.]

I don't have the biggest success with AdSense either, although i already got checks. It might be good to always see your sites from a visitor's point of view. How often would YOU click on the ads?

AdSense never was the great earner for me..so i target other ways of income, like CB products. I just see a better ROI there.

[dadamson]

It is highly likely that your keyword research and SEO is not up to scratch.

You need to focus on keywords that you are capable of ranking for and bring a decent amount of traffic.

Firstly target very low competition keywords that have sub-1000 searches per month.

Build one page around this keyword and build some targeting backlinks to rank the site through the search engines. Try to aim within the top 3 spots in Google for that keyword.

While this is happening build 5, 10, 15, or 20 more pages targeting similar KWs (based on the time you have to do this).

Do some backlinking and SEO to rank these pages also. Across your pages you should aim for about 10,000 money searches. This would give you some decent traffic to get started with and you should make $100 within a few months.

Rinse and repeat.

There are lots of variables here, but if you follow the above strategy as best you can with easy to target keywords you should have some more success.

Cheers,
Dave

[dadamson]

LOL DAMMIT!! I hope that was useful 2 years later...

[RyanCoisson]

One problem a lot of people trying to make money with adsense have is traffic. They are not getting enough traffic to really be able to test their adsense layouts and designs effectively.

For example if you are only getting 1000 adsense impressions a day vs 50,000.

The cause of this has to normally do with going after too small of a niche. I prefer to go after competitive niches that have a lot of traffic like weight loss or something but niche the site down a bit.

That way I can monetize the site with adsense as well as affiliate or banners.

Hope that helps.

[Cantbedone!]

Dadamson,

It's ok lol. I found it useful!

[Michael55555]

2 sites i clicked on in your profile don't have adsense on em.

[dadamson]

Originally Posted by Michael55555

2 sites i clicked on in your profile don't have adsense on em.

He probably gave up on adsense.... it was 2008

[dadamson]

Originally Posted by Cantbedone!

Dadamson,

It's ok lol. I found it useful!

Lol i'm glad somebody got something from it

[renhoek]

Heh - I checked the urls -they are all dead.

[dadamson]

I guess that is a lesson to us all. Don't get discouraged with your goals or you will become like this guy, a fallen Warrior.

His last activity on the Warrior forum was 13th Oct 2008.

Man, imagine where he would be today if he didn't give up....

He is probably cleaning toilets for a living now... :S

[nettech]

Frank,

The crux of it really comes down to effective keyword research and choice of niche. If you don't do this right then chances are you either hit a niche that is too competitive or a niche that gets little or no searches and therefore a waste of time. I haven't had a chance to look at the URLs in your sig but I noticed a forum. I have several forums I own and I don't make much from them, just a hobby.

Focus on more product based niches that sell physical products and those that have some decent search volume trend throughout the year.

Dave has some very good points above regarding keyword research so definitely to take those on board. Just to add to that, I always look at the competition of the first page of Google to get a gist of how competitive it is (using browser extensions like SEOQuake or SEO for Firefox). Things to look out for are PR of URL and domain, Number of backlinks (URL & Domain), Backlink age and I guess anything else that gives you some kind of idea. After a while you tend to get a knack for this kind of thing and can pretty much identify a good niche...it just takes some experience.

I would suggest that you use a tool like Micro Niche Finder or Market Samurai to give you a little intelligence on types of keywords that you can target or just use the AdWords tool as a start.

Once your initial KW research has been done, the rest shouldnt be as difficult. Create good compelling content of high quality. Something that adds REAL value, upload this, add AdSense just under the main heading and backlink from various sources like Ezine Articles.

Its not a difficult process, its just as difficult as you want to make it....I like to simplify things as much as possible.

@ John (XFactor) - Good to see you here again John, its been a while...lol


Hope it helps


Regards,
Zaheer

[Amys101place]

Originally Posted by nettech

Frank,


@ John (XFactor) - Good to see you here again John, its been a while...lol

I don't think he's back. That post was from 2008.

[Black Hat Cat]

Originally Posted by dadamson

He probably gave up on adsense.... it was 2008

Five sites, one year and less than $100 in earnings tells me he never even got started, lol.

[gtree]

Choose keyword by manual or by softwares and start SEO for that sites...

[achong]

I just no more than $120 a month. hard to get more

[rain21]

I think u have very less traffic and bad ad placement and color blending.. pay your attention for these and u will be earning more than that, at least 100 $ per month

[stenrok]

I agree. A book I used some time ago called The Adsense Code by Joel Comm. It focusses on strategies to increase clicks on ads by various placement, colour methods etc.

I am not an affilliate or related in any way to the promotion of this book. Just thought it might be helpful.

[Intrepreneur]

When I started to concentrate one ONE SITE, I got my first Adsense check.