Follow me to $100 a day in Adsense in 3 months from 1 blog

[kevin1mil]

I'm following this now and it seems to be so far so good, looking forward to your traffic generation techniques.

[MarkH45]

If you are successful I will buy 2 copies of your book. One for myself and one for any other warrior member you choose. Best of luck....

[Julia Andersson]

Hey Steve

I have a question regarding sites like this. It's similar to the question asked above by kevin but a little different

Once you have your sixty articles online and traffic is coming in... are comments viewed as updates to the blog by search engines. In other words, will frequent comments alone keep the blog in the spotlight with search engines or do you need to keep making regular posts?

[Steve Crooks]

I am hoping for an average of around 20 - 30 visitors per day per blog post. The reality may be different and I won't really know for sure until I actually get the traffic. Whatever, if I need more articles or other types of content then I will do it until I reach the $100 a day.

Originally Posted by SunSpore

Mr Steve,
in your opinion what will be the minimum number of articles a blog would need? I understand that most people will try to have multiple blogs for additional traffic but what is the advise number of articles that we need in order to have a fair amount of chance to make a decent sum of money off our blog.

Thanks

[Steve Crooks]

Thanks Mark..

Originally Posted by MarkH45

If you are successful I will buy 2 copies of your book. One for myself and one for any other warrior member you choose. Best of luck....

[Steve Crooks]

My theory and it is only my theory is that because a blog is supposed to be updated regularly by definition then it does need to be updated once a week or so to keep the interest of google. I may be wrong about this but it seems logical to me, Comments are part of that process.

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

Hey Steve

I have a question regarding sites like this. It's similar to the question asked above by kevin but a little different

Once you have your sixty articles online and traffic is coming in... are comments viewed as updates to the blog by search engines. In other words, will frequent comments alone keep the blog in the spotlight with search engines or do you need to keep making regular posts?

[kakang]

nice tips.. im join with adsense 1 month and i've problem to get many visitors .. myearning $0, im worry about it

[viewsource]

Hey Steve,
I have a question regarding site domain.

This kind of projects can be done on a freehosting server too?
What I mean is.... If we develop a similar blog on a free hosting service, can we get good results too (in this case we have mysite.freehost.com, for example)? Or the site domain must be like mysite.com or mysite.net....

Thanks for your answers.
ViewSource

[kah22]

Hi Steven

I had just started the process of changing an ordinary html site into a blog when you posted your self challenge – I’m now following your tips and doing a lot of tweaking, hopefully it will pay dividends!

While we all appreciate that you will want to keep your blog site private might I ask if you could post four or five sample posts so as we can get an idea of where you’ve placed your adsense blocks, how you place images, and get some general layout ideas etc. You could replace the original content of the pages with dummy material and your adsense with say colour blocks.

Looking forward to your next post.

ps should have asked what plugins are you using

[peterwhyte]

Hello ,how can i get a one on ne coaching from you .i really don't have any idea on how this whole this you are talking about work but am keenly interested so how can you help?am ready to follow every instruction from you.thanks.

[Keith Ngu]

Originally Posted by kakang

nice tips.. im join with adsense 1 month and i've problem to get many visitors .. myearning $0, im worry about it

Hi kakang,

there's nothing to worry since you have nothing to lose. Are you spending a lot of money to learn AdSense already? Just follow this thread and take action and you'll be fine. To get more visitor to your site, you just have to generate more traffic.

Here's thread that helps.

Fastest Way To Generate TrAffic

Why Do Most Marketers Fail In Traffic Generation

Personally I would like to know Steve's own traffic generation tactics and strategies. Looking forward to that..

[Mike Long]

Originally Posted by viewsource

Hey Steve,
I have a question regarding site domain.

This kind of projects can be done on a freehosting server too?
What I mean is.... If we develop a similar blog on a free hosting service, can we get good results too (in this case we have mysite.freehost.com, for example)? Or the site domain must be like mysite.com or mysite.net....

Thanks for your answers.
ViewSource

I'm not Steve, but I'll try to answer this one for you...

While it's possible to develop a site on free hosting, I would really recommend that you do everything you can to get your own domain name and hosting.

You can get a .com domain and hosting for as little as $20.81 US for an entire year! ($1 a month hosting at Hostica and a .com domain for $8.81 with a coupon at Namecheap).

Free sites often come with limitations on how you can monetize them, and you don't always have control over site layout.

Even if money is tight, I would strongly urge you to find that 20 bucks, and set up your own site.

~Mike

[mfurlong]

Steve,

Thanks for detailing this process for us. It's really helpful.

I know you've talked about this in general terms before, but to summarize here, I assume you outsourced your article production. Was the final count sixty? How much did it cost? How long did it take.

>>> Mike

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

My theory and it is only my theory is that because a blog is supposed to be updated regularly by definition then it does need to be updated once a week or so to keep the interest of google. I may be wrong about this but it seems logical to me, Comments are part of that process.

I have a number of blogs and mini-sites that haven't been updated for over a year. The traffic has remained constant (200-1200 unique visitors a day depending on the site) and the Adsense earnings have remained constant as well ($2 to $40 a day, depending on the site). It's all in having good, solid, aged backlinks and having done good keyword selection in relatively low competition areas.

Now, if there was significant competition or if I wanted to increase the number of keywords and long tails I was targeting then that would call for more frequent updating. If the domain was new and, in Google's estimation, an unknown, then more frequent updating would help. But, for right now, I'm happy leaving them 'as is' while I develop other sites.

And, yes, comments do help with SEO in a number of ways, especially with new domains. That's why it's a bad idea to turn off comments on a niche blog. Moderate them tightly, don't accept trackbacks, but leave them open to good contributors.

[meadow.c]

Very interesting thread and very helpful. All the best Steve and thanks.

[GatesBill]

Originally Posted by kakang

nice tips.. im join with adsense 1 month and i've problem to get many visitors .. myearning $0, im worry about it

Even if you are not having many visitors you should have some earnings. the problem is that you can not "sell potatoes to the potatoes trader"!!
You need to target "Adsense ignorants and people avid for information" to make some money. As an example I can tell you that with a web site with 6 days live and 7 visitors I managed 4 Adsense clicks.

If your aim is to make money with Adsense choose diferent topics for your web sites, otherwise don't worry with your earnings because if you do 1 cent it's profit anyway.

[Julia Andersson]

Thanks for answering my question BG. Would you happen to know whether comment posting sends pings? You also say not to accept trackbacks but to leave them open to good contributors... how do you do that?

Personally, I moderate all comments before they appear on my blog because of all the unscrupulous people leaving crappy "non-comments" containing links to spam sites. I am happy to add quality contributors as users.

Out of curiosity, with the amount of traffic you receive to your blogs, how often would your posts receive comments?

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I have a number of blogs and mini-sites that haven't been updated for over a year. The traffic has remained constant (200-1200 unique visitors a day depending on the site) and the Adsense earnings have remained constant as well ($2 to $40 a day, depending on the site). It's all in having good, solid, aged backlinks and having done good keyword selection in relatively low competition areas.

Now, if there was significant competition or if I wanted to increase the number of keywords and long tails I was targeting then that would call for more frequent updating. If the domain was new and, in Google's estimation, an unknown, then more frequent updating would help. But, for right now, I'm happy leaving them 'as is' while I develop other sites.

And, yes, comments do help with SEO in a number of ways, especially with new domains. That's why it's a bad idea to turn off comments on a niche blog. Moderate them tightly, don't accept trackbacks, but leave them open to good contributors.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

Thanks for answering my question BG. Would you happen to know whether comment posting sends pings? You also say not to accept trackbacks but to leave them open to good contributors... how do you do that?

In WordPress this is a global setting in the Options|Discussion section of the Admin Panel and you can set it in each individual post. Unless you're doing a lot of social activity (blog commenting, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.), which you shouldn't do for an Adsense site anyway, virtually all the trackbacks will be from spam sites.

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

Out of curiosity, with the amount of traffic you receive to your blogs, how often would your posts receive comments?

The busiest one gets about 10 comments a week but only 2 or 3 are legit comments, the rest are automatic comment spammers. On others, I'll only get one or two legit comments a month, if that.

[Steve Crooks]

Let The Fun Begin..

Finally the cruise blog is live with just 5 posts to begin with and already getting spider activity I have started promoting it also. I have added a blog entry here The Adsense Challenge Begins… | The $100 Challenge if you want to read more detail into what I have done so far and any minor results of doing it.

[Steve Crooks]

Do you have a reason for not wanting to do blog commenting, digg, stumble etc for an adsense site?

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

In WordPress this is a global setting in the Options|Discussion section of the Admin Panel and you can set it in each individual post. Unless you're doing a lot of social activity (blog commenting, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.), which you shouldn't do for an Adsense site anyway, virtually all the trackbacks will be from spam sites.



The busiest one gets about 10 comments a week but only 2 or 3 are legit comments, the rest are automatic comment spammers. On others, I'll only get one or two legit comments a month, if that.

[Steve Crooks]

I am getting 100 articles written initially most for the blog and the rest will be used for promotion. I will write some of them and outsource the rest at around $5 per article. If I need more to reach my goal then I will get more. The articles are arriving in batches of 10 or so and usually take my ghostwriter about 1 day for 5 articles.

Originally Posted by mfurlong

Steve,

Thanks for detailing this process for us. It's really helpful.

I know you've talked about this in general terms before, but to summarize here, I assume you outsourced your article production. Was the final count sixty? How much did it cost? How long did it take.

>>> Mike

[Steve Crooks]

I have just checked on google to see if my new blog had indexed any posts yet and was very suprised to see that they had indexed all 5 posts. They are all ranked very low at the moment for keywords worth over $5 and with a few thousand searches but just 2 hours after posting my last article they are indexed on google none the less.

[Oscar D]

WOW, that is really fast indexing.

Wordpress Rules

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

Do you have a reason for not wanting to do blog commenting, digg, stumble etc for an adsense site?

Smart pricing is why. This happens when your clicks aren't converting for advertisers. This is what happens when you get a lot of social referral traffic that likes your site and decides to 'help you out' by giving you a 'tip' by clicking your ads. The result is that you'll get paid about 10% of what you would have been paid for a click. The most obvious warning sign is a low CTR, below 1%. However, you can have a low CTR and if your clicks still convert well you won't get priced. Also smart pricing doesn't affect one domain but your entire Adsense account.

Some targeted blog commenting or forum posting can help so far as link juice go but you don't want to over do this.

You want to have over 95%+ organic search traffic for your targeted buying keywords in order to maximize your Adsense earnings.

[Steve Crooks]

Good point, I was thinking more for SEO though really.

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Smart pricing is why. This happens when your clicks aren't converting for advertisers. This is what happens when you get a lot of social referral traffic that likes your site and decides to 'help you out' by giving you a 'tip' by clicking your ads. The result is that you'll get paid about 10% of what you would have been paid for a click. The most obvious warning sign is a low CTR, below 1%. However, you can have a low CTR and if your clicks still convert well you won't get priced. Also smart pricing doesn't affect one domain but your entire Adsense account.

Some targeted blog commenting or forum posting can help so far as link juice go but you don't want to over do this.

You want to have over 95%+ organic search traffic for your targeted buying keywords in order to maximize your Adsense earnings.

[askloz]

or go to 1and1.com and get it cheaper.

Originally Posted by Mike Long

I'm not Steve, but I'll try to answer this one for you...

While it's possible to develop a site on free hosting, I would really recommend that you do everything you can to get your own domain name and hosting.

You can get a .com domain and hosting for as little as $20.81 US for an entire year! ($1 a month hosting at Hostica and a .com domain for $8.81 with a coupon at Namecheap).

Free sites often come with limitations on how you can monetize them, and you don't always have control over site layout.

Even if money is tight, I would strongly urge you to find that 20 bucks, and set up your own site.

~Mike

[InternetMoneyStream]

Great thread and i will be keeping tabs on how you are doing. Keep it up and you will be on your way my friend!

Great content!

[Mike Long]

Originally Posted by askloz

or go to 1and1.com and get it cheaper.

True, but then you start to cross into the "you get what you pay for" territory. (i.e., I've had some major issues with 1and1 over the years.)

That's why I recommended what I did. Is it the absolute cheapest possible solution? No, but it's as cheap as I was comfortable recommending while knowing from experience that the two outfits I mentioned run strong, consistent, dependable operations.

Tough to sell from a site that's down because the web host isn't dependable.

~Mike

[InternetMoneyStream]

I have had my own personal horror story with 1and1 customer service and credit card charging, and re-charging and...... you wanted that domain cancelled? Well.... we kept on billing you, and oops... we still are billing.

I choose not to do business with 1&1 any more.

[milamber]

Im looking forward to see if you really make $100 a day on just 1 blog.

[Julia Andersson]

Originally Posted by milamber

Im looking forward to see if you really make $100 a day on just 1 blog.

It wouldn't really matter if it took a couple of blogs. Once you've actually acheived it all you have to do is 'rinse and repeat'... just duplicate the results. Imagine having three or four blogs each earning $100 per day. Write one new article for each per week. Wouldn't take a lot of maintenance to acheive a nice tidy income.

The fact is that even one blog earning $100 per day would earn $200 per week more than my current employment. Not that I would leave work based on the results of one income stream. But then, each of the blogs would incorporate more than just adsense too... I'd probably promote some clickbank or paydotcom products aswell. My current site has a CTR of around 2% which is pretty low but still earns money

[askloz]

You must be the odd one out, I've never had a problem...

Don't let the past years knock you back from a good deal - just like wine, older it gets, it tastes better.

Originally Posted by Mike Long

True, but then you start to cross into the "you get what you pay for" territory. (i.e., I've had some major issues with 1and1 over the years.)

[dosborne08]

Very interesting post. I wish you all the luck with your blog! You make it sound very easy.


I will be following this thread closely to see how it is going.

regards,
Dean

[Julia Andersson]

Got a couple of questions for you Steve (and any other experienced adsense users).

1. Do you know what type of adsense units fetch the most clicks? Text, image or link units?

2. What is the prime position to place adsense units in? Top of page? Top right hand sidebar?

They do say that our eyes automatically gravitate toward the top right hand side so is that the best place for adsense units? I'm assuming of course that you have researched this (or at least noticed which units work best in the process of experimentation).

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

1. Do you know what type of adsense units fetch the most clicks? Text, image or link units?

I've had the most luck with text only large rectangles and squares.

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

2. What is the prime position to place adsense units in? Top of page? Top right hand sidebar?

I prefer placing a single Adsense block in the upper left corner of the page inline with the text.

Of course, different traffic patterns produce different results. I'm just saying what's worked best for me over a wide variety of niche blogs and mini-sites.

[Steve Crooks]

Personally speaking, I go for the less is more theory with adsense and don't put to many blocks on one page. I usually go with a 468 banner at the top of each page and bottom of the page and maybe a skyscraper in one of the sidebars.

I never really go for image ads as I think people are a bit blind to banner ads these days. Llink units I haven't really tried although many people say they have had success with them.

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

Got a couple of questions for you Steve (and any other experienced adsense users).

1. Do you know what type of adsense units fetch the most clicks? Text, image or link units?

2. What is the prime position to place adsense units in? Top of page? Top right hand sidebar?

They do say that our eyes automatically gravitate toward the top right hand side so is that the best place for adsense units? I'm assuming of course that you have researched this (or at least noticed which units work best in the process of experimentation).

[Julia Andersson]

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

Personally speaking, I go for the less is more theory with adsense and don't put to many blocks on one page. I usually go with a 468 banner at the top of each page and bottom of the page and maybe a skyscraper in one of the sidebars.

I've never used more than two adsense units per page... one 468 banner at the top and either a skyscraper or link unit in the sidebar. Although, that doesn't count the cbpro (clickbank) unit that I have below adsense. I always make sure the adsense unit is above the fold & I sometimes ad a google search box lower down in my sidebar

[sarahstaar]

Originally Posted by InternetMoneyStream

I have had my own personal horror story with 1and1 customer service and credit card charging, and re-charging and...... you wanted that domain cancelled? Well.... we kept on billing you, and oops... we still are billing.

I choose not to do business with 1&1 any more.

i had exactly the same issue with 1&1 two years ago. Never again !!!

[KathyBaka]

Sounds interesting, I will be following this thread!

Kathy Baka

[Steve Crooks]

First Visitor

Less than 24 hours since I posted my first articles to the blog and I have just checked my stats to see I have had my first visitor from google. A small victory, I know but progress none the less. The keyword was a bit of an obscure long tail keyword but hey, I'm not complaining. A larger progress report will appear on my 100buckschallenge blog later.

The rest of the day will be spent starting the promotion of the blog and getting my articles queued up in wordpress for future posting.

[Julia Andersson]

Congratulations on your first google visitor Always a good feeling, I recall the buzz I got when I got my first SE visitor.

When you say you're getting your articles queued for posting do you mean you're entering them but saving them as drafts?

Originally Posted by Steve Crooks

First Visitor

Less than 24 hours since I posted my first articles to the blog and I have just checked my stats to see I have had my first visitor from google. A small victory, I know but progress none the less. The keyword was a bit of an obscure long tail keyword but hey, I'm not complaining. A larger progress report will appear on my 100buckschallenge blog later.

The rest of the day will be spent starting the promotion of the blog and getting my articles queued up in wordpress for future posting.

[Steve Crooks]

No, I am talking about the ability in wordpress now to click the edit button next to the publish button and set a date in the future when you want it to post.

Originally Posted by Julia Andersson

Congratulations on your first google visitor Always a good feeling, I recall the buzz I got when I got my first SE visitor.

When you say you're getting your articles queued for posting do you mean you're entering them but saving them as drafts?

[SaSeoPete]

Hey Steve, this is great man.

I am following along, but I am using my blog to promote a clickbank product. I have 70+ articles based around keywords that I am using and I started yesterday, uploading 3 per day. One for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Hope I get some success, I am sure I will!

Thanks man, this is the kick in the a$$ I need!

[Steve Crooks]

Nice one Pete.. Good luck.

Originally Posted by SaSeoPete

Hey Steve, this is great man.

I am following along, but I am using my blog to promote a clickbank product. I have 70+ articles based around keywords that I am using and I started yesterday, uploading 3 per day. One for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Hope I get some success, I am sure I will!

Thanks man, this is the kick in the a$$ I need!

[Oscar D]

Dear Steve

I have decided to try out the Wordpress system on a new domain. Can you please tell me where can I get a good free template with the navigation coloumn on the right hand side - thanks.

[SaSeoPete]

Hey Oscar,

Just type "free wordpress themes" into google, you will be spoilt for choice!

Pete

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Oscar D

Dear Steve

I have decided to try out the Wordpress system on a new domain. Can you please tell me where can I get a good free template with the navigation coloumn on the right hand side - thanks.

You can try out my simple as they can get dateless mini-site templates: Dateless Mini-Site Demo

[Steve Crooks]

There really is a lot of free stuff online, wordpress.org is a good place for starters.

Originally Posted by Oscar D

Dear Steve

I have decided to try out the Wordpress system on a new domain. Can you please tell me where can I get a good free template with the navigation coloumn on the right hand side - thanks.

[Oscar D]

O, ok.

What are the steps in making a wordpress theme more SEO friendly?

[Steve Crooks]

Whole books have been written on this..

1. Permalinks
2. Usual on-page SEO stuff (keywords, titles, H1 tags, meta stuff)
3. Keep things themed under different categories
4. No linking to bad neighbourhoods
5. Google sitemaps

That will do for starters.

Originally Posted by Oscar D

O, ok.

What are the steps in making a wordpress theme more SEO friendly?