1st Page of Google and Finally Making Some Adsense Money... and How I got there!!!

[JR9982]

Hi boys and girls,

First of all I would like to thank the many of you who have posted threads on SEO, Article Marketing and link building. It really helped me out and I'm writing this not only to say thanks but to share my experience with anyone who might be interested in hearing it.

I have not made tons of money, in fact I've only made $20 so far. but in the last week I've made $17 of those $20 dollars and I am now in the first page of google for my main keyword and also for other random keywords that I never thought of before.

I am now making at least $1 a day and my traffic has tripled since I got to page 1.

I am by no means a guru, and there are 1000s of people on this site that would run circles around me when it comes to SEO and Adsense, but I have had some small success that should help people who are only a few weeks behind me and who might learn from my MANY mistakes, and my solutions to those mistakes. Again this is what has WORKED FOR ME.

So Here's my story and how I did it:

Details About My Site
I started my site back in late September (2010), it is a sports related site, and I have my 2 word hyphenated keyword in a .com domain.

When I first started this site I knew nothing about SEO or Internet Marketing (however I knew web design, that is what i do for a living, so I can hand code HTML, CSS, and I know some other languages pretty well so that was not a problem for me).

My site is a worpress site using the thesis theme which i customize to my desired look and feel. the first vesion of my theme had a big banner image with another huge background image. I had 2 light gray sidebars on either side. I had a medium 300 x 250 rectangle on the top right (which brought me my first click ever) and Leader board 720x 90 above the header with nav links and archive links on the left side bar.

I do no more than 1 post a week, and each post is not more than 500 words.

Traffic

The first thing that I wanted was for people to see my site, and I read somewhere on WF that youtube videos were great for targeted traffic, so I created videos relating to high profile events in my sport, each week and added the url to my site to the video, and added the live hyper link to the description of the youtube video.

These videos were successful in their own right, I manage to have 12,000 see one of my videos but the max of visitors to my site I got from youtube (at least in 1 day, which is when the videos hit and were most relevant, was 200, even though I still get the occasional youtube visitor from my old videos). This was great to bring people to my site, but I was not making any adsens money.

I did this youtube technique for about month, till mid October, and it managed to get me 15 or so visitor on average (way more the day of the event and the day after, but much less after that). and no clicks.

Article Marketing
I had never heard of article marketing or ezinearticles.com till I read it on here. After some research, I wrote 4 articles on my keywords and submitted them to ezine and I have to say, I am a believer now. I wen up in rank after a few weeks (from page 65 to 32) and I have had at the time a total of 300 clicks from them (it might now sound like much but my articles don't even crack to top 5 of google and the clicks I get are super targeted. I also did the same for hubpages and squidoo. )

I really notice the hike in raking after Implemented blog commenting and started doing yahoo answers, and added more article submission sites. I found blogs relating to my sport (not many 4) which have dofollow links and I commented a few times on there, and I found yahoo answers of people who were asking questions with my keyword in the the question. I answered about 15 questions my first 2 day doing it and 9 were given best answer status. which helps because you link stays on top of the page when someone goes there and is looking for an answer, and your site is the "best answer".

I found that my best yahoo answers were LONG (around 150-200 words, compared to the 2 liners most people give) This got me links and recognized by yahoo, shortly after I was on page 1, spot 1 in yahoo. which is A LOT easier to get to than google.
(note on Y! answers, your links don't go live till you reach level 2, and once you do all your links go live)

Adsense
By this time it is mid November and I am not getting any clicks really, it had been almost 2 months and not even a dollar made. I really felt like giving up.

I decided to make changes to my theme, (again from reading threads of people here) and I decided to and a 180x90 link unit that matched my color scheme and placed it on the left side column. I also added a Large Rectangle 336x280 text unit below every title of every post and every page (it only appears on the first post in the home page) and added 2 a 120 x 600 skyscraper to the right side. I removed my huge graphic from the header and the background and guess what...

These changes dramatically increased my clicks, I am getting at least 3 a day now, and I get a lot more traffic now too so I'm sure that helps.

Page 1 of Google

This goes back to the article marketing, 2.0 sites, and my blog commenting. My site took for ever to get index (I know better now, I just started my second site and got it index in a day.) and I was stuck in the 60th or so page for a while, and after writing those articles and saw the huge jump that I got I added my articles to 30 other submission article sites (got approved to about 20 of them without changing a word) and now according to yahoo site explorer I have over 250 links, and I noticed that one of my articles got picked up on 2 other random sites, and of course my author links went there too. So I might focus on better articles in the future to get more of these freebies.

I am now on page one position 7 for my main 2 word keyword, and position 16 for my 1 word keyword (not bad for having 8 million results in google)

Things I've Learned So Far
Key Word Research:
I honestly did none for this site, which could of been a huge mistake but luckily (and it was pure luck) I picked a keyword that was somewhat easy to get with hard work, and which has 2000 local monthly searches.

But after reading more and learning more I started doing some research, and what some pleople say did not make sense to me. I read on here that you should target keywords that have low "keyword in quotes" competition. My in quotes keyword has 1,000,000 results!

I now believe that the results dont matter too much, it all depends on how well to top guys are optimized, I bought Market Samurai and checked all my competitors on page one and only 2 were "real" completion, most did not have a lot of links linking to them, or in url keywords, or even in the title tags.

In my new site I'm focused more on competition in terms of quality than quantity.

Also my keywords are not buying keywords, they are more for people looking for information rather than to buy something or solve something.

I started this site because I wanted to learn and because I am passionate about the sport, but I think that I can do much better with a different niche now.

I considered closing my site in November, just a week or two after I started making $1 a day, but I kept going cause I love the topic and I have fun reading people's comments, on youtube and my site. I'm glad I did, and I will always probably keep it, it's like my baby now. I guess the point that im trying to make is start with something you really like, and you can push your self further than you can with something like "hat-for-my-pet-iguana.com" or something like that.


Adsense

I am a web designer/developer by trade, I get paid well to make things look amazing... this simply doesnt translate well to adsense money. my original theme had a beautiful background image, with a great banner image it was a really good looking site (sorry for patting my self in the back a little) but it didnt make money.

I read some threads and people were saying that simple few graphics would do the job, that text links not image ads would do better... and guess what, that worked for me. my theme is in version 4 right now, and it is the simplest, uglies and best performing of the 4.

I made it so the blue links stand out and shine, everything else is dull, and I made my post images smalled (200px wide) which seems to have worked.

Youtube

I'll be honest, I didnt always have my own video, so I "borrowed" videos, edit them together and added an cool opening/ending graphic with my url. I used premiere to edit the video and photoshop to create my graphics.

Here's a cool tip:
Add a "kiss", yes a "kiss"...

you can add a "kiss" to any youtube video to download it to your computer and you can edit it.

example: This is my Girlfriends favorite cat video

youtube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8 (add a "kiss" to before the word "youtube")

kissyoutube.com/watch?v=0Bmhjf0rKe8

and it will take you to a page where you can download the video and edit it with your favorite editing software.

I'm not recommending that you take other people's videos or anything like that. I'm just showing you what I did. Also I just recapped sporting events so it's more acceptable I guess?

I don't do videos anymore for 2 reasons, 1 they take at least 2 hours from start to finish (average of 2 min per video) and 2 I would rather just find a nice video someone already did embed it to my site, and save the 2 hours for articles or blog/forum commenting.

Tools I use
So far only one Market Samurai, yes I know, You can get all the info for free with out paying the one time fee of $97 dollars, yes... yes... but it does it so much faster! and time to me is invaluable.

I use it mostly now to check out my competition and who is linking to them and what their anchor links say.

Oh yeah and Wordpress with Thesis theme. Mostly out of habbit from my personal web design jobs.

Articles
You might not be able to tell from reading this post but I hate writing... but unfortunately for me Articles have got me the best results in my SEO efforts and good enough results in clicks over to my site, and minimal results in people taking my articles and putting them on their site. So what does that mean? well it means that it is by far the best method I have found to build links and drive traffic.

I use ezinearticles first, once approved I get them over to my list of about 30 article submission sites, and most get approve in a week and i make changes to a few.

Anchor Text
When linking to your site don't just use the same keyword a million times, add or change it up a bit, from what I read, it makes it more natural to google.

example:
Original Keyword: Iguana Hats
anchor 1:Iguana Hats
anchor 2:Cool Iguana Hats
anchor 3:Iguana Hats on Sale

This will help your rankings, it helped mine.

Things I'm Working On

Moving from #7 to #1 on my 2 word keyword, and get to page 1 from page 3 on my 1 word keyword

I'm starting to work on adding amazon links to my site, and I haven had good results yet, so I'm either going to create a whole new site for it, or no mix the in my content and dont use images. still thinking about that one

I'm also starting to work on my list for my sports site. Once I have any good info worth sharing I will let you guys know.

I'm still making changes to the layout, colors, and placement of ads, but I will update if something worthwhile happens.

Oh and since I know some will ask... how do I get index really fast now? well find a site that get's crawled by google all the time, if found this one and it works great

tagzbook.com

I got indexed super quick, let me know how it works for you.

Conclusion

Just 2 weeks ago I was averaging 20 hits a day and was on god know what page in google only making $0.25 a week if that. After doing the things I explained I got to page 1 I average 150 visitors a day, and I make at least $1 a day.

No great feat in the grand scheme of things, but it does motivate me to go further and learn more. I only wanted to thank those who post on this forum for the great service and knowledge they provide, and I wanted to give a little something back to those who are just a few baby steps behind me.

Feel free to ask questions or comment!

-JR



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2 months ago I created the post avobe to thank you and let you all know my modest success and how I got there. 2 months later there has been more success and new things learned I would like to share.

I am now on the first page of Google in the #1 position and sometimes some of my post breaks the first page aswell, so I will have my main domain name and a second article on google. The funny thing is that my 1 word keyword is what comes up #1, my 2 word keyword comes up #3. I find it funny because most of my link building strategies were geared to my 2 word keyword, yet my 1 word keyword ranks higher.

I increase my ranking bulding more links (articles, blogs, forum comments, and signatures in high PR sites).

A strategy I used was Googling something SUPER competitive like “internet marketing, viagra, and dating; and I found out where their links where coming from (using Market Samurai) and saw which PR3 or higher sites I could leave links to as well.

As for my Adsense, my highest day has now been $12, today I am at $7, and my average is $5… however I still have some bad days like $1 or $2. I still have the same layout and ads, nothing has changed but the number of visitors I get.

My highest day has been 1200 unique visitors but I average around 400. I know exactly how and why I got so many visitors in one day, and I will try to replicate it whenever I can.

What happened was that there was a very controversial news story (totally unrelated to my niche) but I found out that a player from my niche made a comment regarding that issue. I wrote a post about it and it spread like wild fire, it was shared on facebook over 100 times, getting me a ton of traffic in one day. unfortunately adsense was only $5, one of my lowest CTR.

I have now started a facebook page and get at least 3 new “likes” a day. I also started building a list but that has been tough, no one was signing up, I had an optin form on the sidebar and one below each post, and got only 3 signups and there were close to 2000 unique visitors. 3 days ago I decided to try popup domination and to my COMPLETE amazement people started to sign up, today alone I got 10! Those popups always bother me and I have never signed up using a popup, but it’s been working for me.

My next step is to develop my List (email, and Facebook) and market related products to it, but I will wait on that I want to build a relationship with them first and only market quality products to them.

Thanks once again for all the info and the great post many of you have put up,
Can’t wait to get at least $200 from google this month!!!



-------- Update 4-22-2011-------------

Things are still going great, I now started to play with facebook and list building.

I started a facebook fan page around the time I made the last update, and it has been a huge success. at the time of this writing I have 5,278 fans, which is pretty awesome I think.

The first thing I did to promote my page was add friends (to my fan page not my personal page) which are related to my niche. one particular page has Millions of active users. I add comments, like people comments, and people add me. it is that easy.

as a side note, I figured that I was able to add friends really easy since I have a popular topic on my page, so I decided to create a more obscure and specific page and tried doing the same thing. and as I thought, it wasnt as easy, but I did manage to get 268 fans in 3 weeks.

also as another side note, there are services out there that can get you fans, A LOT of them, but they are not responsive, and im not sure why, maybe they are fake profiles, or just uninterested people, maybe in foreign countries, who knows but I know that they don't respond. Just remember, quality over quantity.

As a third side note, not all paying services are bad. I found a guy on Fiverr who has a 30,000 page on my niche, I tried it out and I got around 100 fans. But I knew he had a "quality" facebook fans DIRECTLY related to my niche.

I started by posting on facebook 3 times a day, which worked well, the more people comment and like your post the more fans you get. but I got tired of it so I do it once a day. I post pictures videos, or links to my website.

Facebook is now 20% of my traffic, but according to google analytics and adsense it is my #1 referrer to Adsense.

So it has been paying off.

As I mentioned before I added a pop up opt in box which comes in 25 seconds after the user has been on my page, and it's working great. I'm at about 400 people now. my problem now is finding the right way to monetize it. I have not let the list go cold, I email it once a week with a link to my site with about a 52% click through rate.

any ideas on marketing to 400 sport fans?

Also I have some amazon links on my page, in 3 months I have made $90, not great but it's free money!

Thanks and as always feel free to ask any questions!

[Hustle]

Thats truly an inspiring story, JR!
Congratulations on reaching there

All what I conclude (And I always say that) is right efforts in right directions pay off...
Hard work never goes wasted, people...

Cheers,
Sarim.

[Buyseech]

Hi JR9982,

its nice to hear these "starting out" success stories. I remember when I was hopping around when I got my first click, than my first 1$ than my first 10$ day etc. All were great and kept me motivated to continue on this journey.

Just remember the great feeling you got with these 17$ you just made and it will guide you forward to bigger and better things.

Sincerely, Buyseech

[goclarkanderson]

Great story. I'm working hard to get there. I have a website that I'd like to share with everyone here.
Its basically a free article submission and translation website. You submit your articles and the website automatically translates it to 56 different languages of the world. What is the result? Your article is reviewed by a diverse audience and you get 56 additional one-way links to each article submission.
Its great. Here it is:

Article Translation Free Article Submission Website

[BradRich]

Is adsense your only profit center or are you promoting affiliate products as well? Do you keep adsense on the side or sneak it between content?

[essex14]

If you get enough traffic look to monitizing it a different way.

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by essex14

If you get enough traffic look to monitizing it a different way.

Yeah, I agree i think that for my niche amazon might be good.

Originally Posted by BradRich

Is adsense your only profit center or are you promoting affiliate products as well? Do you keep adsense on the side or sneak it between content?

Adsense is my main source at the moment but as I mentioned I'm working in Amazon and starting a list.

I have a link unit on the left column next to the navigation, and and big text rectangle in the content, and a skyscraper image on the right column.

Originally Posted by Buyseech

Hi JR9982,

its nice to hear these "starting out" success stories. I remember when I was hopping around when I got my first click, than my first 1$ than my first 10$ day etc. All were great and kept me motivated to continue on this journey.

Just remember the great feeling you got with these 17$ you just made and it will guide you forward to bigger and better things.

Sincerely, Buyseech

It's those little milestones that make the big differences...

Originally Posted by Sarim

Thats truly an inspiring story, JR!
Congratulations on reaching there

All what I conclude (And I always say that) is right efforts in right directions pay off...
Hard work never goes wasted, people...

Cheers,
Sarim.

Couldn't agree more!

[dwzemens]

Great article and great story. Quick question: How do you put a link or signature in your Yahoo Answers reply?

[flx89]

IM it's like a web , it's very complicated , and there are lot of ways to make more money online . By the way , what is your CPC?

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by dwzemens

Great article and great story. Quick question: How do you put a link or signature in your Yahoo Answers reply?

just put the http : // URL. they wont be live links until you make it to level 2. they have this point system and after you reach a certain number of points you get to level 2. it took me 3 days to get to level 2. I answered a whole bunch of easy dumb questions about 13 year old girls and their boyfriends and when was miley cyrus' birthday, not just questions about my niche, I wanted to get to level 2, so that's what I had to do.

Also stay on the main page and just keep hitting refresh and you will see to the left all the new questions as they come in, most are not even a minute old. I found that if you answer first and it's a good answer, chances are that no one else will comment, or it wont be as good and you get selected as best answer which keeps you on top of the page and gives you more points to get to level 2 faster. (I didnt bother with my URL to the non niche questions, they were just for me to level up)

I actually got 1 question while doing this refresh method with my keyword in! I couldnt believe it, lol, after answering like 10 dumb questions about who knows what, my keyword question came up, and got a best answer for that one too!

[yukon]

Originally Posted by JR9982

I read some threads and people were saying that simple few graphics would do the job, that text links not image ads would do better... and guess what, that worked for me. my theme is in version 4 right now, and it is the simplest, uglies and best performing of the 4.

I made it so the blue links stand out and shine, everything else is dull, and I made my post images smalled (200px wide) which seems to have worked.

-JR

A simple theme is one of the best tips for anyone that is new to Adsense, IMO.

I've had several sites & tested several themes for each of those sites. The Adsense clicks always happen with simple, basic looking themes.

My latest site has a single Adsense Text Ad per page, no external links, with a simple free WP-Theme & averages around 10% CTR on the Adsense Text Ads.

Good luck & keep testing everthing, just make a note of what is working & always keep a backup of the old working Theme while testing new things.

[4morereferrals]

Articles
You might not be able to tell from reading this post but I hate writing... but unfortunately for me Articles have got me the best results in my SEO efforts and good enough results in clicks over to my site, and minimal results in people taking my articles and putting them on their site. So what does that mean? well it means that it is by far the best method I have found to build links and drive traffic.

Unique content - Textbroker.com - godsend ... 2-3 star quality for 300 - 400 word articles takes < 48 hrs and is great for getting sites - indexed ranked and / or filled out. $7-15 an article... shweeet.

Wait till you combine other article networks like Niche Press Platinum to your arsenal to post the spun versions for links and or just adding a backlinking service to the ol arsenal of page #1 tactics.

Congrats and good luck ... now - wait till your #1 on page 1 :-)

Scale it mate ...

90% of failure is the STARTING ... keep up the momentum!

[sbraill]

Thanks for taking the time to share that with us. It's all gotta start somewhere and a solid foundation and consistency is better than any quick money scheme.
Congrats to ya!
Sher

[taffiliae]

QUALITY post JR. Many good points made.

Keep taking ACTION!

Perhaps, an up date when you..........

[Azlan]

Very quality post.

Just keep on taking action and focus....

Congrats...

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by Azlan

Very quality post.

Just keep on taking action and focus....

Congrats...

Originally Posted by taffiliae

QUALITY post JR. Many good points made.

Keep taking ACTION!

Perhaps, an up date when you..........

Thanks!!! and I will Update

[JR9982]

I have an update!

[F1SEO]

Thanks for sharing the info JR9982.

I earn about $100/month from Adsense, and while that's not amazing it pays for fuel and phones so it's not bad. My biggest earners out of that are sites with genuine content that attracts visitors naturally, whereas the sites I took a lot less time on seemed to have done nothing.

I'm a bit wary of putting all focus on Adsense because it depends on Google, and as we are seeing a change in Google algo can mash things around.

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by jsfunstuff

what a great story i really like the method

Thanks, I'm glad you like it

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by F1SEO

Thanks for sharing the info JR9982.

I earn about $100/month from Adsense, and while that's not amazing it pays for fuel and phones so it's not bad. My biggest earners out of that are sites with genuine content that attracts visitors naturally, whereas the sites I took a lot less time on seemed to have done nothing.

I'm a bit wary of putting all focus on Adsense because it depends on Google, and as we are seeing a change in Google algo can mash things around.

I know what you mean, that is why im working on building my email and facebook lists, so if google decides to kick me out of adsense I can have those loayal readers, and re-direct them to a new site or a new offer.

I'm have aslo started to play around with some CPA stuff... we'll see where that goes.

[Dartma]

This is the first post I read on this forum, thank you for sharing. It was very helpful and also was inspiring. Awesome post!

[seoman76]

Lovely story, congrats with your results. It's unbeleivable that people love plain / ugly designs instead of sites where's really put some work into. Also nice to hear that this article and blog strategy works out so well. Keep up the good work!

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by Dartma

This is the first post I read on this forum, thank you for sharing. It was very helpful and also was inspiring. Awesome post!

Thanks,

I'm glad I was able to help. Feel free to ask any questions if you have any!

[calfred]

Wow, good to see you post your efforts and documenting it here for everyone to see.

Now you can't afford to skip the work! If you do, the whole warrior forum will know about it!

We are watching you!

Congrats on your success there.

AdSense is all about getting a page ranked highly enough to get clicks (which leads to dollars).

But in all seriousness, AdSense is the number one business that benefits DIRECTLY from SCALING. This means having more top ranked sites, more writers, more backlinks.

In this case, the more you have what I described in the previous paragraph, the more money you'll make.

Please don't take it as you gotta have more in everything! Just those 3; more sites, more writers, more backlinks.

[Goatboy]

I know exactly what you mean about a surge in traffic not translating into additional Adsense money. I have experienced the same situation when one of my blogs was mentioned on a large forum. Traffic to that blog multiplied by a factor of 10 or 15 for several days and then eventually tapered off. During that time the Adsense revenues stayed exactly the same as they always are. None of the visitors converted, because they weren't there to buy, they were there to get the free information that the website provides, which is fine by me.

On the other hand, when that spike occurred I noticed that Google immediately treated me differently. All of the additional traffic, combined with who knows how many links embedded within that other forum, caused Google to crawl almost all of my site and update most of my pages in its database. Shortly after I noticed the Adsense money began to rise slightly, and with this last algo change the Adsense has tripled.

[Spradle]

Wow, I loved reading every part of your story. I'm where you were about a million page ranks ago

[HaydenR]

Wow.. congratulations.. nothing like having that first small taste of success.. keep going and you'll be raking in the big bucks in no time.

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by seoman76

Lovely story, congrats with your results. It's unbeleivable that people love plain / ugly designs instead of sites where's really put some work into. Also nice to hear that this article and blog strategy works out so well. Keep up the good work!

You know, I'm not really sure what it is, but I think that it is the simplicity of it all you know. no distracting images, or crazy colors, just plain and simple, which makes the Google adsense links stand out like a sore thumb.

I was actually talking to a friend about a similar topic, and i was telling him how Facebook is much simpler and cleaner than myspace. and that might have something to do with the way people perceive it and their willingness to subscribe.

If you go to their respective pages you will see that the Facebook home page is an optin form really. really simple, you can't get confused on what to do. no crazy images, no distracting text. Just plain and simple, it tells you what it offers and how to get it.

My space on the other hand is a lot more confusing and it has about 40 different images, and about 50 links you can click on.

obviously that is not the defining factor to Facebook's success, but I bet that it has something to do with it. after all it is the most filled out optin form in the planet... over 500 million and counting. I read somewhere that by 2012 they would have reached a BILLION subscribers!

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by Goatboy

I know exactly what you mean about a surge in traffic not translating into additional Adsense money. I have experienced the same situation when one of my blogs was mentioned on a large forum. Traffic to that blog multiplied by a factor of 10 or 15 for several days and then eventually tapered off. During that time the Adsense revenues stayed exactly the same as they always are. None of the visitors converted, because they weren't there to buy, they were there to get the free information that the website provides, which is fine by me.

On the other hand, when that spike occurred I noticed that Google immediately treated me differently. All of the additional traffic, combined with who knows how many links embedded within that other forum, caused Google to crawl almost all of my site and update most of my pages in its database. Shortly after I noticed the Adsense money began to rise slightly, and with this last algo change the Adsense has tripled.

You're absolutely right, the same thing happened to me. I noticed that I got a lot of links from social media sites and forums, so I noticed a huge jump in rankings for other keywords as well, adsense got a little better as you mentioned.

[WannabeIMR]

This is great to hear being an absolute beginner to adsense my self.

Good luck to you!

[RossChops]

Good to hear your story! Make sure you keep updating this thread as you hit bif milestone markets like $100 and $1000!

[actionbiz]

Thank you for posting your run down on how you got your site ranking. O am going to give the tagzbook a try. It seems it is taking quite a bit longer for Google to index sites on their own without doing anything so I was searcing for someone with a simple suggestion.
I don't like going after to many backlinks and bookmarks right out of the gate seems to me Google has a problem if you have 100 bookmarks and backlinks and no traffic to your site yet.
Anyway thanks again for the rundown.
Barry
375

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by actionbiz

Thank you for posting your run down on how you got your site ranking. O am going to give the tagzbook a try. It seems it is taking quite a bit longer for Google to index sites on their own without doing anything so I was searcing for someone with a simple suggestion.
I don't like going after to many backlinks and bookmarks right out of the gate seems to me Google has a problem if you have 100 bookmarks and backlinks and no traffic to your site yet.
Anyway thanks again for the rundown.
Barry
375

No problem Barry,

by the way I no longer use tagzbook, you can do the same with digg, stumbleuppon, and twitter. Those 3 have been working good for me.

tagzbook was good, but the site stopped working for me a few times I wanted to use it, so I don't bother anymore.

By adding a social plugin to my site, I just click on the buttons when I post a new article. I have a fan page on facebook, so usually by posting it there people "like" it or re-post it. that get's things indexed fast too.

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by WannabeIMR

This is great to hear being an absolute beginner to adsense my self.

Good luck to you!

thanks! if you have any questions let me know

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by RossChops

Good to hear your story! Make sure you keep updating this thread as you hit bif milestone markets like $100 and $1000!

I sure will thanks!

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by HaydenR

Wow.. congratulations.. nothing like having that first small taste of success.. keep going and you'll be raking in the big bucks in no time.

Thank You,

it is amazing when you look back at the end of the month statements:

first month not even a dollar, the second month, 2 or so dollars, next month over $20... it just keeps rolling, every month in better than the next. I had my biggest adsense month in February with close to $200. I would of broke $200 if it were a 31 day month...

[Alileonard]

Nice story, thank you to share it! Ihave some small sites to get up and I tried out xrumer profile links, scrapebox commenting, bookmarking (with different accounts and IPs) I pinged every page of my website to about 3000 whois, statistics and so on services - but still can´t catch up to the first page of google with two of my best keywords that stuck like glue on page 2 (Position 12 and 11... argh!). If I could make it on the first site with thes that would triple my traffic!

Article marketing won´t work because that site is all in german and there are only a very few artikelsites out in the german market and most of them are no follow. There are no videos that I could create for this and commenting doesn´t bring that effect. So what else could I do? More content for the site itsself? Would be suidoo and hubpages a good way? Isn´t there something else?
Any tipps would be very nice!

Cheers, Ali

[walksonthebeach]

hard work truly pays off!

[JamesMSpacey]

Nice one mate and thanks for sharing. I love stories like these and could read them all day.

Just a quick comment on something you said in particular...

Originally Posted by JR9982

Article Marketing
...I am a believer now.

I know how that feels. I got my 'revelation' on article links when I checked EZA and found a heap of links that were broken in my articles (I'd sold these sites). I went through them and and just replaced them with a link to a crappy 2 page blogger site I had. I then did the same in GoArticles and Hubpages for the same links. In 2 weeks the site went from non-existent to #1 for a brand name keyword above the offical brand site. I did absolutely nothing else. It's since dropped to #2, but has pulled $20-$30/mth Adsense every month from that 15 minutes of editing.

jms

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by Alileonard

Nice story, thank you to share it! Ihave some small sites to get up and I tried out xrumer profile links, scrapebox commenting, bookmarking (with different accounts and IPs) I pinged every page of my website to about 3000 whois, statistics and so on services - but still can´t catch up to the first page of google with two of my best keywords that stuck like glue on page 2 (Position 12 and 11... argh!). If I could make it on the first site with thes that would triple my traffic!

Article marketing won´t work because that site is all in german and there are only a very few artikelsites out in the german market and most of them are no follow. There are no videos that I could create for this and commenting doesn´t bring that effect. So what else could I do? More content for the site itsself? Would be suidoo and hubpages a good way? Isn´t there something else?
Any tipps would be very nice!

Cheers, Ali

Hey Ali,

From what I have learned you need to do certain things to be in the first page of google (at least in a medium size market).

There are no easy fixes, or "one-click" solutions. There are smart strategies, and theories you can follow to expedite the LONG process, but it is all hard (smart) work.

One thing you can do is to have as many high quality links pointing back to your site as possible.

So article marketing would work for your backlinking efforts, but obviously not for direct traffic. just one article can get you at least 20 back links by submitting it to different sites.

to get links "spy" on people who are successful, one thing I did with Market Samurai was to spy on people ranking in EXTREMELY competitive niches and try to see where their links where coming from and try to add mine (well on PR3 sites or higher) It took me at least a week to get 100 links, but I think they were worth while and ultimately got me where I wanted to go.

Also to be number 1 you need fresh good content (remember, content is king) If your sites are in German then this should be a piece of cake. Find English related websites, read an article, and write it from memory as best you can in German, and you will have a brand new *original* post in the eyes of google.

I'm bilingual and I have done it the other way around. Translating things into English.

You could also create a Facebook fan page, and do this dirty little secret I just learnt. you need to go into facebook, create a fan page, use facebook as the fan page (not your personal profile), write a "Note" (you know that little app on the left side of every page) about your site (the works, catchy headline, good content, about 3 lines, and a link to your site)

now since you have no fans yet (assuming you just built your page) then who in the world is going to see this? well if you look in the Note's options there is a tag feature, much like the photo tag feature, where you click on someone face and add their name and the picture you tag shows on their wall for their friends to see.) Well the notes tag feauture is very similar, but instead of "tagging" a friend you can tag another fan page (of the same or similar niche), ideally one with thousands of fans.

Once you tage them and submit the note the post will appear on ALL your tagged pages fan's wall's, so a potential of getting a lot of targeted traffic to your site.

but be careful not to spam, and DONT do it too often. some fan page owners hate this. so you might want to contact them and ask first. up to you.

But back to your question, being on the first page requires time, and doing the right type of work, I got to the first page, then went back to the second several times before I staid on top.

Remember Google recently changed their algorithm to make "low quality" sites rank lower, so concentrate on making a quality site much more than anything else.

thanks!

JR

PS
you cannot make a youtube video on your niche, really?

I've see an annaconda eat a hippo on there... I doubt you can't find something.

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by JamesMSpacey

Nice one mate and thanks for sharing. I love stories like these and could read them all day.

Just a quick comment on something you said in particular...



I know how that feels. I got my 'revelation' on article links when I checked EZA and found a heap of links that were broken in my articles (I'd sold these sites). I went through them and and just replaced them with a link to a crappy 2 page blogger site I had. I then did the same in GoArticles and Hubpages for the same links. In 2 weeks the site went from non-existent to #1 for a brand name keyword above the offical brand site. I did absolutely nothing else. It's since dropped to #2, but has pulled $20-$30/mth Adsense every month from that 15 minutes of editing.

jms

James,

that is amazing, and I take my hat off to you sir.

Article marketing is awesome. You've just got to find a way of making it work for you.

and Thank You for you comment!

[VOnline]

Great job and great tips!
Glad to see you are still working on it now. How are you doing now and how much has that $20 changed?

[JR9982]

Originally Posted by VOnline

Great job and great tips!
Glad to see you are still working on it now. How are you doing now and how much has that $20 changed?

VO online,

thanks! I'm doing well, if I don't make $20 in 5 days now (on that particular site) it's a bad times!

I have several other sites now, but I still use that one to test strategies. Like this weekend, I started a new goal, getting as much facebook traffic as I do from google. I'm was up till late hours working on facebook, and its paying off, I've added 200 fans to my page from 11pm to 1 am hours!

facebook is amazing. just trying to learn the ropes and turn fans into traffic and traffic into money.

I love my niche site. It is about something im passionate about and it is my first "successful" site, it is not perfect by any means, but that site has thought me A LOT!


Thanks,

JR

[JR9982]

Thanks for all your questions and comments!