Why Your Adsense Websites Aren't Making You Rich

[tommygadget]

Hello Warriors!

I get asked this question so much, I decided to post about it. I have around 200 niche sites with adsense on them. This should make me rich, right? Wrong! I made some mistakes and I would like to share some very hard-won information with you so that you don't fall into the same traps that I did. Here's what I found:

1) Niche choice is important. Here's why: I have several websites that target small niches which Google pays me $0.04/click. These websites only make a few dollars/month. Generally, I view a site as a success if it makes over $10/day. I think that is reasonable. Let's take our real world $0.04/click for a "poor" niche and see what it would take to get $10/day. I go to my adsense account and see that on average, 4.49% of my visitors click the ads. Let's crunch some numbers: to get $10/day, at $0.04/click, we need 250 clicks/day. OK, sounds great. Now how many people need to see that with a CTR of 4.49%. That number is 5568 visitors per day! Ouch! OK, how many visitors is that per month? Well, just a shade over 167 THOUSAND visitors/month. OK, let's say for illustration, we assume that each keyword here (I actually looked at on of my sites for this number) has around 2,000 searches/month. Let's be kind and say that we capture every visitor. That would mean we need around 167/2 or around 84 articles to get there.

2) Optimizing and testing is soooooo important. Here's why: Let's say that we optimized our website for clicks and got a 10% CTR. That would mean we could get away with writing 38 articles instead of 84! Hey, big incentive there! People, that means you should be doing everything you can to get that click! OK, let's say we got that 10% CTR, moving on, what else can we do? Here's what: target keywords that get $0.20/click instead of $0.04/click. Really, it is not hard at all. Google's external keyword tool now has CPC (cost per click) data. Fixing our website to target these clicks means we need 1/5 the traffic. Well, how much is that? 5568/5 is a much more reasonable 1114 visitors/day. With all our previous numbers being equal, that would mean we target 38/5 keywords, or 8 keyword phrases. Isn't that MUCH better? Doing some research definitely means all the difference between success and failure.

Well, as you see in my example, choosing the right niche and testing and optimizing your CTR makes the difference between writing and promoting and dominating 84 niche phrases or just 8 phrases. Which would you rather do? Now go out there and make some cash.

Thomas C. Gajdjis

[discrat]

Thanks Tommy, some good sensible stuff you Post !!

Can I ask you something, though ?? How in the World do you keep up with 200 Sites ?
Auto content or what ??

[tommygadget]

I have many sites that tell you how to do things. This kind of information does not need constant updating. I have a website with page 1 results in Google for several keyword phrases that was last updated in 2003.

TomG.

[Chris Kent]

Dude you know your stuff. You and the $100/day guy in the Adsense forum have inspired me to look into my Adsense again. I would love to see your final tried and tested site layout for maximum clicks.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by ProductCreator

Dude you know your stuff. You and the $100/day guy in the Adsense forum have inspired me to look into my Adsense again. I would love to see your final tried and tested site layout for maximum clicks.

Here's a hint: Giant rectangle centered and above the fold. Menus on the side replaced by a skyscraper ad.

TomG.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by ProductCreator

Dude you know your stuff. You and the $100/day guy in the Adsense forum have inspired me to look into my Adsense again. I would love to see your final tried and tested site layout for maximum clicks.

Remember what I said about testing? Believe it or not, some niches respond to very weird adsense placement, not intuitive at all, so although I posted above what works for at least 80% of my niches, that other 20% really requires some thought and testing.

TomG.

[valerieSONORA]

Wow 200 sites! I have somewhere around 25 or so and some of them are badly neglected. No, adsense sure doesn't make me rich, but I'm not complaining cause at least I get something!

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by valerieSONORA

Wow 200 sites! I have somewhere around 25 or so and some of them are badly neglected. No, adsense sure doesn't make me rich, but I'm not complaining cause at least I get something!

I bet that I could double your income from those sites in less than 8 weeks. Just a few tweaks and some link love would do it.

TomG.

[Ricky Parker]

Testing is really what it is all about. One little tweak the other day took one of my sites from about 3 bucks a day average to 12. Maybe not a lot to some. But trust me, with enough sites and testing with each it starts to add up.

[MoBuck$]

Adsense is pointless my eyes... I mean, seriously why just make $12 a day when you could make like $500 doing something else... ?

[terryd]

Originally Posted by MoBuck$

Adsense is pointless my eyes... I mean, seriously why just make $12 a day when you could make like $500 doing something else... ?

Yeah tell that to Joel Comm or even tommygadget and I'm sure they'll tell you that you need your eyes checked then.............

200 adsense sites is phenomenal, I'm lucky to have any that average $3 a day!

Tommy, do you use a blog platform for all your sites?
Do you have a formula that you use for these sites? (I couldn't find anything in your sig)

[valerieSONORA]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

I bet that I could double your income from those sites in less than 8 weeks. Just a few tweaks and some link love would do it.

TomG.

Coolness! What tweaks should I make?

[Ricky Parker]

Originally Posted by MoBuck$

Adsense is pointless my eyes... I mean, seriously why just make $12 a day when you could make like $500 doing something else... ?

Why?

Because that is just one site at $12 a day now. And I touch that site 0 times a month. It sits and does its thing and makes that.

Why part 2?

Because this can be done with more that 1 site. (And I personally have more than just that 1)


Nobody ever said ONLY use adsense to make money. Adsense is just another stream of income. Large or small amounts at the end of the month it's still another check.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by MoBuck$

Adsense is pointless my eyes... I mean, seriously why just make $12 a day when you could make like $500 doing something else... ?

I really hope that a lot of people share your opinion and stick to it. That would be great for me. Oh, BTW, did you notice what type of ads the really big authority sites have on them? I guess they do that because their whole marketing staff is lazy

Now, with regards to the adsense sites' layout, most of my sites are built by hand from scratch. This is a huge pain as it is hard to edit the layouts and add articles. There are many benefits, though. Let me tell you some of them:

1) In niches that I don't need updates very often, I use static sites because they load insanely fast and do not require a database connection like WP sites do. This also means that I have small backups so I can restore a hacked site in seconds (yes, it has happened, several times).

2) My static sites have a linking structure that favors the pages with the highest CPC. You cannot do this (as far as I know) with blogs. I also have complete control over layouts and the SE spiders know EXACTLY what my sites are about. No unrelated ads on my sites.

3) I can control every action that the reader can take. I control the navigation, what they see, how they can access it, etc. Some sites allow reading only one article at a time in sequence, while the search engines can see all the content for indexing.

I hope this clears some of the issues up. Oh, and don't get hung up on a site's platform. Just know that the most important issue is obtaining the right backlinks.

TomG.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by valerieSONORA

Coolness! What tweaks should I make?

PM me as many urls as you want me to look at. Start with the worst performers.

TomG.

[Chris Kent]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

1) In niches that I don't need updates very often, I use static sites because they load insanely fast and do not require a database connection like WP sites do. This also means that I have small backups so I can restore a hacked site in seconds (yes, it has happened, several times).

Yes, this is why I stopped making Adsense blogs after a while. It became too unwieldy updating all sites and yes I did get hacked like you.

I love Wordpress, but managing more than 10 Wordpress blogs becomes a nightmare. Imagine having to check 200 blogs on a regular basis to make sure that they have not been hacked!! Plus a database is another point of failure.

When you say you code by hand, is it completely by hand? Do you use a pre-made template to start off with? Or e.g. take a Wordpress blog index page and save it to html?

The only other way I could think of doing it without the headache is wordpress mu and making a gigantic blog monolith out of a single wordpress my installation containing multiple blogs.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by ProductCreator

When you say you code by hand, is it completely by hand? Do you use a pre-made template to start off with? Or e.g. take a Wordpress blog index page and save it to html?

Here is my gift to you: Open Source Web Design - Preview - Simple Beauty

You can build an entire adsense empire on websites done with a template like this.

TomG.

[TheOldRanger]

Question, Tommy...say I have software for making article sites (Flip Site Buddy Pro and EZ Article System)...I read your posts, and I took a look at the template you had a link to...is it possible to make even small amounts by building my article sites using A) my software B) OSWD templates (the ones that come standard with the software are kinda bland IMO), and also with Amazon links and maybe a Clickbank area as well?

I know that might sound like a bit much, but I believe in being thorough and asking LOTS of questions of those who know what they're doing :-)

[Sonni]

Thanks for the tips I have 5 blogs two Blogger and 3 WP they were getting some adsense clicks and now seemed to suddenly stop. It seems strange traffic never has been that good so I don't think that's it. I'm puzzled by it. Thanks for any advice you may have.
Sonni

[Chris Kent]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

Here is my gift to you: Open Source Web Design - Preview - Simple Beauty

You can build an entire adsense empire on websites done with a template like this.

TomG.

Thanks. I like the simplicity. Do you use categories on your sites? Or you just have a huge link list in the sidebar?

[tommygadget]

I don't know about these software packages. I don't like to leave a footprint that Google can recognize. I also like to make sure that only the html that is STRICTLY necessary gets in there. Last, but not least, I leave the visitors only one option. My sites with all sorts of stuff don't seem to convert well. Having said that, a text link to a ClickBank product embedded in a review page could work. Also, if you are talking about a subject that there are lots of books out there, an Amazon link sometimes works too. Experiment and test, test, test.

Originally Posted by TheOldRanger

Question, Tommy...say I have software for making article sites (Flip Site Buddy Pro and EZ Article System)...I read your posts, and I took a look at the template you had a link to...is it possible to make even small amounts by building my article sites using A) my software B) OSWD templates (the ones that come standard with the software are kinda bland IMO), and also with Amazon links and maybe a Clickbank area as well?

I know that might sound like a bit much, but I believe in being thorough and asking LOTS of questions of those who know what they're doing :-)

Look at your traffic logs. This has happened to me many times. Page one in Google, and suddenly nowhere. If that's the case (or even if it is not), getting some new links will help.

Originally Posted by Sonni

Thanks for the tips I have 5 blogs two Blogger and 3 WP they were getting some adsense clicks and now seemed to suddenly stop. It seems strange traffic never has been that good so I don't think that's it. I'm puzzled by it. Thanks for any advice you may have.
Sonni

No categories, don't put everything in the sidebar. Structure the sidebar to promote the highest CPC articles and the home page *hint* *hint*.

Originally Posted by ProductCreator

Thanks. I like the simplicity. Do you use categories on your sites? Or you just have a huge link list in the sidebar?

Hope this helps.

TomG.

[keithdougherty]

Wow, I love the numbers. I am a numbers guy myself and you really broke it down great for us there. Thanks for sharing.

[John Taylor]

Sorry, I have to laugh at comments like why
have a site that only makes $12 a day..

Because, when you know how to set up a
site so that it's on page #1 of Google; and
you don't have to do anything at all other
than occasionally check your stats.. it's a
darned site easier to do no work at all on
50 sites, than it is to work your socks off
"doing something else".

When Adsense was in it hey day, some of
us were earning emabarrassing amounts of
money from Google. At one time I had over
3,000 sites. ;-)

John

[tommygadget]

John, 3,000 sites? Wow, now that's real effort. For everyone who laughs at $12/day. How about 3,000x$12/day? Oh, we aren't laughing now are we!?!

Originally Posted by John Taylor

Sorry, I have to laugh at comments like why
have a site that only makes $12 a day..

Because, when you know how to set up a
site so that it's on page #1 of Google; and
you don't have to do anything at all other
than occasionally check your stats.. it's a
darned site easier to do no work at all on
50 sites, than it is to work your socks off
"doing something else".

When Adsense was in it hey day, some of
us were earning emabarrassing amounts of
money from Google. At one time I had over
3,000 sites. ;-)

John

Your post is idiotic. Google will never pay $10/day? Are you joking? I get over $1/click on some of my blogs and you think I can't get $10/day. Keep believing that man, we don't need the competition, though I suspect we've got nothing to fear from you in that respect

Originally Posted by plutoscript

Do not depend so much on Google Adsense to get all the money you need. Seek for other options to make money. Google will never pay you $10 dollars a day. Be focus and concentrate on fewer sites that you can managing. 200 sites? I guess it's much. Goodluck.

And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

TomG.

[robertstr]

great post...tommy , would you be willing to look at a project of mine?
Cheers

[John Taylor]

Tommy,

There wasn't a great deal of effort that went into
it other than setting up a lot of automation.

Those days are long gone, but it was good while
it lasted. ;-)

These days I use Adsense sites to evaluate the
potential of a niche market and get paid for my
efforts by Google.

The sites that do well with Adsense will usually
convert to good lead generators or affiliate sites.

The key is starting out with a well thought out
business strategy and not just building sites on
a random basis.

John

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by John Taylor

Tommy,

There wasn't a great deal of effort that went into
it other than setting up a lot of automation.

Those days are long gone, but it was good while
it lasted. ;-)

These days I use Adsense sites to evaluate the
potential of a niche market and get paid for my
efforts by Google.

The sites that do well with Adsense will usually
convert to good lead generators or affiliate sites.

The key is starting out with a well thought out
business strategy and not just building sites on
a random basis.

John

Still, great work. I have to say that I also think out a strategy and use adsense sites to test the market while getting paid, but every so often I throw random sites up because that's how I discovered some winners that I was sure were dogs

TomG.

[TLCarroll]

Originally Posted by tommygadget

John, 3,000 sites? Wow, now that's real effort. For everyone who laughs at $12/day. How about 3,000x$12/day? Oh, we aren't laughing now are we!?!
And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

TomG.

In case anyone's interested in the math:

$12/day x 365 days= $4,380 per year for one site

$4,380 x 3,000 sites= $13,140,000 for a year



Reminds me of the guy who was laughed at for only making a $100/month profit on his rental house.

"Yes, but I own 1,000 of them."

LOL

[Barbara Eyre]

Tom,

Great thread!

Like you and others have said, don't scoff at a measly "$12/day" when you're getting that money for basically little to no work over the long haul.

I have one site that is a personal site, but also Adsense. It's in a niche that pays decent in Adsense ... but drips the earnings. I know I need to add some more content and promote it a tad more, but otherwise, it sits on page one for many variations of the main keywords/phrases. Basically, my problem is the lack of traffic. It *could* be ad placement, but I'm not sure. I've mixed it up over the years, but never really saw a dramatic enough change to warrant one display over another.

Either way, I do have a list of sites I want to start - all researched and many 'mapped out' .... now all I need is an extra 20 hours in a day to work on that.
Got any spare hours?

[Robert_Rand]

Originally Posted by John Taylor

Sorry, I have to laugh at comments like why
have a site that only makes $12 a day..

Because, when you know how to set up a
site so that it's on page #1 of Google; and
you don't have to do anything at all other
than occasionally check your stats.. it's a
darned site easier to do no work at all on
50 sites, than it is to work your socks off
"doing something else".

When Adsense was in it hey day, some of
us were earning emabarrassing amounts of
money from Google. At one time I had over
3,000 sites. ;-)

John

John,

What do you think is the biggest difference with Adsense today and its' hayday?

Is it mainly that CTR's have dropped as people have become somewhat immune? Or more competition so it's harder to get traffic?

Would love to hear your thoughts...

[terryd]

Originally Posted by plutoscript

Do not depend so much on Google Adsense to get all the money you need. Seek for other options to make money. Google will never pay you $10 dollars a day. Be focus and concentrate on fewer sites that you can managing. 200 sites? I guess it's much. Goodluck.

You obviously have no clue as to what you are talking about. I suggest you read up more before making silly statements like the one above.

[shinmenx]

200 sites! Holy crap!

Do you check google analytics stats for each one each day? Does it take like 100 minutes (30 seconds for each site - going fast!)?

[Paul Myers]

Tommy,

Dude, it's threads like this that make me really miss the beer button. You'd have a case there right now.

AdSense is not my model, but man... This is easily the best example of the mental difference between building a business and buying a job that I've seen here in ages. Test, refine, and expand. Work your numbers, and scale it up.

Sharing the info. And offering to help another member with her own sites.

This is what being a Warrior means, folks.

Bravo, Tommy. Best thread of the week.

And a very valuable tip from Mr Taylor on using it for testing. That's got to be worth some bucks to the folks who are paying attention. Thanks, John.


Paul

[andreasnrb]

why not split test various offers depending on site? 200 adsense sites do seem strange.
Seem more money making to have different ad systems on different sites.
So $10 dollar profit for each site regardless of ad system would I consider to be better.

I use adsense, clickbank offer or Amazon products on my sites. (which has been decided based on ad rotation)

[tommygadget]

Thank you Paul, that's very gracious of you. And yes, I've been going over Valerie's sites and can clearly see what needs help. I will ask her if I can make some general observations here on the thread for the benefit of other warriors. And yes, John Taylor hit it right on the head with that useful tip, I hope everybody was listening.

Originally Posted by Paul Myers

Tommy,

Dude, it's threads like this that make me really miss the beer button. You'd have a case there right now.

AdSense is not my model, but man... This is easily the best example of the mental difference between building a business and buying a job that I've seen here in ages. Test, refine, and expand. Work your numbers, and scale it up.

Sharing the info. And offering to help another member with her own sites.

This is what being a Warrior means, folks.

Bravo, Tommy. Best thread of the week.

And a very valuable tip from Mr Taylor on using it for testing. That's got to be worth some bucks to the folks who are paying attention. Thanks, John.


Paul

Robert, I would like to field this one. The really really biggie was that once upon a time, you could NOT separate bids for the search results and content network. If you don't see the significance of that one, it means that you could not bid $0.25/click on the content network and $4/click for search placement. This meant tons of money for MFA sites which eventually lead to the smackdown.

Originally Posted by Robert_Rand

John,

What do you think is the biggest difference with Adsense today and its' hayday?

Is it mainly that CTR's have dropped as people have become somewhat immune? Or more competition so it's harder to get traffic?

Would love to hear your thoughts...

No, daily, I look at the top earners. Each site has its own channel so I can check performance at a glance. If a site is lagging, I'll check the analytics data. BTW, I don't use analytics on all my sites because I don't want to expose my linking structure to them another *hint* *hint*.

Originally Posted by shinmenx

200 sites! Holy crap!

Do you check google analytics stats for each one each day? Does it take like 100 minutes (30 seconds for each site - going fast!)?

If I understand what you are saying, I want to be very clear on what I do. I test niches for traffic. Then, I put adsense on them and see how the CTR goes. Then, when I have traffic, I throw an affiliate link in the body of the post and see what happens. I am always testing and checking. Overall, adsense has been the easiest road to travel for me because I don't have to sell anything, see?

Originally Posted by andreasnrb

why not split test various offers depending on site? 200 adsense sites do seem strange.
Seem more money making to have different ad systems on different sites.
So $10 dollar profit for each site regardless of ad system would I consider to be better.

I use adsense, clickbank offer or Amazon products on my sites. (which has been decided based on ad rotation)

OK, I'll turn over the mike to someone else

TomG.

[Dennis-White]

Great post, jamm packed with a lot of great information

[Malcolm Tindle]

Hi Tommy,

A great post with some equally great replies. When I first started off I was desperate to get Adsense on my site to make some money but now I don't much care either way. If I get a few bucks then great but that's all it does for me. Perhaps in the future when I have built a better business the Adsense will start to increase but at the moment it doesn't do anything for my income.

Mal.

[philbowman]

Love the post. As a numbers man, this gives you great info.

[jasonl70]

So, what good is $12 a day? that's pretty much a car payment.. so that one site just bought him a new car

3 or 4 of these sites? that's the lease on a new Lamborghini; or the payments on a vette, truck and harley; or a mortgage payment.

[AlphaWarrior]

Thanks for the info and inspiration Tommy.

What do you do to get traffic?

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by AlphaWarrior

Thanks for the info and inspiration Tommy.

What do you do to get traffic?

Alpha, traffic generation is a whole other beast. Here's some inspiration: http://www.warriorforum.com/blogs/ja...trategies.html
Hope that helps you get started.

TomG.

[cballi]

Tom,

How long does it take for you to start seeing decent traffic on a new site? I have started a few niche sites and granted, haven't given it a full effort b/c of time restraints, but I was still hoping to see better numbers by now.

[locke]

Very slick Tom! I agree, lets focus on high traffic/high CPC keywords, optimize our sites as much as possible and then do whatever is necessary to get the sites up to the 10/day min.

Sounds like a plan that will yield results to say the least...

[AlphaWarrior]

Tommy, I looked at the link you posted and I do realize that there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of ways to get traffic, but the key is targeted traffic. I have been using articles. I do not get much traffic from any of the search engines. I was just curious as to how you get most of your traffic?

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by AlphaWarrior

Tommy, I looked at the link you posted and I do realize that there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of ways to get traffic, but the key is targeted traffic. I have been using articles. I do not get much traffic from any of the search engines. I was just curious as to how you get most of your traffic?

I did not want to take on the traffic issue here, but I will say a few words about it. Most people do it all wrong. There are two ways of getting links that are effective (for me), asking for them from high PR related websites and link building through article marketing or free websites. Asking for links is tedious, but the rewards make it worthwhile. A single pr5 keyword rich link can bring your site from oblivion to page 1 in Google depending on niche. Now the second approach has two methods, articles and free websites. Each should have original content with RELEVANT keyword anchored links. Here's what I mean: For more weight loss tips, go to our site, click here. Now if you are looking to rank for the keyword phrase "click here", you're doing great. If you do this, go back to your articles and fix them so that they look more like this: For more weight loss tips, visit our site, weight loss exercise for beer lovers. Now you will get more weight for "weight loss exercise for beer lovers" which will bring you $3/click. Anyway, I hope this little digression has illustrated my view on traffic generation.

TomG.

[Zeus66]

I'll share a link method I've used to great effect...

Compile a list of related sites that are not direct competitors. For example, if you have a fishing tackle site, build a list of sites about fishing boats, fishing charter services, and fishing tips. Then contact each site owner via email or even over the phone if you're comfortable talking to them, and offer a unique article for their site in return for a link to your site. Since they're not competitors, but are in related niches, it doesn't hurt their business and it's win-win for you both. They get some nice content for their visitors and you get click-thrus and one-way link love from the search engines. I took a brand new domain and site in a moderately competitive niche (not about fishing) to about 200 visitors/day in a few weeks using nothing but links from this method.

John

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by Zeus66

I'll share a link method I've used to great effect...

Compile a list of related sites that are not direct competitors. For example, if you have a fishing tackle site, build a list of sites about fishing boats, fishing charter services, and fishing tips. Then contact each site owner via email or even over the phone if you're comfortable talking to them, and offer a unique article for their site in return for a link to your site. Since they're not competitors, but are in related niches, it doesn't hurt their business and it's win-win for you both. They get some nice content for their visitors and you get click-thrus and one-way link love from the search engines. I took a brand new domain and site in a moderately competitive niche (not about fishing) to about 200 visitors/day in a few weeks using nothing but links from this method.

John

Way to go, that's what I'm talking about. Sometimes I've heard of people actually emailing the prospect with the proposed article so they can publish it directly. Any way you do it, getting links from established web properties is a good deal.

TomG.

[sushee]

i am new in this bussiness..
im still didnot get anything from adsense website

[John Taylor]

Originally Posted by Robert_Rand

John,

What do you think is the biggest difference with Adsense today and its' hayday?

Is it mainly that CTR's have dropped as people have become somewhat immune? Or more competition so it's harder to get traffic?

Would love to hear your thoughts...

The biggest difference is what Google will
and will not accept.

I must admit I was surprised to see how long
it took them to eliminate all the scraped, low
quality sites designed exclusively to get clicks.

John

[Nathan Hangen]

Very good post, lots for new people to learn from on this one. Tommy, you are positioning yourself as quite the expert these days..well done.

I've got a few sites that do well, but my question is how do you have time to drive traffic to 200 sites? I struggle with a dozen.