OK .. how many of you had been developing your site for quite a while providing content because the content was interesting to you and you wanted to share it with others. All this before you even considered Adsense. The reason I ask this is, it would be interesting to gauge whether such sites are found to be more successful with Adsense than those purely developed to make a buck via all the different attempts of keyword density etc .. So in closing, is good old hardwork being rewarded or are the get rich quick techniques proving to be more successful I am hoping that Content is still King a question out of interest in the hope that good old solid hardwork is rewarded
I started my site before I realized there would be any money in it at all. I'm not making a fortune on it, around $10/day, but I basically worked on it for a year and haven't touched it in the last 15 months. That's because I'm working on an extremely fancy new version of it, due to finish soon, which should increase the revenue several-fold. That's right: I've spent 15 months (about 8 of them full-time) on an AdSense site without even taking it live yet. How's that for dedication to content? I think Google is smarter than the webmasters who try to fool its system, and Google's success relies on putting good sites at the top of the SERPs. Rather than fighting the endless uphill battle against Google's algorithms, I think it's more profitable in the long term to create the kind of site Google WANTS at the top of the SERPs and let them sort it out. Also, working on my site is a lot of fun, and it has led to many benefits I can't put a price tag on. I've got several real-life friends who I met because they liked my site, and I've gained some notoriety within the offline corner of my niche which has helped me professionally. None of that would have happened if I had 3,000 sites with names like "best-mesothelioma-lawyers.com."
Great to read Troutnut hopefully your site goes from strength to strength it is all about content and hopefully the hardwork put in leads to the rewards $1 an hour is a good target for anyone to aim for
I'd say, "Original content is king." At the end of the day, what's important is getting new visitors and having those visitors return. So a site needs to be different, other something new, be interesting, have things about them that keeps people returning, hopefully on a daily basis. A site can have lots of content, but if it's not original then it won't work. Hardwork is definitely needed for a site's long-term success.