What were your Adsense expectations?

I've been making web sites for the past 15 years and love it - so for me web sites are the end within themselves. I heard about adsense from a friend a few months ago (I was aware of it, but had never really thought about it). I knew it would never be easy, I knew I wasn't going to be making a thousand $ a day from it, and I knew it would take lots of tweaking and work - but isn't that the fun of a web site??? LOL

However, on the serious financial side of things ... Adsense makes money for me in many other ways than money actually earned from clicks (it enables me to claim all costs incurred in web making from tax etc and enables me to ferret away investment items used on the web pages that become tax write offs because of adsense) and for me that is where the really big time money comes in. I'll be able to retire on these investments but I doubt I'll ever be able to retire on actual adsense income. Diversification of Adsense potential is the key. (new catch phrase for you lot LOL)

Still, in a couple of years I'd like to be making $2000 a month from adsense. will I do it? Who knows. Much more hard work, but it is the fun what counts.

 

Sara,

I was very impressed with your take on Adsense in that other thread (though I am too lazy to go and find it). So here, (slap), have a green, because I forgot to give you one in that thread.

I only hope that if I ever have an idea as positive and rewarding as yours has been for you that I will not be too narrow minded to see it.

 

This is my first post... Great Forum!

I started my website like most of you to try to connect with others who did the same thing. Started with a forum over three years ago and it kinda grew into a review/article type website... Because it was such a niche subject "Flamenco" there was not a whole lot of advertisers out there so I figured I would give adSense a try and see what would happen.

I dont make enough to pay any bills yet but I do think the orignal post had a great point. Build a site based on something you are already doing or enjoy and that will make your site that much better. People will appreciate it and visit your site often as well as link to it.

 

Falseta,

It is good to have a niche and understand it but you can develop complimentary content which may have a wider advertiser base or better paying keywords.

By expanding the content (of course, you may have already done all this but just as an example) to include the areas in Spain where you might still see a traditional Flamenco dance troupe, or Flamenco songs, or language used in Flamenco you can expand the AS base to include travel, record companies, language schools - and all still relevant to your visitor.

 

I had a site for almost three years just for fun and learning. It is a community site for friends to post on the forum and also a place to keep downloads and information. Just about one year ago started to notice Google ads and thought they might be a way to help pay hosting fees because the download section was getting quite a bit of traffic. The first month and the site was paying for itself and a little more So I thought hmmmmmm and made a travel related site about the area I live in and it started bringing in a couple hundred a month My expectations are just to make a few extra bucks and have fun making websites. Very few will ever make the big bucks but you can make some extra cash to cover the cost of owning a website.

 

I had high expectations and my expectations are fulfilled.

 

Took a year to get up to $600-800 per month. Expect to double that by the end of this year. Mostly by creating more content and improving seo.

 

I knew about Adsense, in fact my competition has it plastered all over their site & I was whinging to a friend how awful their site looked. She actually had Adsense on her own site & told me that people do make BIG money from it. I thought I'd probably make a few cents a day, and as I'd made a promise to myself that my site would remain ad free I just had no interest in adding it.

After the friend said you can do well (I still didn't have visions of buying a new BMW from any income) I decided to give it a shot. Money is tight & I thought that if I could cover my hosting costs then I'd be happy. I did okay with Adsense, made more than I thought I would but still wasn't earning a great deal. What Adsense did for me though was give me a renewed interest in my site. I mainly ran it because I had 2,500 forums members who visit the site & I kept it open for them. When I saw the potential to earn more money I began to add more & more content. My figures slowly started climbing up. I'm doing okay now, still not in the big league & I don't think I ever will be, but I've seen with a lot of hard work you can earn quite a nice income.

As the OP said, I see many people who think it's easy. Just whack up a website, sit back & enjoy those fat google cheques, but in my experience, nobody makes money without a great deal of effort. The thing I like about Adsense is that you do have the potential to earn money, as long as you're willing to put in the hard graft. I often bend the ear of my boss, who always tells me how he started out with nothing, and worked his tail off for years & years to get to where he is now.

ETA: My boss wants me to return to work full time once my youngest starts school. I really don't want to do this, so hope that by the time my son starts school I'm earning enough revenue (from Adsense & other sources) to enable me to continue to work part time. A large income would be lovely, but I'd be happy with the equivalent of what I'd earn if I returned to work full time.

 

Really enjoyed reading this thread and all the posts. My objective is to make by September somewhere between 300 to 500 USD. Maybe that is asking too much i dont know. we will see. Of corse i get excited when i ear that there are some people making several thousands per month and i wish i will, after good work and time, be making some cool amount of money.

Thanks u all fo your posting

 

Yes, thank you for the posts. Keep them coming.

I just started about a month ago with adsense. I really don't have any expectations. I figure any extra change would be nice, but really I think it's a neat challenge to optimize a website that people care about. I think that's what is thrilling at this point. I just want to have "cool points" with the web geeks. hah!

 

I had my site up over a year before I even put adsense ads on it. I had never even heard of adsense when I launched my site. So, no, I never had the adsense fever and I still don't. I enjoy working on my site and if I make some money from advertising with it, we'll that is just an added bonus.

 

I just started my first blog on friday and I admit I am doing it solely to try and make some income from adsense but I am atleast putting original content up daily. I hope that by putting in 5 hours a day 6 days a week I can replace my current income by november of this year at the latest. I dont think that is a pie in the sky expectation because I know it is going to take tons of effort and a fair amount of time to make anything significant with adsense.

 

Too be honest I don't think you could realistically go from nothing to earning a full time living off blogs within 6 months. I mean you might be able to but I mean the thing about the internet is that everything takes time, and lots of it. I don't know if this is the first site you have ever made but if it is I'd say there is just so much to learn before you can really create a popular website. Mastering the skills of building popular websites is something that takes years rather than months to learn, and most of the learning I'd suggest comes from making mistakes the first time around and then going back and revising your site, then realised your haven't optimised here so you revise again, only to find a month after that last revision there is more that you could do so that you have to revise again. Well that has been my experience at least.

 

Oh, you'd be surprised. Blogging software nowadays, especially Wordpress, are so geared toward SEO that you don't even actually have to know SEO to get your site optimized for the search engines. And the line between what is traditionally considered "blogs" and "website" has been blurred so much that you oftentimes see a blog-site now. From personal experience, I can safely say that you can go from making nothing to making a living with a blog within 6 months time.

 

Well those people that manage to do it would be the exception rather than the norm, if you know what I mean. I don't know many people that have gone from $0/month and clueless to $4000+/month and veteran in 6 months, if you know what I mean. I do agree that it is possible, but I think you need to be a special sort of person that is a real "go-getter" and you'd probably have to invest a little bit of your own money to get things rolling and happening.

Basically I'm just trying to suggest what is "realistic" for most, not so much what is possible, and I sometimes get the impression that probably 9/10 people that get involved in website creation with the dream of making thousands within months using Adsense would probably quit after 4 - 6 weeks realising that the $1 - 3 dollars you will most likely earn in the begin just isn't what they thought they would earn.

 

I had always wanted to start a web-site, but never wanted to pay for any hosting (and i didnt like the free-hosts because they look lame IMHO). When i learned about AdSense i figgered i could have my site and AdSense could cover the cost of hosting. My initial up-front cost was about $125 (18 months hosting in advance), so i only needed to make something like $0.27 per day to break even. My plan was to average $.27 per day for the first year, then get up to something wild like $1 - $5 per day after the first year.
My first month i think i made $1.23
My second month i made about $70
Third month i made just over $100
Forth month was $152
and so far THIS month, i'm up to $984.30 (as of right now)

So as you can see, AdSense has FARRRRR out-performed my expectations.

The first 2 months I spent every minute of my free-time working on my site - learning, tweaking, writing content. The last 3 months i havnt work AS hard, but I still make changes, ad some content, work on SEO, link requests, read the forums, etc, for at least 2-3 hours per day - so it wasnt easy money.

i'm hoping that if my traffic continues to increase like it has, i can quit my job working for 'da man within a year.. or two..

 

I ahve to say I was pulled into the whole adsense thing as easy money. But I've learnt it ain't easy and I ain't getting money lol but it's enjoyable. I learn new things everyday and I've already made 20% of that first check so I've gone farther then anyone of my friends/knowwhos and I've learnt about marketing and advertising and management web design so all in all adsense has actualy exceeded my expectations with it's by-products rather then it's revenue.

 

I'm doing 120-150 with one of my sites. My adsense expectations for this site are 400-500 USD. Wish me luck...

 

I don't have expectation but goals. Sometimes I reach them sometimes not. I try to have a long term plan while setting short term goals which are the true measurement of my advance toward the next step.

For now, I'm a little behind my current goal due to unforeseen personal affairs. That;s what happens when life gets in the way of work.

 

Great thread!!! i have been very impressed with google adsense i been doing internet things for a couple of years and recently i been wondering why so many sites have ads by google i thought it would be something to look into. on April 11 i added adsense to all my sites and first month made$4x.xx. I thought hey i can make money with this. Also its a pretty easy formula:

Unique content+Great ads placement+traffic=google cash

So now i see it works its all about doing the above over and over and you will see the results. Looking to start making a full-time income by Summer time which for me is about 35 to 40 aday would be great.

rob