Addictive Adsense

Damn, this Adsense is addictive. In two months I've become a Gooogle Mooogle (that's like being a Mogul, but without the money.... ).

I'm a self taught web designer and only play at the web. I started with a home page on AOL, decided to learn proper HTML, and went from there. I've never looked towards generating a lot of traffic. I've built a few sites for myself, a few for friends (free) and a few for small businesses (which I charged for).

I joined adsense in the last few days of October (the 28th) with the opinion "Well, the sites are there anyway, so I may as well put ads on them". I didn't have any visions of grandeur, in fact I thought "if it pays out once a year, it'll cover the cost of hosting".

Then I started experimenting with blending and moving the ads around. In those last four days of October I earned $5.01, in November $37.07 and in December $64.59. I hit the first $100 on the 30th, which wetted my appetite. In the first three days of January I've already made over $20.00, so I'm feeling confident that I'll hit the $100.00 before the month is up. That'll be my first $100 month.

Now I find I've gone from "if it pays out once a year, it'll cover the cost of hosting", to setting myself targets and wondering, "I wonder if I can make a living out of this?"....

There's no reason for this post, I was just bored and thought it may offer other newbies a bit of hope....

 

Cool one.

What are your sites about ?

 

I'm not going to post any links to my sites (I've read too many horror stories on this forum)....

But:

The one that's doing all the work at the moment is an Amateur Radio site. I built the first site for a friend for free and he let me put the ads on there (I maintain it anyway). I had set him up with a forum, but that ended at the end of 2006 (after two years) because he didn't want to renew the domain that hosted it. So, I replaced it with my own forum (I run several forums, including a general one and a dating one) and coaxed all his members across before his closed. I've also picked up another 120 members since I launched it in mid November, and I've now started to wrap a website around the forum, but that's got a lot of growing to do.

People say forums don't do very well, but between the forum and the new site I'm getting about a 3.5% CTR. I'm quite pleased with that.

 

I wish you to get develop your forum like DP in this new year

 

Ha ha, thanks Netjobs, but I've got a long way to go before I get there.

 

wow, you have a really nice start. congrats

 

LOL, now you will forever be a slave to Google like me... oh well it could be worse.

 

well...aren't we all ? in so many ways....

 

Great work , yes do not post the links to your site . Its dangerous

 

Yes as he says don't post your links here in the forum.....otherwise like myself people will visit and click on ads and you'll earn revenues like I do and we dont want that do we????

 

hello congrats on your success,
do you mind share with us how do you promote the websites ?
and from where your traffics come from ?

 

Everyone is like that! I was making 25 a month from google, now im making around 350... and thinking, hey when this hits 800$ im gonna quit my part time job =P

 

Right. There's not much of a science involved here (yet).

Like I've already said, the site that's doing most of the work is a new Amateur Radio site.

Basically, I mentioned it on other Amateur Radio sites (where posting links is allowed) and also started an e-mail campaign to licenced radio hams. So far I've only targeted the UK with the e-mails, but there are over three million 'Hams' worldwide so I'm just going to keep plugging away. A large amount of those e-mailed visit the site (there's a lot of activity right after a mail shot) and about 10% have joined the forum.

It's small at the moment, but I'm hoping it'll grow as the word gets around.

I wouldn't exactly describe it as a 'success', just an unexpected start. Still, from tiny acorns, mighty oak trees grow....

 

May I ask: How did you start your email campaign? How many adresses are there in your database, and how did you get them? I'm interested in doing something similar, but don't want to get 'spammy'.

 

This is the hard bit. I've never done mass e-mails before and I hate spam.

It takes me about two hours to farm about 150 e-mail addresses. So far I have about 1,200. It's a long winded and very boring job, but every single e-mail is directed towards an Amateur Radio operator (Radio Ham), so the return interest is high. Also, as it is directly connected to their hobby, they don't consider it spam. Most of those who have joined the forum have thanked me for the invite. Radio Hams are a bit like CB'ers, except they talk on radio worldwide instead of just locally. They are known by callsigns (which are Country specific) and unlike most web users, they advertise their callsigns and e-maill addresses all over the web.

Ham Radio is all about communication. I just go onto the sites where they advertise their e-mails, and copy them into Notepad (like I say, long winded). I doubt if the same approach would work for, let's say, stamp collectors.

 

lol heard too many horrors eh? Worst thing you can do is put your site on your sig, or profile.

 

Actually it works for stamp collectors as well.

Mostly its in the manner done and whether the offers relevant.

Its often okay to recommend someone to a website that the person has an interest in...this is behavior targeting.

If I go to a stamp collecting forum or group, newsgroup, etc and say "hey here is a great stamp history website" then those stamp collectors will likely visit.

However if I said to the same group "hey here is a great submarine history website that I like" there will likely be few people who will go visit and quite a few would be put off.

So too in an email...sending a note of a good resource as a friend would work.

Plugging a stamp collecting binder at $49.99 as a marketer would trip the spam mind.