Story of an Internet Sweatshop Worker

I am sure this story will ring a bell with alot you members!

Some days I spend over 12 hours on the internet working on my websites, trying to make a living off the internet, most days now it is usually around 5 -6 hours a day in between my other hobbies, such as metal detecting and gardening.

Isn’t is so frustrating when you are battling to make $10 a day through google adsense, and have been doing this for around five years now. I am sure there are millions of other webmasters with great websites and are in the same boat as me.

I remember when I was averaging around three dollars a day with adsense, that was a couple years ago and now I am in the two digit average per day! Wow great money isn’t it? NOT!
Don’t get me wrong, $10 a day adds up to a few hundred dollars a month and it comes in handy, paying for my web hosting, site upgrades, banners and so forth.

But after five years with one website at Page Rank 4, another site at Page Rank 3, and the others Page Rank 1 and 2, you’d think I’d be making at least $20 a day with my click throughs going at about 100 clicks a day and 10,000 plus impressions per day.

I put so much work into my websites, I have tried everything, adsense, adbrite, ebay partner network, commission junction, click bank and many other affiliate programs.

Some people earn around $10,000 a month using google adsense, I’ve earned that in five long years … alot of money and I don’t know where I would be without it, but I have invested way more than $10,000 into a couple of my websites. Maybe one day it will pay off for me. I hope so.
Earning money off the internet has a big advantage, if you lose your job at least you have the internet to fall back on.

I am closing on to my late 30’s now and sometimes I wonder if I will be doing this internet stuff when I reach retiring age … will I still be selling domain names when I reach 80 years of age? Will I still be running my ute website when I am 80, modering young kids who sign up for the love of utes?

Maybe I will be, but when I do retire and I am living off my pension, and if I am still blogging on the internet and selling domain names, at least I will still have a side income coming in.

But right now I have to admit, I am lucky to be earning a proper wage, however just like alot of webmasters I would rather be making a full time wage from the internet, from my domains, blogging and from my discussion forums, working from the comforts of home.

Having my domain name portfolio helps a bit also, especially when I am struggling a bit for money, I have more domain names to turn too, and it is a bit of coincidence when I am really struggling that all of a sudden I will get an offer for one of my domain names, usually I will one one or two serious offers a month for my names.

But right now what I earn off the internet is no worse than what a person in an Asian Sweatshop earns a day, $10 lousy bucks.

Lets hope one day I get look back on this post when I am making $100 a day, if I am, I’ll let you know and in the meantime I am seriously considering moving to China to work in a Nike Sweatshop, it sure pays better than this internet working!

 

Whats the point of this if we heard it before?

 

Oh sorry just venting my frustration of trying to make money on the net, I'm sure there are many threads of this forum where members ask and talk about the same stuff.

 

Lol if you are fustrated get a job in real life

Not everyone can make a lot on the net.

 

I have got one - a real job.

 

huh? whats the point of this post ?

 

Hi Father Christmas,

maybe you need to find better paying niches, or at least some you enjoy, this really shows up in your content. I am not doing much better than you, but boy have I learned a lot in the last year.

To give you inspiration, here is a link to absolute best teacher on adsense, and Grizzly gives it freely. Please read all of his articles and websites. he really knows his sh*t, and wants to help people understand

http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/

I am serious, Grizzly is the best at adsense for 1 man teams like us.

 

Relax, hes just venting. Although, I wouldn't expect any positive replies considering 99% of the people on this board are optimistic about their internet endeavors, and your story is quite the opposite.

 

Don't agree! I really believe every-f.-body can make money online!

@ FatherChristmas

Dont get despaired, adsense is not doing so well last couple of months/some say it is the advertisers paying less, which I doubt/. Try promoting affiliates, which however won't work as well as adsense since u mentioned some forum, but...

My own adsense earnings dropped some 200-300% during March and April, but thats the worst time to leave ur online business alone! Keep finding ways!

Nah, it would be pretty hard to keep living from the net at 80, simply because it will be way too different internet those days; same is valid for adsense! But in 2009 whats thew chance to reach 80s actually?

If I am not wrong someone suggested to blog about things you like, things you are into, well it seems you are from Australia - believe me that's a mega huge/although very competitive/ travel niche! I myself have a site about Australia, but simply do not have time for it...still I keep it somehow...and will continue the work on it once I am done with my current projects.

Finally, ya - there are many people living with way-less money than 10$ a day in 2009, but G. adsense is not the reason - its all our fault, we make it how we live, so just clawfinger do say - "hold your head up"!

p.s. not sure about the prices in Aussie, but I make living only from the internet and I am almost totally happy(excluding my gf)!
p.s.s. guess that thread shouldn't be in the adsense forum as it is not so related to it, but anyway...

 

If it's hobby, consider it as hobby, i.e. are you making more money per hour then your metal detective hobby? If yes, then you should not complain and enjoy extra income.

If it's business, treat it as business and stop doing random hour work, put atleast some fix number of hours every day to develop and think about great idea/innovation. Every business needs great first time idea or great implementation of over used idea, do you do any of this? if not, you can't make tons of money.

And last, never quit, what if you quit? do you have back up plan to get same income/hour?

 

I believe dealsonweb said it most accurate... "If it's business, treat it as business; if it is hobby - enjoy the extra earnings"
..And last, never quit,..if you quit - IT IS DEFINITELY NOT BUSINESS!

 

Cheers everyone!

 

nice little step back good read...although I do not use adsense and not sure how difficult it might be I make all my e-income using EPN.

 

Stop trying to monetize with just google adsense and you will see the light.

 

@FatherChristmas - First off I commend you on sticking with things. Most people talk about doing something or get so far and then walk away. However I want to tell you that you could make $10 on autopilot with sites that take several hours each to build and promote. Even if you did everything yourself it would only take 1-2 days per site. I also want to tell you that you could do this with 10 sites or less based on these timeframes. In some instances you even hit a home run and make over $5 a day from one site but atypically earnings fall into the $1-5 range per site. I am going to show people how to do this for free in the very near future so if you want to be notified about that in advance just sign up at the site in my signature.

Anyway, congratulations on persisting.

Dean

 

I know what you mean, it can be bad for your mental health!

I agree either treat is a hobby and/or even better set of very strict rules for when you work. You have to be able to let it go and not sneak and check adsense earnings!

A real job can be good too, no question, you have people to talk to and have fun with. I get tired in my head when I sit alone in front of computer to long.

I have very modest goals, I would like to make 200$ dollars a month to begin with as that would pay my rent (privilege of currency rates). Then I would go for 1000$ a month, that would pay for a basic lifestyle (again currency rates can work for you).

Maybe its time to reconsider.. Take up a real job and do this as a hobby!

 

I guess as in your case, it's more towards getting something extra in addition to your day job. As what you've said, at least you have something to fall back on if you lose your main source of income. Look to it as security rather than taking it as your main source of earning.

 

If all of your sites are laid out in a similar way to the one in your signature its not surprising that you aren't earning much.

Just look at how many links there are on your pages for visitors to click. I didn't count them but there has to be about 100 or so. The majority just lead to other pages on your site, so the chance of someone clicking an ad is minimal.

Your visitors probably love the information you provide but in all honesty if you want to make a lot more money from adsense you need to try to have them stick around for less time on your site by giving them less to click on. In fact, whenever you design a site you should be thinking how you can design it in such a way to get your visitors to leave your site as soon as possible by clicking an ad. You can still provide lots of great content, just don't make all of it accessible from every page. Imagine if you only had ten links on a page, and half of them were adsense ads, you'd greatly increase the chances of someone clicking an ad. I find that single column layouts work exremely well with adsense. By rearranging your site layout and internal linking structure you'll have less clutter and should be able to achieve a CTR of at least 20%, and still have a great site. How much would that improve your adsense income based on your current earnings per click?

 

I can relate to your post, my passion is creating a site, getting traffic and watching it grow ... like you said - I make about $10 a day with several sites - but the difference is I get them up and running and once they're going smooth with a 1000 or so visitors per day ... I sell them for a few hundred dollars.

So it goes like this :

A) Create, promote and grow a site.
B) Sell the site.

Earnings like this :

Earn $1 - $2 per site a day.
$300 - $350 (USD) after sale.

So I make about $400 a month from earnings and eventual sale of site and that converts OK to Aussie dollars. Also like you I work on the side for $25 an hour ... so work pays a lot more than the net.

 

Thanks glad you can relate to my story.