The $100/day AdSense Challenge

[4morereferrals]

Originally Posted by Cantbedone!

33Cents..

Just wanted to say congrats on the sustained progress and thanks for continuing to keep us posted. I've been following since you started the "challenge". I'm sort of a fan of the themed authority adsense model from xfactors latest.

Your stats and numbers are very interesting and encouraging. I have a similar project going right now. My methods are a little different and my progress is much slower but it is picking up. I did some backlinking and finally got my main page on the first page of google for a keyword with 10k exact globals. My traffic went from about 30 visitors per day to about 150 per day so I'm pretty happy about that.

Ive been trying that concept out too .... 50-60 + posts/pages ...

Using Click Bumps Xfactored "authority model" themes and layouts.

Decent serps and good traffics - but the CTR is just maddeningly CRAPPY.

[Cantbedone!]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

Ive been trying that concept out too .... 50-60 + posts/pages ...

Using Click Bumps Xfactored "authority model" themes and layouts.

Decent serps and good traffics - but the CTR is just maddeningly CRAPPY.

Yeah, my ctr is abysmal. Usually below 1%. I think that it is because most of my traffic is coming from random longtail phrases rather than targeted keywords. I guess I need to focus each and every page on targeted keywords. I was experimenting with mass content which is mostly user generated and not always high quality or necessarily seo'd or even keyword targeted. It helped me get a lot more traffic but unfortunately, it brings horrible ctr.

I will likely have to rewrite everything or just write my own stuff to begin with if I want to get decent clickthroughs. So far, the only pages that are even close to ranking are ones that I wrote myself with good on page seo and backlinks. That is also likely where my few clicks are coming from as well.

I guess there is no way around it folks. If you want decent clickthroughs and traffic, you need tons of highly targeted original content which means lots of time or money to outsource.

[TryBPO]

Originally Posted by 4morereferrals

Great Thread - Nice Detail - Appreciated

This is both encouraging and disheartening all in the same vein ...

I have 2 sites both on page #1 now - barely eeking out $1 - $2 a day.

18 days total having adsense ads live - I dont add the ad blocks till they rank so ...

KW #1 - Ranked #3 | Exact Local Search = 18k | avg CPC $1.65

Jan 13 - 31 / 601 Page Views | 62 clicks | 10.xx% ctr | avg cpc $.15 | < $10 earnings


KW #2 - Ranked #6 | Exact Local = 15k | avg CPC $22

Jan 13 - 31 | 474 Pageviews | 19 clicks | 4% ctr | cpc $.47 | < $10 earned


KW 1 = health issues - 11 pages content 3 yrs old PR2 - was abandoned site - repurposed and re seo'd for this adsense niche

KW 2 = popular software and electronics niche [ could be a huge authority niche site and likely will ultimately be that ] 10 pages of content so far review related and info tutorial related.

Any ideas why Im getting such low value clicks? Seems as if these sites should be rockin waaaay harder.

Adsense newb - < 60 days into this journey ...

I'm a little late to answer this...but one of the things we've noticed is that a KW that the GKT shows as having a high CPC doesn't necessarily translate. This is ESPECIALLY true if that keyword has a very low number of advertisers.

You can somewhat discount cpc with the GKT and just use it as a "range"...but if there are very few advertisers for that keyword you can throw the estimated cpc out the window, in our opinion.

Even if it's a lower cpc...try to stick with keywords that have plenty of advertisers. It helps if one or two drop out and you know it's a competitive KW.

[smr1968]

Originally Posted by Cantbedone!

Yeah, my ctr is abysmal. Usually below 1%. I think that it is because most of my traffic is coming from random longtail phrases rather than targeted keywords. I guess I need to focus each and every page on targeted keywords. I was experimenting with mass content which is mostly user generated and not always high quality or necessarily seo'd or even keyword targeted. It helped me get a lot more traffic but unfortunately, it brings horrible ctr.

I will likely have to rewrite everything or just write my own stuff to begin with if I want to get decent clickthroughs. So far, the only pages that are even close to ranking are ones that I wrote myself with good on page seo and backlinks. That is also likely where my few clicks are coming from as well.

I guess there is no way around it folks. If you want decent clickthroughs and traffic, you need tons of highly targeted original content which means lots of time or money to outsource.

Here's my opinion FWIW.

The OP is obviously getting most of his traffic from longtail keywords, and in reality, unless you pick extremely low comp keyword phrases, you're not likely to rank without backlinks UNLESS you write such high quality articles that loads of people backlink to them from good quality sites.

Two choices. Build targetted pages and backlink the hell out of them for as long as it takes, OR trhow so many pages up that you are going to rank for longtails only.

In reality, that;s what it's supposed to be4 about anyway. You build a page, people like it and link to it. You get found for whatever random phrases you rank for. Sure, backlink building is what we do, but it's not the real way Google want it to be is it?

I have a site. I guess it was a bit of luck when I got it, as the main KW only gets 1600 exact match local searches per month. But, it gets 80 cents - $1 per click, and is making over $1000 pm with around 50 pages. It ranks No1 for the main KW phrase, but when I looked at the stats, the site is only getting found for that phrase 11% of the time. It's getting found for other pages target words, but MOST of the hits are for random longtail words.

This site makes $50-60 a day sometimes with only 200-250 page impressions per day. More like that please.

I think the thing to do is do what you like. If it's writing......write....a lot. I see mto think that was pretty much what Xfactor used to do. 1 new page, 1 article backlink to EZA, then carry on. He had 10000 pages or so online and made around $1000 per day at times. I have 500 pages online and average around $150 a day from adsense. Also, some (probably 100) of those 500 pages are Amazon reviews only, no adsense.

On backlinking, it's a bit hit and miss. I have worked like crap to rank some pages and am well outranked by pages with a handful of backlinks only, and no real authority from those links either......go figure.

The name of this game IMHO is to focu on what you can control. You CAN control the quality of your article, and how many pages you write. Backlinking is something of an unknown quantity, you can never be sure if or when the effort will produce the results you desire.

Another idea is to forget these 3-500 word content pages. Write less pages, but throw up 1500 word, authority articles with lots of good LSI content. It's less work on backlinking (if you do any), and you'll get found for more longtails, AND you can do a good job of writing a decent piece on the subject matter.

Definitely more than one way to skin a cat

Cheers

[JeromyS]

Good challenge!
It is kind of funny. I had a bunch of websites when I first started in IM world and some had Adsense on them. As I improved, I kind of abandoned many of these sites. Years later, I discovered I was making money with Adsense....but from where? I did some searching through my Google account and discovered it was all coming from one website. It was even a cookie cutter site! Turned out it was because of the domain name, exact match on a fairly highly searched keyword. The site had other revenue sources built in, but it was just adsense that was working. Unfortunately I let that domain expire....I really should re-register it.

Exact match domains do make a big difference in this type of money maker.

Cheers!

[snubi]

This thread has inspired me to make an authority site myself. Thank you

[Shaon Sha]

Wonderful thread....

All the best for your challenge..

Shaon

[Cantbedone!]

Any updates for June or July?

Your numbers still amaze me and I can only image how well its doing now.

My own site has grown a bit as well. It gets about 250 visitors per day now in its 7th month but my adsense income is nowhere near that $10 per day threshold yet. I'm averaging about $2 per day now but it seems to go up a little bit every month. I'm finally seeing sustained progress so all in all I am happy. Time to scale up and hit that $1000 per month goal. It doesn't seem so impossible anymore.

I'm thinking of systematically rewriting all my user submitted articles to make them more unique and more keyword targeted. I have nearly 1000 pages of content but 90% of it is not very optimized or keyword targeted and gets only obscure long tail traffic. Rewriting it will obviously take me a looong time. On the bright side, my ctr is averaging between 2% and 5% so that is much better than it used to be.

Oh I just recently checked and my site has gone from PR0 to PR2 so that was pretty motivating.

Good luck to you. Hope to hear an update soon.

[Cantbedone!]

@ 33cents...


I am also quite curious about your keyword research. I typically shoot for anything with global monthly search count (exact) of between 1500-10k. I do this because I was also backlinking like mad for the competitive ones.

I want to stop all this time consuming self backlinking for the most part and focus on content going forward. I would like to know what ranges you target with the "no backlinking" strategy. Your pages seem to be generating pretty good traffic so whatever you are doing seems to work pretty well.

[33centsaday]

Cantbedone!, July set a new earnings high for a single month at $261.22 and a new daily high of $22.47. August set a new daily traffic high of 175 uniques. This despite that fact that I've done practically nothing with this site in the last 3 months.

I haven't done any keyword research in ages either. When I was still regularly adding content it was all just long tails for a main keyword or two. What I've ended up with is traffic that's very spread out. 322 pages generate 8-9,000 pageviews per month from about 1,600 keyword phrases. The #1 most used keyword only accounts for 3% of total traffic.