For those earning - how did you start off? quantity (small niches) or quality (authorities)

Agreed.

A large volume of traffic is needed in order to make anything decent with Adsense.

There is much better ways to earn like building a PBN and selling links

but it will take a lot of coordination to pull it off.

** Disclaimer** I am currently not earning a living online.

In 2000, I lost my last corporate job because of downsizing. For 3 years after that I tried to find another one with no luck. Finally, out of desperation, I turned to the Internet. I started out doing every stupid thing you can think of from paid to read emails to surveys to you name it.

I made like $10 in 3 months.

Finally, I stumbled onto a legit traffic generation program which at the time was one of the best things around. Today, that program is pretty much dead in the water. But in 2003, it was great. But my excitement about seeing how good the program was turned into personal referrals to people I knew. It was from those referrals that my business started to grow.

The problem was, it stalled out at about $1,500 a month and there was no way I could live on that. So finally, after a couple of years, I started looking for something to do as a job while the business grew. That's when I stumbled onto a gig where I would write articles for some guy who owned a site and got paid for doing so. Well, I always loved to write so I started cranking them out like crazy for all the niches he listed. Turns out he just put these articles up on Adsense sites. This was before these sites took their major hit from Google.

Anyway, I remember my one PayPal payment for writing all these articles came to like $1,200. I was in heaven.

Then I got a brainstorm and it was the one that changed my whole life.

I thought to myself, "Why don't I write a book on how to write articles for payment?" So I did. I researched other sites that paid for article writing and included everything in the book. I put it up on Clickbank and my first month I made 200 sales.

Everything after that was history. I just kept turning out one product after another, using article marketing itself as my traffic source.

This lasted for about 4 years until finally Google pulled the rug out from article directories and my traffic literally dried up over night. So I went from making a crap ton of money to making all of $300 this year.

It's been a humbling experience.

If I had to start it all over again (well actually I do and I did) I'd put up an authority site in a niche and concentrate on that one thing and build it up until it was successful. I'd put everything I had into it, which I've done.

I have no idea if this current business venture is going to be profitable. I'd like to think, given my past experience and knowledge about some things marketing related, that it will be. My biggest stumbling block, now that article marketing doesn't work the way it used to and I have no idea how to make it work, is generating traffic. I have a few ideas thanks to the wonderful people at this forum. I hope they pan out.

My advice to you is as follows:

1) Don't get caught in the shiny object syndrome. Pick one thing and put everything you have into it. Make sure you research that one thing first to make sure it's viable. You don't want to get into a niche that has no earning potential.

2) Learn how to communicate with people. Writing is going to be one of the most important things you do, whether it's a blog post, a sales page or an email to a prospective customer. If you don't communicate well you're going to lose a lot of money.

3) Run your business as if your life depends on it. If you're not serious about making money, you won't.

4) Don't quit. No matter how tough things get you have to keep at it. It may not happen for you right away. It took me years to make a decent living and now I'm starting all over from scratch. If anybody has a right to be discouraged it's me. But I'm not. I'm more determined than ever to get back to where I was.

5) Enjoy what you're doing. If you don't, it's going to be very difficult to continue doing it.

That's my 2 cents for whatever they're worth from a guy who's broker than a government run brothel.