The $100/day AdSense Challenge

[33centsaday]

Last week I had my first website break the $1/day mark in adsense revenue. If you’ve ever tried to make money online you know that this is no easy task. In fact, it took nearly 2 years for me to reach this point! After a lot of analysis I think I have some idea of what worked and what didn’t. So I’m setting myself a challenge–to push that website to the $100/day mark.

I’ll be documenting my progress on the blog in my sig and in this thread. The blog includes pics that I haven't attached here.


Benchmarking

To give you a better idea of the position I’m starting this challenge from here are a few statistics.


1. As of today the website ranks 60th worldwide on Google for its most-searched-for keyword according to Search Engine Genie.


2. Site usage statistics for the week of December 13-19 2010 during which the site made its record $1+/day average adsense revenue: 122 visits, 459 pageviews, 3.76 pages/visit, 42.62% bounce rate, 00:01:31 average time on site, 90% new visits.


3. Traffic sources were divided up as follows: 86% search engines, 9% referring sites, 4% direct traffic. Also of note is that 86% of the traffic came from Canada while 10% came from the US. This is one statistic in particular that I expect to change drastically as one of my goals is to add a large amount of US-specific content to the site.


Ground Rules for the Challenge

1. No paid traffic. This is partly because I don’t have the money to spend, but mostly because I don’t want to try to figure out arbitrage between PPC or PPV advertising and AdSense.


2. Part of the challenge is to force myself to add new content (at least 1 page) every day.


3. While the ultimate goal is to reach $100/day I’ll be keeping track of milestones along the way like: new peak revenue for one day/week/month, as well as new averages like $2/day, $5/day, $10/day etc.


4. I’ll also post updates on traffic statistics and search engine rankings.


Pictures for this update can be found at The $100/Day AdSense Challenge

[inlecture]

Good luck on your challenge,

I will be sure to post some of my own challenges and how I overcome some of them once i get up and running myself.

Again,

Good luck and best wishes with your site

[Effective Marketing]

Your story will inspire Adsense admirers including myself.

[superSEO2011]

Good luck, I will be watching to see how you do!

[Kay King]

Problem is - this should have been posted in the right sector here

Member Contests & Challenges

[Dan B Rusu]

Hey,

Good luck on the challenge. This looks like a great project that you and us here on Warrior can learn alot from.

A couple things I'd like to recommend if I could:

1. A 6% click-through rate is good, but depending on the topic of the site, you can do much better. I dont do much adsense monetization anymore, but the sites I've got on adsense from the past hit between 10-30% CTR on average.

Here's a clip:




2. You said you're trying to post an article/day. Are you shooting for ranking for 1 or 2 main keywords or for a huge range of keywords in your niche?

Good luck!

[Mike Morgan.]

Good luck !

I wish you all the best .

[vijay08]

Best of luck Guy.

[TMWeb]

Good luck.
I will be watcing your progres :-)

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by Kay King

Problem is - this should have been posted in the right sector here

Member Contests & Challenges

Except that I don't have 200 posts to start a challenge and this is a challenge to me not other people. If others want to challenge themselves because of this that's great though.

Thanks to everyone for your words of encouragement. And a special thanks to kingofseo and Daniel7ruru for the inspiration.

A 6% click-through rate is good, but depending on the topic of the site, you can do much better. I dont do much adsense monetization anymore, but the sites I've got on adsense from the past hit between 10-30% CTR on average.

Yes, CTR is one stat I'm really hoping to improve. If you have any suggestions I'm more than interested. I do have quite a few days where the CTR is between 10-20%, but then I have other days where it's 0%.

You said you're trying to post an article/day. Are you shooting for ranking for 1 or 2 main keywords or for a huge range of keywords in your niche?

As cool as it would be to reach the top spot for the main keyword for the site (that keyword appears on virtually every page) it's not my main focus. That keyword (the one that the site ranks 60th for) draws 23% of visitors. The other 77% come from over 250 different search terms that I'm not specifically targeting.

[33centsaday]

I’m kicking off the new year right with a summary of results for December 2010, an update on where I’m at with the $100/day AdSense Challenge, and a look ahead at my plans and goals going forward.

December 2010 – the challenge begins
If you’ll remember way back on December 22nd 2010 I decided to publicly challenge myself to turn my first site to earn $1/day from adsense into my first site to earn $100/day. I’m doing this without spending any money on advertising so other than hosting fees it should be pretty much pure profit. So how have I done so far?

Rankings
As of today my site has moved up from 60th to 30th in the world rankings on google for its most-searched keyword which accounted for 21% of all visits. And as a total during December the site was found through 291 keywords. The site ranks on page-one for many of these keywords although as of yet I haven’t found any where it’s in the top spot.

Traffic
A total of 623 visits for the month generated 1,225 pageviews for adsense. Traffic and earnings were low at the start of the month and reached new highs after I started this challenge and began adding new content.

Content
As part of the challenge I wanted to make sure I started adding to the site a minimum of 1 page of new content daily. In the 10 days since the challenge began I’ve managed to add 22 new pages so I’m pretty excited about that! Nearly all of these pages have been indexed according to webmaster tools and I’m seeing search engine traffic for many of the new keywords these pages are built around so I know that’s working.

Click through rate
Unfortunately I won’t be updating you on CTR since I found out it’s against adsense rules. However I will say that after changing the theme and placing 3 ad units more aggressively around my content, my CTR more than doubled from the 27th of the month and it has been holding at the new levels since. I’ve also set up custom channels for each ad unit so I’ll be able to track which position is performing best.

Earnings
The site enjoyed a new peak day and month. The highest earning day was $4.23. And December is the highest earning month in the history of this site at $31.09. Probably the most exciting part of this is that earnings grew so much with the new content and ad placements that it managed to push the daily average for the entire month passed the $1/day mark. As you can see from this chart:

[see blog for pics]

And here are the exact numbers including eCPM:

[see blog for pics]

Although these numbers are very early it at least gives me some idea of what I need to shoot for to achieve my ultimate goal. If they hold I’ll need roughly 4,000 impressions a day to reach my $100 a day goal. Seems a long way off right now so I’ll outline my shorter term goals below.

Goals for January 2011
1. Hit the payout threshold by the end of the month. That means I need to make a bit more than double what I made in December.

2. Continue creating at least 1 new page of content daily.

3. Begin expanding my content into US-specific keywords.

4. Increase the total number of keywords used to find the site to 500 for an ever-broader traffic base.


Pictures for this update can be found at AdSense Challenge December 2010 Summary

[Look4VGames]

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

I’m kicking off the new year right with a summary of results for December 2010, an update on where I’m at with the $100/day AdSense Challenge, and a look ahead at my plans and goals going forward.

December 2010 – the challenge begins
If you’ll remember way back on December 22nd 2010 I decided to publicly challenge myself to turn my first site to earn $1/day from adsense into my first site to earn $100/day. I’m doing this without spending any money on advertising so other than hosting fees it should be pretty much pure profit. So how have I done so far?

Rankings
As of today my site has moved up from 60th to 30th in the world rankings on google for its most-searched keyword which accounted for 21% of all visits. And as a total during December the site was found through 291 keywords. The site ranks on page-one for many of these keywords although as of yet I haven’t found any where it’s in the top spot.

Traffic
A total of 623 visits for the month generated 1,225 pageviews for adsense. Traffic and earnings were low at the start of the month and reached new highs after I started this challenge and began adding new content.

Content
As part of the challenge I wanted to make sure I started adding to the site a minimum of 1 page of new content daily. In the 10 days since the challenge began I’ve managed to add 22 new pages so I’m pretty excited about that! Nearly all of these pages have been indexed according to webmaster tools and I’m seeing search engine traffic for many of the new keywords these pages are built around so I know that’s working.

Click through rate
Unfortunately I won’t be updating you on CTR since I found out it’s against adsense rules. However I will say that after changing the theme and placing 3 ad units more aggressively around my content, my CTR more than doubled from the 27th of the month and it has been holding at the new levels since. I’ve also set up custom channels for each ad unit so I’ll be able to track which position is performing best.

Earnings
The site enjoyed a new peak day and month. The highest earning day was $4.23. And December is the highest earning month in the history of this site at $31.09. Probably the most exciting part of this is that earnings grew so much with the new content and ad placements that it managed to push the daily average for the entire month passed the $1/day mark. As you can see from this chart:

[see blog for pics]

And here are the exact numbers including eCPM:

[see blog for pics]

Although these numbers are very early it at least gives me some idea of what I need to shoot for to achieve my ultimate goal. If they hold I’ll need roughly 4,000 impressions a day to reach my $100 a day goal. Seems a long way off right now so I’ll outline my shorter term goals below.

Goals for January 2011
1. Hit the payout threshold by the end of the month. That means I need to make a bit more than double what I made in December.

2. Continue creating at least 1 new page of content daily.

3. Begin expanding my content into US-specific keywords.

4. Increase the total number of keywords used to find the site to 500 for an ever-broader traffic base.


Pictures for this update can be found at AdSense Challenge December 2010 Summary

You can do it if you stick with it, just dont give up

[Bremaine]

Good luck my friend, I'd like to do something like this myself to help with expenses and such. You seem to be making a small amount, but it looks like that small amount keeps getting bigger. I say stick with it man.

[benintheworld]

Thanks for this mate, I enjoy reading it!

[33centsaday]

This is just a short post to share some exciting news about my $100/day AdSense Challenge. Just 2 weeks after starting the challenge with $1/day average earnings, my site has broken the $2/day average for the week of December 27th-January 2nd. This is thanks to a combination of two things:

1. Traffic has grown by 107%

2. Click through rate has doubled.

Unfortunately CPC dropped a bit or earnings would have been even better.

Here are the site usage statistics for the week:

[see blog for pics]

[Bramantya Prakosa]

adsense is not hard, i recommend adsense crusher and article marketing robot to toughen up your arsenal..

[Michael55555]

good luck!!!!

[33centsaday]

Another week of my adsense challenge is over and I have new record earnings and traffic to report! Perhaps the most exciting news is that earnings are staying well above the $2.16 daily average needed for my account to reach the payout threshold by the end of January. So that's another goal well on its way to successful completion. Now let's take a look at those new records.

[see blog for pic]

New 1-Day Earnings Record
January 6 2011 marked a new record high since this challenge began with earnings of $4.94. The 8th also got close to the $5 mark with $4.81. I was really rooting for the site those 2 days hoping to break $5 but that will come in time.

New Average Daily Earnings Record
The week of January 3-9 2011 broke through the $3/day average very convincingly and earnings never dipped below $2 on any day this week.

New 1-Week Earnings Record
Total earnings for the week were $25.42 which isn't far off from the earnings for the entire month of December!

New Traffic Peak
Finally, traffic grew another 30% over last week with a new daily peak of 61 visitors. Pageviews broke the 1,000 mark as well.

[see blog for pic]

[rain21]

keep updating

[benintheworld]

I would love to earn just even £20.00 a month right now!

[unikbit]

what do you use to get traffic?
thanks for sharing this real case

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by benintheworld

I would love to earn just even £20.00 a month right now!

You'll get there! Just keep creating content every day.

Originally Posted by unikbit

what do you use to get traffic?
thanks for sharing this real case

Content.
No backlinking, no tools, no article marketing, no video marketing, no social bookmarking. Just fresh content daily.

[benintheworld]

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

You'll get there! Just keep creating content every day.


Content.
No backlinking, no tools, no article marketing, no video marketing, no social bookmarking. Just fresh content daily.

Thanks I will keep trying!

[simpleonline1234]

How many keywords per page are you optimizing for on your pages?

You say that you are not using any backlinking measures? How competitive is your market?

Are you optimizing for completely different keywords per page or just using long tail keywords off your main keyword?

Keep it up..can't wait to see what happens next.

[chiwawa]

Its a great challenge. I wish you the best

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by thelensboss

good luck thats a hefty challenge 36500 a year just from adsense

And all from one site too

Originally Posted by simpleonline1234

How many keywords per page are you optimizing for on your pages?

1 primary and 3 or 4 secondary. But even my main keyword is really just a long-tail of an even bigger market.

You say that you are not using any backlinking measures? How competitive is your market?

That's right, I'm only doing internal linking.

As of right now google is showing 11 million results for my main keyword and 135,000 searches per month. But with all the content I've been adding that primary keyword has dropped in importance as a traffic source from 23% of total site traffic to just over 10%. YES you read that right, keywords I'm NOT targeting account for 90% of my traffic.

Are you optimizing for completely different keywords per page or just using long tail keywords off your main keyword?

Each page targets long-tails for both my primary and secondary keywords.

Keep it up..can't wait to see what happens next.

Thanks! Me too

[Dan B Rusu]

This is an awesome case study you're doing, I'll be following it.

Will you reveal your keyword/ site eventually?

[bouncingboy]

I signed up here because I found this challenge, and I found it quite refreshing since it does not rely on any paid products or WSO.

I am wondering if you can discuss how many articles you had when you started at the challenge. How many words are in your typical article? And do you have any estimates on how many articles it will take to reach $100/day?

Thank you so much for this challenge, and I look forward to watching your progress throughout 2011.

[Chris Cole]

Hi 33cents,

I truly love your challenge, i am also currently on an adsense challenge. This thread is an inspiration to me. I do however have some questions.

1. The site you are promoting. You do not say how old it was or PR etc.. before you began your challenge. Was it aged and established or was it a new domain?

2. you say you do not do any backlinking apart from internal linking. Truly amazing to be getting the traffic you do without any backlinks. So the structure of your site must also play a major part for you. Do you simply just blog or have you setup categories and pages etc?

[enrique899]

i don't think that anyone can make a 100 a day, not possible according to me, thanks for the tips though

[KristofferIM]

Good luck with your project. I'll be following your thread.

[ScottieScott]

Originally Posted by enrique899

i don't think that anyone can make a 100 a day, not possible according to me, thanks for the tips though

Tell that to X-Factor and Clickbump. Those are two that I know beat the $100/day mark by a mile. There are most likely dozens, even hundreds, or maybe even thousands that make more than $100/day with Adsense.

[33centsaday]

Thank you for the encouraging words folks! Glad my tiny success so far has inspired some of you.

Originally Posted by Daniel7rusu

Will you reveal your keyword/ site eventually?

I may reveal the general niche because it's a huge one. I already have so much competition that a couple more warriors wouldn't make any difference.

Originally Posted by bouncingboy

I am wondering if you can discuss how many articles you had when you started at the challenge. How many words are in your typical article? And do you have any estimates on how many articles it will take to reach $100/day?

I had about 35 pages of content when I started. I've built about 50 since then. So I'm currently averaging about 3.5 cents per page per day. That would mean I'll need 2500 pages to reach $100/day. As far as I'm concerned that is exactly what sites like EzineArticles does. Produce tons of pages and make a few cents off of each one. It adds up. Although when you're doing all the work yourself its slow!

Originally Posted by chrisc363

1. The site you are promoting. You do not say how old it was or PR etc.. before you began your challenge. Was it aged and established or was it a new domain?

It's PR0 and 8 years old.

2. you say you do not do any backlinking apart from internal linking. Truly amazing to be getting the traffic you do without any backlinks. So the structure of your site must also play a major part for you. Do you simply just blog or have you setup categories and pages etc?

I've tried to structure the blog in a way that makes sense for me so I can find things. Categories, posts and pages. The home page is a static linking out to all major categories and pages, which in turn link out to subpages, which link back to the major categories as well as to each other in some cases.

Hope that made sense

[erikoro]

good work Im thinking in starting a adsense websites all my sites are about product reviews.

[noble]

Great thread, looks like you're already improving and good luck!

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

You'll get there! Just keep creating content every day.


Content.
No backlinking, no tools, no article marketing, no video marketing, no social bookmarking. Just fresh content daily.

Just a word of advice, if you spent just a little time, say 30 minutes a day to build a couple of links and maybe submit your new content to a couple of top bookmarking sites you would:
- rank higher in Google overall especially in time
- get new visitors that may click ads, become return visitors or even tell others.

It is, in my opinion, very important to focus on all avenues and aspects.

Anyways good luck!

[NikkiDelgado]

WOW tough challenge. I have used adsense in the past and had my account banned. I also don't like their terms and conditions. I find it very hard to make money with them as they don't tell you how much you make per click plus they discount clicks etc.

Good luck though I will follow your progress.

[brchap]

$100 per day through "accidental" long-tail traffic is very possible. If you have enough content, anything is possible.

However, creating 2000+ pages of content in 30 days is crazy talk. That's 60+ pages of content per day. A better goal is a few pages per day over a couple of YEARS.

A better plan is to actually promote your site with some backlinking. Even if you outsource it, it's not that expensive... In fact, you could probably get a lot of bang for your buck at less than $50 per month, which is about what you are earning now from the site. In other words, if you want to hit your goal faster, reinvest your earnings until you reach your goal.

[mrpdl]

I will keep an eye on your progress.

[bouncingboy]

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

I had about 35 pages of content when I started. I've built about 50 since then. So I'm currently averaging about 3.5 cents per page per day. That would mean I'll need 2500 pages to reach $100/day. As far as I'm concerned that is exactly what sites like EzineArticles does. Produce tons of pages and make a few cents off of each one. It adds up. Although when you're doing all the work yourself its slow!

Thanks for the numbers.

I have a website like yours too. The figure I use in my head is how much each post should make per month. 3.5 cents per day is about a buck a month. I'm actually shooting for four to five bucks per article per month.
With my numbers, I am going to reach my goal in 750 pages instead of 2,500. Like the other guy in this thread said, I think 2,500 is too much.
I'm getting between 50 cents to $2.50 a click. Maybe you can choose higher value keyword phrases.

I would not promote to get traffic because that could lead Mr. Adsense to smartprice you or even ban you for poor quality traffic that doesn't covert for advertisers. I think you can do it with just quality content, but maybe you can make the math work a little more in your favor before you get to the $5 per day mark.

[grahamsmithlee]

Pls contact me as soon as possible.

[Chris Cole]

THank you for your reply 33cents,

I see you had an aged domain, so trust must be in that somewhere for the traffic to come without any real backlinking.

Do you have a genreal domain name or have you also got a boost from an EMD?

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by bouncingboy

I'm getting between 50 cents to $2.50 a click. Maybe you can choose higher value keyword phrases.

Yeah you're definitely getting paid more per click than I am then. I wish adsense for analytics worked on my account so I had a better idea of what ads are getting clicked!

Originally Posted by chrisc363

I see you had an aged domain, so trust must be in that somewhere for the traffic to come without any real backlinking.

Maybe. I've tried all the backlinking strategies with other sites and never got anywhere with it. That's why I'm focused on content creation now.

Do you have a genreal domain name or have you also got a boost from an EMD?

My domain has 1 of the 3 words in my main keyword, and it is a .com if that makes a difference (I'm not convinced google cares about that kind of thing.) My site beats all sorts of EMDs for various keywords.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

Yeah you're definitely getting paid more per click than I am then. I wish adsense for analytics worked on my account so I had a better idea of what ads are getting clicked!

How do you have it setup?

I can create unlimited Adsense/Analitics site connections for my own sites.

After the first connection the rest are treated similar to sub-domains.

That data is awesome because you can sort analitics by what pages are earning the most, & shows you the exact $$ each individual page has earned.

[grahamsmithlee]

I am interested, please reply me as soon as possible.

thank you so much.

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by yukon

How do you have it setup?

I can create unlimited Adsense/Analitics site connections for my own sites.

After the first connection the rest are treated similar to sub-domains.

That data is awesome because you can sort analitics by what pages are earning the most, & shows you the exact $$ each individual page has earned.

I've tried following the instructions but I don't get the option to link my adsense and analytics accounts

[bouncingboy]

Analytics/Adsense linking options only works as a subdomain (or subprofile) of the first domain you tried to link Adsense and Analytics. If you have a completely separate profile, it won't give you any Adsense options at all. In my setup xyz.com was the first Adsense domain I set up, and I put abc.com underneath it. You have to put in a second set of Analytics code for either xyz or abc (whichever domain you designated as not primary).

[33centsaday]

I don't see the option of linking any of my analytics website profiles or accounts to adsense and none of them have the adsense tab on the dashboard.

[bouncingboy]

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

I don't see the option of linking any of my analytics website profiles or accounts to adsense and none of them have the adsense tab on the dashboard.

Your Adsense earnings page should have an option to "Go to your Google Analytics Account." If so, then I think you did the Adsense part already.

Go to Analytics and look under the Content bar instead of the Dashboard for every single Analytics account you have. Only one account will have AdSense listed underneath the Content bar (other options common to all Analytics accounts include Site Search and Event Tracking). That is the Analytics account where you will have to add your other domains to. I think Google needs to fire their UI engineer for this one.

[33centsaday]

Originally Posted by bouncingboy

Your Adsense earnings page should have an option to "Go to your Google Analytics Account." If so, then I think you did the Adsense part already.

Go to Analytics and look under the Content bar instead of the Dashboard for every single Analytics account you have. Only one account will have AdSense listed underneath the Content bar (other options common to all Analytics accounts include Site Search and Event Tracking). That is the Analytics account where you will have to add your other domains to. I think Google needs to fire their UI engineer for this one.

Adsense does have the "Go to your Google Analytics Account". But I checked all of my accounts and none of them have adsense under the Content bar. Is it possible that I linked it to an account I have since deleted?

[NuZu]

Good luck and dont quit.

Originally Posted by 33centsaday

Last week I had my first website break the $1/day mark in adsense revenue. If you’ve ever tried to make money online you know that this is no easy task. In fact, it took nearly 2 years for me to reach this point! After a lot of analysis I think I have some idea of what worked and what didn’t. So I’m setting myself a challenge–to push that website to the $100/day mark.

I’ll be documenting my progress on the blog in my sig and in this thread. The blog includes pics that I haven't attached here.


Benchmarking

To give you a better idea of the position I’m starting this challenge from here are a few statistics.


1. As of today the website ranks 60th worldwide on Google for its most-searched-for keyword according to Search Engine Genie.


2. Site usage statistics for the week of December 13-19 2010 during which the site made its record $1+/day average adsense revenue: 122 visits, 459 pageviews, 3.76 pages/visit, 42.62% bounce rate, 00:01:31 average time on site, 90% new visits.


3. Traffic sources were divided up as follows: 86% search engines, 9% referring sites, 4% direct traffic. Also of note is that 86% of the traffic came from Canada while 10% came from the US. This is one statistic in particular that I expect to change drastically as one of my goals is to add a large amount of US-specific content to the site.


Ground Rules for the Challenge

1. No paid traffic. This is partly because I don’t have the money to spend, but mostly because I don’t want to try to figure out arbitrage between PPC or PPV advertising and AdSense.


2. Part of the challenge is to force myself to add new content (at least 1 page) every day.


3. While the ultimate goal is to reach $100/day I’ll be keeping track of milestones along the way like: new peak revenue for one day/week/month, as well as new averages like $2/day, $5/day, $10/day etc.


4. I’ll also post updates on traffic statistics and search engine rankings.


Pictures for this update can be found at The $100/Day AdSense Challenge