Living off Adsense?

I'd say in few cases verses most cases.

Most people have "entry level skills" which is why they try to put up 100, 200, 300 sites. They don't know how to make money with a site past 2 bucks a day, so site replication is their only shot. And that's fine. But it usually leads people to a life of hardship, frustration and mediocrity.

I've seen numerous posts here and elsewhere of people with 30, 40, 50 sites who make just a few bucks a day, which can easily be made with a single site of 5 pages or less and no real work.

Point is, AdSense is a great vehicle, but only if you know how to drive it. Otherwise, you'll just make a series of left turns and go nowhere.

You want to replicate success, not failure. So my tip would be to build ONE site. Get that making money, know why it's making money and go from there. Keep trying with one site at a time until you get it right.

Work smarter.

Creating another account is easy, but adding the ads back on sites that have been banned is not likely. I know from personal experiences that if a site is banned, then you can not put Adsense back on that site, even in another account. I also have been told by a friend who had an account banned, that any site that is part of a banned account can no longer serve Adsense ads (under any account).

That is not the blog that i use to apply for adsense, i got a lot of blog that have been 2 year old and the content is definetely unique. Sorry i not want to ads in the warrior forum signature .

Great points, Kay. And to amplify just a little bit. I see these sort of almost anti-Google messages frequently here. Those thinking of becoming AdSense publishers and being serious about it need to consider the fact when you ask for an account you are asking to become Google's business partner.

If you 'hate' them and badmouth them in public forums, how interested do you think they are in partnering with you?

AdSense publishing is a business activity. it should be treated as such. Badmouthing Google before you even start the business relationship strikes me as a recipe for disaster ... but then, only my opinion of course.

A few years back Google used to pay me $25USD just to refer new publishers. Now, they have so many eager new publishers there is essentially a waiting list. That should tell you that AdSense is indeed a viable source of income ... but it requires work and patience ... that is the investment you have to be willing to make.

Scraping content. Not the right forum to talk about stuff like that though, go to Syndk8 if you wanna find out how people do that sort of thing.

that is so true!

come to think of it, for the first few years, i did not even put a single ad on my site!

Exactly!

Everyone will have a different experience, mainly depending on their niche.

Getting 10 cents a click is quite rare for me, thats definitely on the lower end of the scale.

All in all across all my niches I average 40 cents a click which is decent.

However one of my niches averages 50cents - $1+ a click, I'm not complaining

BTW, at current levels, if the earnings stay as they are for the next 12 months (I'm adding content all the time though), I'll make around $25000 from adsense for the year. I expect my earnings to rise and would hope for 30-40k in 2011 at a minimum

Way to much fluctuating as of late. Kinda undermines the epitom of a STABLE and RELIABLE income.

The key to actually making a good living from Adsense is to stop putting the cart before the horse. What I mean by that in practical terms is that you need to stop yourself from thinking about "how can I make an income from Adsense?" and instead start thinking "how can I create great websites?"

Of course you can make a good living from your Adsense earnings.. It is very possible but if that is your only motivation you are going to fall into the trap that so many people fall into. The trap is to just think of your website as a vehicle for Adsense clicks.. It ISN'T! The usual approach to building these types of MFA (made for Adsense) type sites are..

1. Locate a niche based on good search volume, low competition, high CPC.
2. Throw up a quick site on your chosen keyword
3. Find other keywords based on similar criteria and throw up poorly written (or worse) poorly rewritten content on those keywords.
4. promote with some low quality backlinks.
5. Rinse and repeat.

Now of course there are many tricks and tactics that are also used like exact keyword domains etc.. but that basically describes the usual process.

Now, of course it is possible that these types of sites will happily be generating some sort of Adsense income for a while. However, it is very likely that at some point one of a few things will happen.

1. Other people using the exact same keyword tool will be competing with you for the same keywords.
2. Google will flag your site as MFA and potentially drop your site from Adsense or worse ban your account.
3. The poor content will eventually result in deindexing or severe drop in rankings.

A far far far better way of approaching this is to be professional and start treating this as a business. Your business is to create information rich sites that people will love and in return you get paid by Adsense. Once you grasp that as a concept you will take a big step in the right direction.

This is the approach to site building you should take.

1. Put your keyword tool to one side..
2. Research a niche that you are interested in or at least have a semi interest in.
3. Visit niche related forums and note down everything you can about what makes the people in that niche tick. What are their interests? What gets them all hot and bothered? What products they discuss? Look at popular threads and recurring topics. You need to get inside your niche and get to know it and the people inside out.
4. Create some fantastic content based on all this research. Content can include articles, videos, diagrams, flowcharts, software, audio etc.. The list goes on but you should be creating content that totally satisfies what people are looking for. Link bait, link bait... LINK BAIT!
5. Promote your pages by looking for some good relevant High PR backlinks to get your site noticed. Your content as link bait will eventually take over.
6. Pay close attention to social media for promotion of your site.
7. Syndicate content for promotion.. Think viral!
8. Optimize your adsense placement and styles by utilizing Adsense channels.
9. Create more and more great content.. You start small to grow big!

Over time your Adsense income will move from a trickle to a flow if you get this right. Better still you are giving Google exactly what they want because you are giving the people exactly what they want.. It is WIN WIN.

You're welcome. =) I think that anybody can be a success at anything who strives hard enough. I am an avid reader of Poor Richard's Almanack.