My first $10 day after a huge loss in SERPs positioning

So, this is my time. I've read so many threads in this forum and other seo/sem related forums about the first $10 day, the first $100 day, the first $1000 month... And now here I am!

I was doing ok in Adsense with a couple of websites, even if only 3 of them were running Adsense in a serious way (with optimizing and close monitoring of the statistics). I was going steady at $x.xx almost in the $xx.xx mark!

Then update Jagger came along and my traffic was hit at 40%. Almost half of the uniques, and half of the revenue from Adsense. I've searched the forums, shared my views and observations, and then forgot about those updates and thinked to myself 'Hey, you lost 40%, big deal, you still have 60% of visits and you should focus on them'. That's what I did.

I've started to read a lot, especially here at DP! I've read over and over the threads from Shoemoney (my tips) and from Critters (Quadrupled my CTR thanks to DP members).

I've monitored lots of channels, added diferent types of ads and set them to rotate and see what converts best.

One of my websites started as a SEO experience, it went #1 to a not very competitive keyword, but with good searches. I've redesigned the website and tried a few things. In my industry it seems that Link units are more targeted then the normal ads, with appealing keywords (keywords the visitors use to get to my website from search engines). This generated a nice CTR, but better yet, a nice source of revenue with high paying ads (for the industry they are). I've also changed the language of that website to English so I could get my visitors to stick to my website (since most of them are from the US, UK, France and Spain, even tough the website was in portuguese).
Most people will think 'Well, if they don't understand the language is normal to click the ads'... Wrong! If they don't understand it they will hit back and leave, they won't be searching for ads or an english version.

From this small website I've learned alot about Adsense and ad placement, and used that knowledge to the other websites. The result? I have more revenue now with those "60%" visits than I had with the old "100%". No problem with this, as I'm already targeting new keywords to get more traffic.

What I can share with the community is something I guess everyone already knows.

Don't try go get rich fast. Build a decent website, take your time. Don't go after high paying keywords, go after some theme that you like and you think you're capable to get content, that you can spend some time writing copy, taking photos.

First of all never never cheat! Don't click on your own ads, don't ask family or friends to click on your ads. It will cost you what could have been a great source of revenue. Instead, tell your friends and family to visit your website. I've told about my website to a friend of mine and after a while he asked me about a tire selling website. So, guess, he was looking at my website, saw an ad that was of is interest and clicked on it. This is honest revenue. Never forget that ads in Adwords are placed by small/medium business, and even webmasters that read those threads. I even spent some money on Adwords to get my business noticed.

Don't stop, make a new goal... If you goal is $1 a day, when you reach $0.70 change it to $2 a day. Keep it clean and don't quit no matter what.

Try new things. People say that some things convert better than the others. Well, it's true, for their websites. You should go and serve your visitors needs, give them what they want and they will give you revenue. Don't be afraid of trying. If it converts, stick with it. If it doesn't convert, go back to the old formats/colors/etc. If you find something that converts but you think you can do better, give it a try!

I hope you can get something usefull from this thread and find it inspiring and I found other threads in DP. Be patient, use "trial and error" and you will succeed for sure.

Now, I'm going back to work in other websites that need to be optimized!

 

That's a really good inspiring post. Thanks.

Great point about mentally "moving the goalposts" when you're near your targets.

 

At first i thought it was going to be a long rant bitching about how you lost so much, but i was gladly surprised. A lot of good points made and tips given out, very good.

 

Newbies will appreciate this, good stuff, keep it up!

 

Good job eduardomaio... and I would add, for all you PageRank obsessives (like me) that I learned a valuable lesson with the Jagger update. One of my established sites dropped from PR5 to PR4 - the first time in years... and guess what - my adsense is up!
Lesson learned? It's not the page rank/alexa rank/yahoo rank or anything else, the bottom line is as always, "show me the money" (or should that be "shoe me the money"

Oh and critters "add images" trick has helped smooth out my CTR over the week... nice! Thanks to all the great DP posters that help imporve the process.

 

thanks........ like you..... both of us learn a lot of things from what we did.

 

Thanks, Eduardo for taking the time to share. It's always encouraging to hear someone's success story.

 

nice motivational post

 

Good stuff!! Very Good stuff!! Danny

 

werd that !

 

Thank you all for your words. Yesterday I've made another $10 day, so I guess I'm on the right track.

If I had my traffic back I'm sure I would be making as much as $15 to $17 a day, but no one can rely their business in a free service like Google!

 

Good motivation. Thanks for it.

I myself had my first $13 day last monday but dropped to my usual $2-$6 days again but keep on working on it and posts like these help me doing it.

 

Sounds quite similar! I made $11 which definitely was a flash in pan, LOL. Well, let's concentrate on MSN then (j/kidding!)

 

congratulations!

 

Congrats my44! Are you keeping your revenue steady?