After I started to read this forum I have almost quadrupled my CTR, my eCPM is more than 5 times bigger and I have learned how to multiple my best site. This only makes possible that I can leave my dayjob before summer. Plus that I have got plenty ideas of good new sites by looking the sites all you are publishing. I don't mean that I will copy anybodys site, but some of your site ideas has brought me an other idea and I have allready tested the ideas - checked competition and advertising with key searchterms - and they look very promising. I was struggling long time with $200 - 300 monthly AdSense income and this month I'm ready to to hit first time 1k month and I have good reason to expect next month to double that. Many readers here asks the recipe for a good AdSense site. My recipe is this: 1. Create a good idea. What can be a good idea? Go to a book shop or library and look the books. Lots of good ideas. 2. Create quality content on the subject. This is the hard work part. Create it, don't copy it. Do some research and write about it. Write a lot. Good content allways gives an answer to visitors question. Many of your visitors comes from some search engine, so they have a question where your content gives an answer. 3. Place your ads so that your visitors can see them. Don't be shy, show your ads. Because this is very important, I repeat: place your ads so that your visitors can see them. This is what I have done and what I'm going to do from now on.
I'd add 4. Don't rely too much on free traffic from the engines if you plan on making a living online. However good to hear your expanding and earning and joining the ranks of the self-employed.
Not saying you shouldnt quit your day job but if all your sole income on your sites is Adsense then I would be a little cautions.
Jude - a super-congrats to you! I quit my job in June 2005 .... one day before my wife found out she was pregnant! My manager told me it was foolish to quit now that my financial commitments were set to increase, but my pride told me it was to late to retract my resignation letter. In a way, I think it was God's will because if it had happened the other way round, that is, if I had first found out that my wife was pregnant before thinking of quitting, I would still be in that safe but not going-anywhere job of mine today. My Adsense income was $5/day, and I thought I'd get some income from photography and contract training, but I joined a private Adsense forum where the founders claimed that their keyword lists brought them a combined 45k/month. Well, the forum had some nuggets of information that allowed me to earn >5k in 2 months using non- white hat methods (I don't recommend anyone to do this unless they have deep pockets to buy expensive software and memberships to private forums, hundreds of domains, and tens of hosting services), are willing to open multiple Adsense accounts and don't mind generating 100,000 pages a day and blogging to thousands of splogs, and seeing your sites being deindexed a few weeks later. To cut my story short (sorry to intrude so rudely on your post), I'm now a firm believer in white hat sites, specifically content &/or community-style sites. Once again, congrats, and I wish you all the best in achieving your monthly targets - I'll be tagging along and hope I can be as successful.
I'd expand beyond just "books," to be honest. books are fine, but they're typically stripped of the more commercial side of things. I personally have found a lot more site ideas from magazines, advertisements, commercials, and even my own daily browsing online than anything else. I'd say books aren't the best way to brainstorm for ideas, but they're great to do research once you've already picked a niche.
Besides search engine traffic, where does your traffic come from? What other type of advertising do you do? I'm willing to put some money in my website and would like to know good places to spend it on
good work! congrats im actually going back to works its not possible to live in ireland with 2k / month adsense income, everything is to expensive [maybe i should move to finland ?? ]
Bookmarks/Direct type ins - Running a subscription based service Cheap Advertising (banner ads) Natural Links/Referrals - Running an affiliate program
Congratulations!! I hope im able to do this too in the future.. Good content is the key, as many of us can see
I agree! Don't put all of your eggs into one basket. Most people get banned from click fraud, but I would imagine that there would be one or two people that may get banned for doing nothing. Also, if your sites traffic relys on the search engines then this is also putting your eggs into one basket. Leaving your job feels great though. I must admit. I had left mine about just over 2 years ago and things are still going great. I left it so that I could do all of the internet stuff full time. I was on about £250 a week and now I am on more due to doing all this work full time. At first, once I left my job things had gone a little down hill and I got a little strapped for cash, but things are going well and I have many eggs in quite a few baskets and not just the one.
I have seen two of my friends quitting jobs and still doing better than earlier. Its all with your temperament and luck. I have no plans of leaving my job as I just want to take it as a hobby.