For me, I started some communities that became large. I couldn't afford the hosting bill. Right about that time I found adsense, and I've had no trouble with hosting since then. I can't say that Adsense has made me rich, but it has contributed to my ability to produce good communities which is more important to me than money (others may disagree).
A few ideas more than rules: Be flexible. Things will go well, then crater, then build back. Be ready for the setbacks and take advantage of the successes. Traffic. There are literally hundreds of places to get traffic - articles, directories, top lists, friendly sites. Work one area and then lay off it a bit and try another approach. Growth takes time and a good deal of social engineering. Have an RSS feed. Sign yourself up at the various RSS aggregators including MyYahoo. If your content updates regularily think about a blog as your front page. If you have a blog make sure it is pinging the major blog indexes. Play with different ad formats. Make sure you have a back up service which kicks in when Google has no ad to give. Avoid black hat SEO but be smart about everything from meta tags to alt text to H1. Learn CSS. (You would be amazed at how easy it is to alter what H1 looks like.) Avoid keyword spam. It just makes it way too easy for Google to penalize you. Try to improve every site you have every day even if it is just a little. Get one more back link or a Google sitemap or a cleaner navigation system. Look at user experience. Consider the difference between one time visitors - who are more likely to leave via an ad - versus return visitors who may refer people or link to you. Look past the front page. Are your main subpages all they can be? Do they have titles? do they have metatags? Are they properly linked? Beware of get rich/traffic/links/PR quick schemes. The Google patent applications are pretty clear that they are looking for seasoning on sites. Be prepared to wait out the sandbox and, while you are waiting, get listed at MSN and Yahoo and build links. Don't be afraid to try little tweaks. I was reading this forum a couple of nights ago and someone alluded to a tiny change they had made on a site which paid off. I could not do exactly the same thing, but I make a similar change. It has raised my earnings 40%. It took five minutes. Try different colours, settings, blending options and contexts for your Google adsense ads. A minor shift can pay off. If you have no more changes to make on your site, if it is totally tweaked, go get some more traffic. Or clone the site with similar but distinct content. Be delighted with $10.00 a day but understand that if a site can do that it is likely to be able to do $100.00 with more traffic. Read this forum! I have a white paper project on the hop which deals with all this in terms of what I call "Google points". Nothing fancy, just a checklist of things to do and not to do and a way of keeping score of your own efforts.
Excellent post, especially that part. I think that's even crucial for those of us not yet at the point of being able to do this full-time. I've been trying to get at least one little thing done each day, even when I've been busy at the day job all day. I've noticed that it really helps when it comes to the weekend because I've already got half my planned work already done.
well... almost everyone here saying about finding a niche or something that no one is doing. I am curious... is that so easy?? I can call myself newbie in this adsense stuff, thats why saying that.
rockmyway5: Sometimes it's easy to find a niche, at other times it takes many many hours of searching. Normally you're not looking for something that no one's doing, your looking for something that a) is searched for quite often, b) has plenty of advertisers, and c) the other sites can be easily overtaken. Item c) is the challenge, Finding a & b is easy, spotting c isn't always easy.
If you hate them, then don't use them. It's that simple. RSS is a good method for syndicating the content. You can allow others to get your content through customized interface. Also you can add quality content to your site easily (like news headlines etc.)
I would say my success secret is keeping it secret. Test google ads on diff. scenerio and place them where people will look 1st.
there's never a secret where there's competition. Everything you do can be and will be copied and applied by your competitors, most of the time, on a scale that beats you. Success with adsense has nothing to do with piscrets or secrets or the ozone layer or the weather or melting of the polar caps. There's just hard work in bringing nice quality traffic on a nice quality website. Quality traffic? - now that's the real secret
Yea you can say that but innovation is also a factor which brings in success and secrecy is important for your plans.How much your competitor may copy you or apply the same thing unless his a starter i know i would score more on him netime.
Your innovation is the first thing your competitors will "steal" But i agree with you. Innovation is what keeps the whole game going and gives you this winning edge.
Improvise, adapt, overcome - and keep doing it - everytime you find something new it is only a matter of time before someone else comes along and copies you
Not many secrets anymore. Long hours with original ideas. One tip I like to expand on is CLASSY designed websites. I am a graphic/web designer, and I take the extra time to develop great looking sites for myself even though I really dont have the time. Kind of like a house painter that cant even paint his own house. A professional design goes a long way. Good Luck
But there a hell of alot of people making good money with badly designed sites. Personally i think site design isn't vital, though it might help for return visitors to have a visually pleasing design.