Why bother with Adsense when you could be making more and Faster without them?

[bnetwork]

Originally Posted by outwest

nNetwork, how many pages do your sites typically contain?

Home page + 5-6 large inner pages and then blog posts. I think I'll be sticking with this structure for the time being, as my blog posts act a bit like "inner circle" (love it!) friends of the more important pages. It works for me. There can be anywhere from 20 to 300 blog posts.

Originally Posted by packerfan

You have customers that have to be served. You have to sell. You have to market, etc.

Adsense is passive income at least in the fact the everything can be outsourced.

I think that's the biggest difference. But if you're willing to actually run a business, then yes you're wasting your time with adsense.

I've been thinking of getting into the local thing for a while. Just don't know if I can handle another project. Might start with like 3 clients and just see how it goes.

Not sure. On the surface it seems like easy money though. Thanks for giving me something else to add to my plate.

That's my whole point. Offering services isn't easy, because you have to:

1. Acquire clients.
2. Market.
3. Customer support.
4. Meet deadlines.
5. Manage staff (or outsourcers).
6. Actually know what you're doing. Can't just offer a **** product.

...and many other things. I don't know how you guys in here who do local SEO run things, but once you get to processing hundreds to thousands of orders every month, things get real serious.

I don't see why a successful provider can't do both though. This is the exact same stupid discussion "article syndication vs. blasting spun articles to thousands of sites". Both work, they are different things and should be used for different purposes. Why do people always have to:

1. Pick a side.
2. Fight everyone else until they prove their point.

I, personally, do both - Adsense and SEO services. And it works great for me, because the fact that I know my SEO helps me build/rank Adsense sites faster.

And no I can't pick up and leave right now, not even for 2-3 days, because we get orders coming in non-stop. I personally oversee all communication with customers, because I care.

Competition in the SEO services market is a joke. We have very few real competitors in our niche. That's because new providers start and fail within 3-5 weeks. There's a saying "do better than average work and the competition will take care of themselves". It's soooo true. I guess the same applies to building sites/Adsense.

Meh.

[jonkjonk]

I have both SEO clients and Adsense websites.

I prefer my Adsense income because it's set and forget. You just keep adding to the income stream. Every now and then it drops (my earnings this month will be less than in Dec) but the lessons you learn are invaluable even when that happens.

[MaverickUK]

Mike I'm curious, how do you go about contacting these businesses? I'm not really one to approach a business offering a service they're more than likely to refuse, tired of hearing the same crap about not having the marketing funds available.

The only serious SEO I've done is for friends, friends of friends or friends bosses who were interested. For that reason I'm more than happy to stick to affiliate marketing, product creation and the like - Adsense has you at their mercy, so f*** 'em (though I do make a nice sum off them none-the-less).

[James-]

Well i guess I am in the other boat here. It is stupidly easy to create an MFA site (it can still be useful and provide users with answers etc) that makes £50+ a day within a month/6 weeks. I'm finding it hard to want to do anything else, but i know i need to diversify.

Long term, i do and will go into the consultancy side of things, but for now while i have a full time offline job and saving for a house it's nice to have a hefty AdSense check at the end of each month which is all passive income.

[mosthost]

Originally Posted by James-

Well i guess I am in the other boat here. It is stupidly easy to create an MFA site (it can still be useful and provide users with answers etc) that makes £50+ a day within a month/6 weeks. I'm finding it hard to want to do anything else, but i know i need to diversify.

If you could do that consistently, you would have no need to diversify. After one year you would be earning 450 a day and you could just save money instead of worrying about diversifying traffic sources.

The problem is, everyone always thinks the formula is building websites that all hit a certain revenue stream. It's easier said than done.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by MaverickUK

Mike I'm curious, how do you go about contacting these businesses? I'm not really one to approach a business offering a service they're more than likely to refuse, tired of hearing the same crap about not having the marketing funds available..

I know local is all the rage but I don't touch it. I will put it this way though.

The so called saturation with people offering SEO who do not know what they are doing is a smart SEOs best money maker. They create a LOOOONG list of businesses who ARE interested and willing to pay but who are getting crappy results.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by James-

Well i guess I am in the other boat here. It is stupidly easy to create an MFA site (it can still be useful and provide users with answers etc) that makes £50+ a day within a month/6 weeks. I'm finding it hard to want to do anything else, but i know i need to diversify.

Long term, i do and will go into the consultancy side of things, but for now while i have a full time offline job and saving for a house it's nice to have a hefty AdSense check at the end of each month which is all passive income.

How many hours per day, for each site to get to that level in 6 wks?

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by James-

Well i guess I am in the other boat here. It is stupidly easy to create an MFA site (it can still be useful and provide users with answers etc) that makes £50+ a day within a month/6 weeks. I'm finding it hard to want to do anything else, but i know i need to diversify.

IN the years on WF we see claims like this ALL THE TIME and most of the time when/if the truth comes out it was all fluff and fairy dust. They were either making next to nothing or they had one site that made a moderate return and tried to generalize and act like all their sites were making that or more.

When People Like Yukon who has demonstrated that he knows what he is talking about with adsense tells me it takes building a good resource that people want to come back to I accept it and put the "I make good money easily within 30 days on my MFA sites" into the building hype for a WSO garbage heap.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

IN the years on WF we see claims like this ALL THE TIME and most of the time when/if the truth comes out it was all fluff and fairy dust. They were either making next to nothing or they had one site that made a moderate return and tried to generalize and act like all their sites were making that or more.

When People Like Yukon who has demonstrated that he knows what he is talking about with adsense tells me it takes building a good resource that people want to come back to I accept it and put the "I make good money easily within 30 days on my MFA sites" into the building hype for a WSO garbage heap.

I believe its possible to get to that with Adsense on new sites, within 6 months,
6 weeks? I have a hard time believing

Now Freeson posted (he can barely speak english lives in Cambodia) that he went to 20-25/day in 2 months, and explained exactly how he backlinked etc etc, in his tutorial, I believe the guy, he seemed very sincere, and he did not say its easy. also he targeted 18k/month exact local search term, so that makes sense too

it seems if you crank it out, you can add about $12/day every month to a new site. Does that sound reasonable

[bloomingrose]

Originally Posted by outwest

Agreed 100%

For example
i can envision instead of putting up Netflix ads for Adsense, I would just put up websites targeting movie rentals or netflix etc etc etc

and then sign up directly on Netflix as an affiliate, of course that bypasses clickbank, Adsense and everyone else

but i am sure your concept is much more involved or sophisticated. Thanks for posting this thread though

Netflix is on CPA network, eh?

[outwest]

Originally Posted by bloomingrose

Netflix is on CPA network, eh?

If I were going to do netflix I would target it directly with their affiliate program
but

my research tells me Netflix kws do not get enough search traffic so I am not interested in attempting to rank that niche.
even
"movie rentals"
is not searched for often enough to interest me
and of course the top 3 on that is

Netflix, Blockbuster, Redbox, good luck outranking those

[pbbiet]

Well i dont agree with you adsense is much lot easier to build and get income you dont have to be a seo expert to get ranked if you choose your niche wisely and the proof is the presence of hundreds of rank magnets. Neither i had seen all the seo experts making thousands of dollars per months by other methods. We dont have to request for sales neither we have to make refunds its just setup a nice informative site and go on.
Also its too easy to critique a prevailing system do we really have any alternative to GOOGLE adwords or adsense ?

[James-]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

IN the years on WF we see claims like this ALL THE TIME and most of the time when/if the truth comes out it was all fluff and fairy dust. They were either making next to nothing or they had one site that made a moderate return and tried to generalize and act like all their sites were making that or more.

When People Like Yukon who has demonstrated that he knows what he is talking about with adsense tells me it takes building a good resource that people want to come back to I accept it and put the "I make good money easily within 30 days on my MFA sites" into the building hype for a WSO garbage heap.

I understand where you are coming from Mike, there certainly are a lot of people that talk crap on this forum, but even still, you know better than most what it takes in SEO. I'm willing to bet you know a hell of a lot more than i do, but even still, it doesnt take a genius to make big money with AdSense.

I simply find terms that have a lot of traffic, not these stupid 3000+ exact match searches people go mad over for some reason. Ranking them to #1 is no harder than ranking a much lesser searched term since i did my research and comeption is pretty much the same (for the terms that i go for anyway)

Backlink away, and around 6 weeks later i'm sitting top, or there abouts because there really isnt much competition. Without going into too much detail, i have a term that gets me around 1500+ uniques a day, averages around £0.24 a click, and get a CTR of around 13%.

This really is very simple and i struggle to understand why people think they need 500 spammy EMD sites to make AdSense worthwhile.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by James-

I understand where you are coming from Mike, there certainly are a lot of people that talk crap on this forum, but even still, you know better than most what it takes in SEO. I'm willing to bet you know a hell of a lot more than i do,

And thats why I know when you write the following quote you are talking utter nonsense

I simply find terms that have a lot of traffic,..... Ranking them to #1 is no harder than ranking a much lesser searched term since i did my research and comeption is pretty much the same .......
Backlink away, and around 6 weeks later i'm sitting top, or there abouts because there really isnt much competition.

Terms that have high traffic and have good conversion tend to have better competition. Claiming that the competition is the same and you can just rank "top" for those terms "stupidly easy" in 6 weeks should be obvious to even a newb reading this as pure fluff and fairy dust.

This aint a WSO thread James. Save the sales copy for that offer. You are writing in such a way to convey the idea that from start of the site to making good cash is 6 weeks and you can just rinse and repeat it stupid easy and get the same results over and over. Agreed with you on a lot of crap posts on this forum but you just added to them.

[James-]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Terms that have high trafficand have good conversion tend to have better competition. Claiming that the competition is the same and its just easy to rank "top" for those terms "stupidly easy" in 6 weeks should be obvious to even a newb reading this as pure bluster.

This aint a WSO thread James. Save the sales copy for that offer.

What I am saying is, I have found some terms that get a lot of traffic and no-one is really optimzed for the keywords. So instead of ranking a term for say a 1000 searches a month which if i tell you would take 6 weeks to rank you would all believe, the only difference is i have found ones that get a lot more searches and the competition is the same.

I am sure you have come across some of these in your time, so why are you finding it hard to beleive?

I am just telling you all what i do, i have nothing to sell, heck i dont even have a sig trying to get people to buy anything! I would love to show you proof, but since we are all in the same game here, it would be silly.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by James-

I simply find terms that have a lot of traffic, not these stupid 3000+ exact match searches people go mad over for some reason. Ranking them to #1 is no harder than ranking a much lesser searched term since i did my research and comeption is pretty much the same (for the terms that i go for anyway)

Backlink away, and around 6 weeks later i'm sitting top, or there abouts because there really isnt much competition. Without going into too much detail, i have a term that gets me around 1500+ uniques a day, averages around £0.24 a click, and get a CTR of around 13%.

I think I would have to take Mike's side in this argument. Having analyzed thousands upon thousands of keywords over the years, analyzing them from an adsense marketers perspective, VERY rarely would you find what I would consider to be a good keyword with over 3000 exact searches that would only take 6 weeks to rank. The only real exception here being that the cpc, or buyer intent was really low. Which is what I would consider to be the case since the keyword you are describing is only giving a cpc of £0.24.

Generally speaking, the more traffic a keyword has, the more competition it has trying to compete for that traffic. I am pretty handy with my seo and have never not ranked for a keyword that I targeted, but realistically for a lets say 18,000 exact match term I usually allow at least a few months to hit page 1, and moving into the top 3 could take quite a while longer, of course depending on the sites that are in there.

I very rarely even consider any keyword that has a cpc of less than $4.00, many of my keywords have a cpc of $10.00 or greater. It is not uncommon for me to receive clicks that pay out $5 to $10 on my end. But, essentially the point is, and I guess the point of this thread as well, is that adsense is not an easier or quicker option, its just an option. So those that are considering adsense, need to have realistic expectations of what will be involved and how much time it may take.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by James-

What I am saying is, I have found some terms that get a lot of traffic and no-one is really optimzed for the keywords. So instead of ranking a term for say a 1000 searches a month which if i tell you would take 6 weeks to rank you would all believe, the only difference is i have found ones that get a lot more searches and the competition is the same.

I am sure you have come across some of these in your time, so why are you finding it hard to beleive?

James let me see if I can spell this out clearer. Can you come across some terms that get good traffic with a little competition once in awhile? Yes.

The aberrration does not make the rule. its not "stupid easy" to find a term getting you 45,000 uniques with little or no competition or good conversion terms that you can rank at the top in 6 weeks. You ARE blowing smoke

Lets do the maths. Even number one doesn't get all the clicks from a search term. So you are talking 70,000 plus keyword searches (or you can choose a variety of keywords but then claiming to dominate a bunch of them in 6 weeks gets even dicier).

Are those just sitting round "stupid easy" for terms that people will go to your site and in any reasonable quantity proceed to click through to and adsense link ( a conversion)? In such a way that you can just rinse and repeat over and over "stupid easy" finding these keywords that you rank number one in 6 weeks from start of site to finish?

Nope. Like I said people stumble on one thing and then pretend like you can just duplicate it like a copying machine . Leads alot of good people astray. Its the hallmark of alot of WSO and product launches which is why I compare it to that.

[James-]

Patrich,

I respect your opinion, and i agree with a lot of what you have said is right. I was merely just stating that i have found a fair few keywords that do have massive traffic and are easy to rank.

I know this is not the norm, by a lot shot! I just wanted to tell people that it is possible.

[James-]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

The aberrration does not make the rule. its not "stupid easy" to find a term getting you 45,000 uniques with little or no competition or good conversion terms that you can rank at the top in 6 weeks. You ARE blowing smoke.

Mike, you are taking what i said out of context, or perhaps i didn't write it in the correct manner, apologies. I am not saying ranking for these terms is stupidly easy, or at least i hope i didnt say that. I was saying that making £50 a day is stupidly easy considering what i have done.

Granted, i have come across several keywords that do get 60k+ searches and these have been fairly easy to rank which is very rare which has allowed me to do this. I was just making the point that it is possible, not that everyone can expect to do this obviosuly. I just got lucky with my keyword research and stumbled upon them.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by bnetwork

That's my whole point. Offering services isn't easy, because you have to:

1. Acquire clients.
2. Market.
3. Customer support.
4. Meet deadlines.
5. Manage staff (or outsourcers).
6. Actually know what you're doing. Can't just offer a **** product.

...and many other things. I don't know how you guys in here who do local SEO run things, but once you get to processing hundreds to thousands of orders every month, things get real serious.

Don't know why guys keep going to local in this discussion. Really think you can't get client s online? Really? Your list is just blowing thing s up to make it look hard. I can do the same thing for adsense

1. do ton loads of keyword research and link build with no client to pay for it
2. Market (search engine optimization is marketing) without any pay upfront
3. Customer supporting content - You have to actually acquire content and satsify your visitor at least enough for them to not instantly click away
4. Find and register the domains, build the site, transfer content
5. Manage staff - what adsense people don'tt outsource some SEO work?
6. actually know what you are doing - can't rank for enough traffic generating terms if you don't.

So whats the big difference? One is easier to start and one pays more to start. Both have long term just as much work just different kinds. In the end if you are no good at SEO then you are going to be no good at adsense.

[BigNorm]

Originally Posted by patrich

I think I would have to take Mike's side in this argument. Having analyzed thousands upon thousands of keywords over the years, analyzing them from an adsense marketers perspective, VERY rarely would you find what I would consider to be a good keyword with over 3000 exact searches that would only take 6 weeks to rank. The only real exception here being that the cpc, or buyer intent was really low. Which is what I would consider to be the case since the keyword you are describing is only giving a cpc of £0.24.

Generally speaking, the more traffic a keyword has, the more competition it has trying to compete for that traffic. I am pretty handy with my seo and have never not ranked for a keyword that I targeted, but realistically for a lets say 18,000 exact match term I usually allow at least a few months to hit page 1, and moving into the top 3 could take quite a while longer, of course depending on the sites that are in there.

I very rarely even consider any keyword that has a cpc of less than $4.00, many of my keywords have a cpc of $10.00 or greater. It is not uncommon for me to receive clicks that pay out $5 to $10 on my end. But, essentially the point is, and I guess the point of this thread as well, is that adsense is not an easier or quicker option, its just an option. So those that are considering adsense, need to have realistic expectations of what will be involved and how much time it may take.

While I do somewhat agree with you, there is the odd time where you find a highly searched term with badly optimized competition. I've never been a big believer in the whole, "KW's with 1000 exact monthly searches or more and have a CPC of $1.00 or more" is the ideal business model to follow when building my sites.

I'd rather have lots of small slices of a large pie than fight with people over a few big pieces and this model has served me well. I'll be bold as to say that I will target KW's that may only have 500 searches a month, but 4-5 articles written around these KW's mounts to alot of traffic and easy to rank KW's.

Even though I can see Mikes point in regards to why would you build your business around a service such as Adsense when Google can just yank your business from under you in the space of a click. I like Adsense because I am lazy. It costs me $130 to have a site built with 20 pages of 500+ words of content built around the KW's I choose, all optimized. Ten pages published as soon as the site goes live, the other 10 scheduled to drip feed over a 2 a half month period. All my backlinking is outsourced. On average, over the 2 month period, I probably invest 3-4 hours of my time in total.

And thats why I do Adsense, I am lazy and it does make money if you find your own business model which best suits you.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by James-

I am not saying ranking for these terms is stupidly easy, or at least i hope i didnt say that. I was saying that making £50 a day is stupidly easy considering what i have done.

Think about how a site gets traffic to make the money and tell me the difference? There isn't any.

I can accept that you misspoke because you did if you go back and read what you wrote. it IS representing its something you can repeat easily over and over again and no mention at all about luck

It is stupidly easy to create an MFA site (it can still be useful and provide users with answers etc) that makes £50+ a day within a month/6 weeks. I'm finding it hard to want to do anything else,

I simply find terms that have a lot of traffic, not these stupid 3000+ exact match searches people go mad over for some reason. Ranking them to #1 is no harder than ranking a much lesser searched term since i did my research and comeption is pretty much the same (for the terms that i go for anyway)
,

You represented that it was all simple with an easily repeated process over and over with multiple terms. I didn't take it out of context.

[bnetwork]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

So whats the big difference? One is easier to start and one pays more to start. Both have long term just as much work just different kinds. In the end if you are no good at SEO then you are going to be no good at adsense.

The big difference to me is that there are far too many **** SEO providers that screw over their clients. At least when you **** your Adsense business up it does not affect others.

Maybe I take customer care too seriously, maybe I care too much in general. It makes me mad to think that people who can't make something as simple as Adsense work would seriously consider taking on this kind of responsibility. Because it is not easy to run a successful SEO service and consistently deliver results for your clients. On this topic we will never agree, I see that now and that is fine.

Yeah local or not local - obviously makes no difference. You have to deliver results, have a strong work ethic, good marketing and communication skills and a lot more.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by BigNorm

I'd rather have lots of small slices of a large pie than fight with people over a few big pieces and this model has served me well. I'll be bold as to say that I will target KW's that may only have 500 searches a month, but 4-5 articles written around these KW's mounts to alot of traffic and easy to rank KW's.

The problem with your strategy is the same reason that many adsense marketers fail. They go after the small pieces of pie, be that low traffic or low cpc or both. I don't go after low anything.

I am not building small "throw away sites" <- used loosely, I build sites that dominate large industries. Many of my sites compete directly with .gov agencies, colleges, etc. I don't want sites that make a few dollars a day, I want sites that make a few hundred dollars a day, which is why I am successful with the adsense model. Its also why I don't worry about what adsense may or may not do down the road.

If my adsense account was closed this afternoon, I could be back to making money again by morning, most MFA guys can not say that. I have the "important part of the equation" which is traffic, traffic can be monetized with anything, I just choose adsense for its simplicity. I don't have to sell visitors, I just have to get them to click.

[bnetwork]

Originally Posted by patrich

I am not building small "throw away sites" <- used loosely, I build sites that dominate large industries. Many of my sites compete directly with .gov agencies, colleges, etc. I don't want sites that make a few dollars a day, I want sites that make a few hundred dollars a day, which is why I am successful with the adsense model. Its also why I don't worry about what adsense may or may not do down the road.

Right so my approach is similar to yours, question though -

You say "dominate large industries". I can get my sites there, sure, but how do you ensure that your content is of top-of-the-line quality to be worthy of those positions?

I mean... take my health sites. I don't get as many visitors as you do, maybe 300-500/day per site. But I have many sites. I can easily expand the sites, because they are built around good keywords and are all branded .com domains, so that's not a problem. My problem is content. I'm scared that once I take #1's for all of those keywords, while people like the content, it might not be the best thing for them. The articles aren't written by top experts, heck they aren't even written by MDs at all. Am I over thinking this?

[patrich]

Originally Posted by bnetwork

The big difference to me is that there are far too many **** SEO providers that screw over their clients. At least when you **** your Adsense business up it does not affect others.

To me, that is a very fair assessment. There are in fact a lot of people that have no business providing seo services. I have seen, on this board and others, people post a question that says something like "I just got my first seo client, how do I build links to get them to rank?". lol that is a scam if I've ever seen one. It gives the industry a bad name, but it also allows good seo providers the opportunity to charge more for the services that they provide I would assume.

Its difficult for me to comment too much on how managing seo clients works, because I have never done it and really know very little about it.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by bnetwork

Right so my approach is similar to yours, question though -

You say "dominate large industries". I can get my sites there, sure, but how do you ensure that your content is of top-of-the-line quality to be worthy of those positions?

I mean... take my health sites. I don't get as many visitors as you do, maybe 300-500/day per site. But I have many sites. I can easily expand the sites, because they are built around good keywords and are all branded .com domains, so that's not a problem. My problem is content. I'm scared that once I take #1's for all of those keywords, while people like the content, it might not be the best thing for them. The articles aren't written by top experts, heck they aren't even written by MDs at all. Am I over thinking this?

Most of my content is written by me. I learn the industry before I build the site. I do my research and get to know how things work, what things are required and so forth. That way I can offer advice and information that provides people with the answers that they are looking for. I have been listed as a third party resource by many government agencies for various sites. I also receive hundreds of emails a day from people thanking me for the help and services that I offer.

You don't have to be an expert, you just have to find the answers to what people are looking for and make them accessible. People are surprisingly easy to please, if you make the effort to do so.

Another common tactic that I use is to communicate with people that are in the industry, educate them on search engines work, the value of backlinks and then encourage them to write content for my site in exchange for these benefits.

Basically, yes you are over thinking it. And over thinking will do nothing but send you into a downward spiral at some point. Over thinking leads to stress and procrastination.

Don't worry about what might happen when you get there. Worry about getting there and then use the feedback that you receive to make adjustments so that people are happy with what you offer.

Using your niche, medical, how many medical/healthcare sites do you think are actually written by doctors? Very few. In fact most of the content is written by people like you or me. You can't offer medical advice, but you can offer alternative solutions and information.

Did you know that most government work is not copyrighted? Any work created by government employees is entered directly into the public domain. The exception being work that was created by an outside contractor. Which means that sites like the CDC and Health.gov, etc., can all be used as tools for you to find the information you need to provide adequate information to your site visitors.

[BigNorm]

Originally Posted by patrich

The problem with your strategy is the same reason that many adsense marketers fail. They go after the small pieces of pie, be that low traffic or low cpc or both. I don't go after low anything.

I am not building small "throw away sites" <- used loosely, I build sites that dominate large industries. Many of my sites compete directly with .gov agencies, colleges, etc. I don't want sites that make a few dollars a day, I want sites that make a few hundred dollars a day, which is why I am successful with the adsense model. Its also why I don't worry about what adsense may or may not do down the road.

If my adsense account was closed this afternoon, I could be back to making money again by morning, most MFA guys can not say that. I have the "important part of the equation" which is traffic, traffic can be monetized with anything, I just choose adsense for its simplicity. I don't have to sell visitors, I just have to get them to click.

Why would you assume my sites only a make a few dollars a day? Because I target lots of lower searched terms as well? That's a little presumptuous wouldn't you say? Would it seem surprising that this model serves me well and most of my websites get close to 10k+ unique visits per month, all of them making more than a "few dollars" per day.

Granted I don't have individual sites making hundreds of dollars per day, which I'm gauging from your reply, your saying you do. But they do make good money, enough for me to pay for all my overheads related to my Adsense business, pay for my sports training, paying someone to design T Shirts for me and sponsoring guys from the Muay Thai gym I train at....and all from a business model which people would stay away from.

[patrich]

Originally Posted by BigNorm

Why would you assume my sites only a make a few dollars a day? Because I target lots of lower searched terms as well? That's a little presumptuous wouldn't you say? Would it seem surprising that this model serves me well and most of my websites get close to 10k+ unique visits per month, all of them making more than a "few dollars" per day.

Granted I don't have individual sites making hundreds of dollars per day, which I'm gauging from your reply, your saying you do. But they do make good money, enough for me to pay for all my overheads related to my Adsense business, pay for my sports training, paying someone to design T Shirts for me and sponsoring guys from the Muay Thai gym I train at....and all from a business model which people would stay away from.

Actually, in the second paragraph there I was making a generalization about that particular business model, not pointed at you directly. So, my apologies if you took it that way. I don't pretend to know what anyone earns from their sites as it really isn't any of my business.

However, while you may be an exception, it is more common to find people chasing the small pieces of pie earning very little if anything at all. Much of the information out there today recommends that people chase these 1000/month search terms etc., and typically that advice does nothing but set them up for failure down the road.

[BigNorm]

Originally Posted by patrich

Actually, in the second paragraph there I was making a generalization about that particular business model, not pointed at you directly. So, my apologies if you took it that way. I don't pretend to know what anyone earns from their sites as it really isn't any of my business.

However, while you may be an exception, it is more common to find people chasing the small pieces of pie earning very little if anything at all. Much of the information out there today recommends that people chase these 1000/month search terms etc., and typically that advice does nothing but set them up for failure down the road.

It's cool. I completely agree, while I do target high search terms as well, I don't make this my key area of development. I think the problem with a majority of people who did go after the small pieces assume that you can target a couple of low search keywords and make money. It's an ongoing process, but if you know what your looking for and how broad a range it can be applied to, it can serve a person quite well if they target enough of them.

[IM Ash]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

...based on the points above adsense is a TOTAL waste for most IMers. Even Affiliate marketing is more versatile. There I said it and I can back it up because its the pure truth...

Mike, you surely do make some good points, but as an Adsense publisher myself the first thing I can recognize is someone comparing apples with oranges.

The mindsets of individuals are different (incl. myself).... some people don't mind handling customers and the burden of ensuring everyone is happy - I know I don't!

I use my skill (seo) to build a passive income via Adsense and Aff. marketing and no1 can deter me.. coz I'm making good money without the hassle of taking care of customers

(Sorry if you can't do the same Mike)

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by bnetwork

The big difference to me is that there are far too many **** SEO providers that screw over their clients. At least when you **** your Adsense business up it does not affect others.

Well how about just being an SEO that doesn't screw over anybody? Meanwhile people and their adsense content junk mess up a lot of people. I see them in the health niche all the while with crappy articles with bad medical related advice that people that don't know better will believe because its ranked by Google. I got to shake my head that adsense affects no one else when MFAs junk up so many search results with garbage even in searches where people are looking for potentially life saving advice or desperately important financial direction.

Maybe I take customer care too seriously, maybe I care too much in general. It makes me mad to think that people who can't make something as simple as Adsense work would seriously consider taking on this kind of responsibility. Because it is not easy to run a successful SEO service and consistently deliver results for your clients.

Bnet what we will never agree on is that there is ANY venture that is easy to make money in. You completely are distorting my position to suit yours. I assume that ANY business that makes good money will require hard work. I'm not advocating that people that sit back on their rear end and never learn anything go ahead and enter SEO. I fully accept what you and others have said about people offering SEO services that are a complete joke and should not be offering anything. My rep around here is to give people a full head on analysis (my detractors call it something farless flattering and are probably right) when they come with some weak SEO knowledge and claim they are the best SEO on the planet.

But you know what my answer to that is? Its part of the IM culture that I hate and MFA proponents are also directly responsible. Whats the SEO alternative of

" Next month You can Make $20,000 a month while sitting on your coach watching TV"

Its the MFA lazy I don't have to do nothing but buy a domain and put adsense code on a site and I will retire.

See I am not convinced that everyone that fails at MFA or even IM are mindless dolts that can't make anything work. Many of them have day jobs that require thought and work. Its just that many of their minds turn to mush when they read the testimonials from the guys selling kits that because its the internet they can make cash with the push of a button.

You act like its something in their DNA or all of their low IQs where I think if we didn't have these rubbish get rich lazy approaches people WOULD wise up. How do I know I am right? Because I have seen people who were into MFAs and crappy SEO wise up over the years and now run their business extremely sensible - With hardwork.

Bottom line - "make money easy with MFAS", "do nothing but link spam blast sites to the top" and "get rich overnight" are all the same mentality and adsense proponents very often own that.

If you don't own hardwork as the key to success you have nothing to be indignant about . Whether you do SEO, adsense or any kind of IM you ARE the problem.

Try reading the OP again. You might see that it was addressing people who have or would WORK long at adsense not sitting on their thumbs.

[IM Ash]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Well how about just being an SEO that doesn't screw over anybody? Meanwhile people and their adsense content junk mess up a lot of people. I see them in the health niche all the while with crappy articles with bad medical related advice that people that don't know better will believe because its ranked by Google. I got to shake my head that adsense affects no one else when MFAs junk up so many search results with garbage even in searches where people are looking for potentially life saving advice or desperately important financial direction.



Bnet what we will never agree on is that there is ANY venture that is easy to make money in. You completely are distorting my position to suit yours. I assume that ANY business that makes good money will require hard work. I'm not advocating that people that sit back on their rear end and never learn anything go ahead and enter SEO. I fully accept what you and others have said about people offering SEO services that are a complete joke and should not be offering anything. My rep around here is to give people a full head on analysis (my detractors call it something farless flattering and are probably right) when they come with some weak SEO knowledge and claim they are the best SEO on the planet.

But you know what my answer to that is? Its part of the IM culture that I hate and MFA proponents are also directly responsible. Whats the SEO alternative of

" Next month You can Make $20,000 a month while sitting on your coach watching TV"

Its the MFA lazy I don't have to do nothing but buy a domain and put adsense code on a site and I will retire.

See I am not convinced that everyone that fails at MFA or even IM are mindless dolts that can't make anything work. Many of them have day jobs that require thought and work. Its just that many of their minds turn to mush when they read the testimonials from the guys selling kits that because its the internet they can make cash with the push of a button.

You act like its something in their DNA or all of their low IQs where I think if we didn't have these rubbish get rich lazy approaches people WOULD wise up. How do I know I am right? Because I have seen people who were into MFAs and crappy SEO wise up over the years and now run their business extremely sensible - With hardwork.

Bottom line - "make money easy with MFAS", "do nothing but link spam blast sites to the top" and "get rich overnight" are all the same mentality and adsense proponents very often own that.

If you don't own hardwork as the key to success you have nothing to be indignant about . Whether you do SEO, adsense or any kind of IM you ARE the problem.

Try reading the OP again. You might see that it was addressing people who have or would WORK long at adsense not sitting on their thumbs.

You have time on your hand

[bnetwork]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Well how about just being an SEO that doesn't screw over anybody? Meanwhile people and their adsense content junk mess up a lot of people. I see them in the health niche all the while with crappy articles with bad medical related advice that people that don't know better will believe because its ranked by Google. I got to shake my head that adsense affects no one else when MFAs junk up so many search results with garbage even in searches where people are looking for potentially life saving advice or desperately important financial direction.



Bnet what we will never agree on is that there is ANY venture that is easy to make money in. You completely are distorting my position to suit yours. I assume that ANY business that makes good money will require hard work. I'm not advocating that people that sit back on their rear end and never learn anything go ahead and enter SEO. I fully accept what you and others have said about people offering SEO services that are a complete joke and should not be offering anything. My rep around here is to give people a full head on analysis (my detractors call it something farless flattering and are probably right) when they come with some weak SEO knowledge and claim they are the best SEO on the planet.

But you know what my answer to that is? Its part of the IM culture that I hate and MFA proponents are also directly responsible. Whats the SEO alternative of

" Next month You can Make $20,000 a month while sitting on your coach watching TV"

Its the MFA lazy I don't have to do nothing but buy a domain and put adsense code on a site and I will retire.

See I am not convinced that everyone that fails at MFA or even IM are mindless dolts that can't make anything work. Many of them have day jobs that require thought and work. Its just that many of their minds turn to mush when they read the testimonials from the guys selling kits that because its the internet they can make cash with the push of a button.

You act like its something in their DNA or all of their low IQs where I think if we didn't have these rubbish get rich lazy approaches people WOULD wise up. How do I know I am right? Because I have seen people who were into MFAs and crappy SEO wise up over the years and now run their business extremely sensible - With hardwork.

Bottom line - "make money easy with MFAS", "do nothing but link spam blast sites to the top" and "get rich overnight" are all the same mentality and adsense proponents very often own that.

If you don't own hardwork as the key to success you have nothing to be indignant about . Whether you do SEO, adsense or any kind of IM you ARE the problem.

Try reading the OP again. You might see that it was addressing people who have or would WORK long at adsense not sitting on their thumbs.

Woah, finally! I get where you're coming from now.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Eleva8

Mike, you surely do make some good points, but as an Adsense publisher myself the first thing I can recognize is someone comparing apples with oranges.

and I can recognize when a cliche is soooo over killed. Just because some people don't like communicating with people doesn't mean the whole analysis is "apples to oranges" . the Op spells out the similarities pretty clearly.

Does everyone who does adsense hate relating to people that makes doing adsense an apple instead of an orange? Thats Strange for people in this thread because they all just by posting already doing the very kind of communication that I do every day. Typing on my keyboard.

As for this hyped up stuff about pleasing customers, dealing with them Yad, yady,, yada . Those of you trumping up that to more than it is are showing signs of just not knowing about what makes a SEO business run.

I do not care if my customers are happy. I don't call them to ask them. shocking? For some perhaps but I already KNOW what makes them happy and its nothing odd - its what I offer.

My longer term customers can go weeks without talking to me because frankly they care about one thing only - the same thing I care about "where is there site placing in the search engines". They see it and know it and smile or frown

If top 3 they are happy. End of story. None of the trying to plase them and "answering to them" and constant communicating back and forth you guys are trying to sell as soo hard. Deliver what you promise. rankings. the same kind of ranking that if you don't achieve in Adsense you are out of a business as well.


Now i realize on WF SEO is a little different . Lots of you do link counting. "10,000 links" and "where is my report" and "how fast did you place them" and junk like that. I got one customer like that from here that is no longer my customer. Ranked number two within two weeks of using links I gave him and cried like a baby because he didn't get a report on the location for the last two. Hence I rarely take customers from here anymore for full SEO.

SEO world is hundreds of time bigger than WF though. To each his own. I'lltake dropping a few lines like everyone is doing in this thread anyway and have my business untethered from waking up one morning and the one company I work for saying my account has been suspended or decides unilaterally to change my payout.

[dminorfmajor]

I've recently started embarking on an authority site without AdSense. I'm glad I saw this post. The clicks are too low and inconsistent.

[IM Ash]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

and I can recognize when a cliche is soooo over killed. Just because some people don't like communicating with people doesn't mean the whole analysis is "apples to oranges" . the Op spells out the similarities pretty clearly.

Does everyone who does adsense hate relating to people that makes doing adsense an apple instead of an orange? Thats Strange for people in this thread because they all just by posting already doing the very kind of communication that I do every day. Typing on my keyboard.

Well Done!!! 5 Stars! You cannot distinguish similarities when you have not experinced both sides.

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by Eleva8

Well Done!!! 5 Stars! You cannot distinguish similarities when you have not experinced both sides.

That argument right there........

Apples and oranges

[patrich]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

and I can recognize when a cliche is soooo over killed. Just because some people don't like communicating with people doesn't mean the whole analysis is "apples to oranges" . the Op spells out the similarities pretty clearly.

Does everyone who does adsense hate relating to people that makes doing adsense an apple instead of an orange? Thats Strange for people in this thread because they all just by posting already doing the very kind of communication that I do every day. Typing on my keyboard.

As for this hyped up stuff about pleasing customers, dealing with them Yad, yady,, yada . Those of you trumping up that to more than it is are showing signs of just not knowing about what makes a SEO business run.

I do not care if my customers are happy. I don't call them to ask them. shocking? For some perhaps but I already KNOW what makes them happy and its nothing odd - its what I offer.

My longer term customers can go weeks without talking to me because frankly they care about one thing only - the same thing I care about "where is there site placing in the search engines". They see it and know it and smile or frown

If top 3 they are happy. End of story. None of the trying to plase them and "answering to them" and constant communicating back and forth you guys are trying to sell as soo hard. Deliver what you promise. rankings. the same kind of ranking that if you don't achieve in Adsense you are out of a business as well.


Now i realize on WF SEO is a little different . Lots of you do link counting. "10,000 links" and "where is my report" and "how fast did you place them" and junk like that. I got one customer like that from here that is no longer my customer. Ranked number two within two weeks of using links I gave him and cried like a baby because he didn't get a report on the location for the last two. Hence I rarely take customers from here anymore for full SEO.

SEO world is hundreds of time bigger than WF though. To each his own. I'lltake dropping a few lines like everyone is doing in this thread anyway and have my business untethered from waking up one morning and the one company I work for saying my account has been suspended or decides unilaterally to change my payout.

Mike, I think everything you have said up to this point is excellent information for people to use that are considering adsense or that have tried adsense with limited results.

Although, for someone such as myself, I wouldn't even humor the idea of changing what I do for a living I am not worried about what google changes or decides to do, it doesn't make any difference to me. I change over advertising and move on. I am sure Yukon is in the same boat.

When I started, I didn't decide to build sites that make some money. I decided to build a business and that is what I did. The very worst case scenario for me, I sell off my sites and retire. Retirement wouldn't be all that bad for someone in their early 30's! lol

[BigNorm]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

Its just that many of their minds turn to mush when they read the testimonials from the guys selling kits that because its the internet they can make cash with the push of a button.

This was me the first 12 months of my IM career. Them magic push button software cost me a **** load....bastards!

[Mike Anthony]

Originally Posted by BigNorm

This was me the first 12 months of my IM career. Them magic push button software cost me a **** load....bastards!

Bright side is you wised up. there are people who never do