Is anyone else sick of making a few bucks a day, and spending hours doing SEO, article submissions, link development and all the BS? I'm not expecting to make a thousand dollars a day yet, but I've got some good sites, in good niches, and I just can't seem to get my traffic up to a number where I'm making $50-$100 a day. This is more of a rant than anything, but I've got the skills to make it happen, I just can't seem to get it going. What am I doing wrong? And no, i'm not blaming adsense for anything..I know it's in my hands how much I make..
First off, how long have these 'good sites in good niches' been on the web? I can see from your signature links that at least 3 of your sites contain terms for : Chrysler, Clip Art, and Golf. All three of these are not exactly the easiest areas to build sites in. Golf returns 375,000,000 results, Chrysler 71,200,000 and Clip Art 46,900,000. -- orangecoastfleet.com has horrible ad placement. The link in your signature is better, but the domain has a lot to do with your results. The domain name states nothing about your keywords, which never helps. The keyword in your signature, 'Chrysler 300 Grill & Accessories', returns 950,000 results, including Chrysler and other large auto companies. However, your page is number 3, which is excellent! Using http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html, 0 searches are done for this term. If your term is not searched for, it will never be found. -- Christmas Clip Art has 29,900 results, which is better niche results. Two problems here though. Blogs are notorious for low CTR. And this site is seasonal. How many people are looking for Xmas Clip Art in July (for example)? -- netgolfgames.com is an arcade site, which is also notorious for low CTR, even more so than Blogs. People play the games on arcade sites, they don't come to click on ads. The games themselves draw their attention away from supplemental information, like ads. -- If all of your sites are like this, these points above give you an idea of why you only make a few bucks a day.
^^ Ok, now that's a good reply..Thanks for the critique..I appreciate it. The root domain for OrangeCoastFleet.com isn't for adsense revenue...I have some niche landing pages on that domain (like the one in my sig) that I use to generate adsense $$. I have 3 or 4 pages like that which are doing well for their keywords....however, they're not in the 500-1000+ pageviews per day, where I'd like them to be. The game site; I've heard that they don't have real good CTR's but there were only 12,000 intitle sites competing, and "Golf Games" is getting about 7000 searches per month, so I thought I'd try it out...but that site is very new. I thought I'd try to sneak in the Xmas Clip art one before the holiday season, it had low intitle competition for Christmas Clip Art and a good search amount for the coming months..once again, it's a new site. All total, I probably have 2 sites, 2 blogs and a hand full of pages that I try to promote regularly. I'm still learning, I know this for sure, but I guess I'm just struggling to find a niche that brings enough traffic to generate decent adsense money.
Try developing a website that contains nothing but information. Look at the Lizard site in my signature. The reason people come to this site is for information about lizards, and the ads on the site normally contain supplemental and related information, which encourages clicks. The high level of content is great for the search engines, as you can see by searching for Lizards in Google. This site comes up number 2. Content sites with a lot of continuous updates are going to result in the best CTR, and in turn, earnings of any site type out there. For your games site, add a section for content, and write about golf & new games (just examples), and this content will help you in the SERPs.
Patient is the hardest part. I've been in a rut the last few weeks because of slumping numbers despite rising impressions.
Honestly, I like your sites and I think they look great! it's just not ranking high enough in the SEO to capture the traffic you want. I experimented a site on christmas gifts and it took ONE year to get noticed. From Jan to Sept, nothing happened. I did not do a single thing to promote the site (no article submission or links exchange). But from Oct onwards, they paid off. Traffic is not high, about 50-100 uniques a day, but they pay about $10 a day. I am expecting it to last till early dec only. (the site doesn't even look as good as yours ) I can understand the frustration and pain of getting a few cents a day. But if you keep working at it, I am sure you will get better, maybe the existing sites will get better or maybe some ideas will pop by and you will develop new sites that will bring in more money. i hope you are not depending on this to make a living. Otherwise the pressure is even greater. Good luck.
One problem you might have with 'golf games' is folks searching for something to do with playing real golf and being upset finding a game site so just closing the window immediately without having a chance to click anything. Also having the title "Featured Links" above your adsense might get you banned.
Same here..I've been pretty bummed about my results lately too but it's definitely getting better. Slowly (very) but surely its picking up. What helps me is reading through these forums and seeing the success stories. I know with some hard work, and as you mentioned, patience it will pay off. I keep telling my wife this is her retirement plan.. Once I get it to $100 bucks a day she can quit This helps her stay off my back too when I spend all night on the computer. lol Good luck everyone..
hi alejandro, great job with regards to your Lizards site. I'm planning to include a review (video/textual) on adsense with regards to your site (and some other sites). If you're interested, please get in touch with me via PM. Cheers! =)
I have learned, by snooping around lots of your sites, that information sites seem to be good ways of getting good traffic...however there seems to be a fine line between giving too much information, not enough information, and making your site look like a credible, professional site...not just MFA. I don't know about the rest of you, but I sit around and brainstorm good niche keyword phrases and check search volume / competition. I find some great phrases with high search volume and then you see the competition and realize there's no way to get high enough in the SERPS to make it worth the effort. So I fall back on medium volume searches with minimal competition...but even with good SERP's, it doesn't seem to get good traffic volume, i.e. good CTR's. The guys making $500 a day or more seem to have sites with super big search volume & competition, but they can get their sites near the top... Is that the only way to make serious money with adsense? Find a way to beat the big sites to the top of the SERP's. It seems like a war that's difficult to win. Thoughts, ideas?
Your problem is that you are stuck in the AdSense business model. Expand to other revenue streams. Until I tried it, I never knew that by selling banner ads and text links myself, I could make more in a week than I make with AdSense in a month...and this is in addition to my AdSense revenue, same traffic.
Hey, I just noticed that Golf site was born 2nd November, am I wrong ? I looked via Whois And Chrysler today ?! 7 November ?! If so you are doing well)) Numbers of $50-$100 a day ...hmm...no less than 6 monthes. Usually upto 2 years. That's average and with consistent efforts
think out of the box..... I make about $125 / day from non-seo activities... ontop of everything else.
Selling physical goods is the way to go. My business is making $50-$100 a day doing that, and it's pretty nice.
The chrysler one was on a sub domain, but I just purchased a dedicated domain for it today...which is why you see that...the golf one is new too, but I have other sites and pages out there that are my main adsense focus.
I believe the more it goes the harder it gets to earn good money from websites. I would like to hear from the gurus whether they agree with me.