My Adsense Journey From $0 to $2637 per month In 2.5 years!

Yes, as the title says, i started my adsense websites in January 2008 and today after receiving the cheque of September 2010 for an amount of $2637 i feel that all those day and night slogging was worth it.

I have posted screenshots of my Google Adsense Payment History page here, there are four images click on the images to see it in full size and check the images from top to bottom in sequence, it shows all the money earned and payments received from January 2008 till September 2010.

Now, i know everyone shares this much part only, but i want to share the complete part except the part for revealing specific niche and domain names. I will lay out my strategy, how i went about it and what worked and what didn't work for me.

I started with one single website in January 2008, did some on page SEO, i think i dont have to tell how it is done, a simple search in Google can give hundreds of results and go with the ones that are on top.

I built around 5 websites in the niches of health, beauty, education, training, food etc and all were live by June 2008. I always went with broad niches and not micro niches. Somehow my gut feeling always told me if the website becomes a hit then you can earn in thousands and not in hundreds, because with micro niche sites even if the site becomes a hit still you might earn only few hundred bucks a month due to the low traffic volume for that keyword. So i always went with broad niches.

I just kept adding content to those websites and from the second month onwards started doing link building methods, prominent ones include, article submissions, directory submissions, blogposts submissions etc and many other link building efforts that used to come up around this forum.

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The basic problem with adsense that i found for low earnings and may be helpful to you is that, adsense Page eCPM remains low as long as you are not on the first 3 spots of SERPs. I learned this the hard way as i was not aware of this and used to be happy when my website hit the first page of SERPs. But when i found out that it hardly increased my earnings i started looking closer to it, then one fine morning it happened, one of my website hit the first spot for some reason and it remained there the whole day, guys i was shocked to find my Page eCPM go through the roof even the CTR increased for that matter. Well that is the time i realised it is time to get those sites ranked in first spot which will start sending the money.

Let me tell you that out of the 5 websites that i worked on, 2 are on first spot in google for the desired keywords and that is what is paying me this amount, i am waiting for my other 3 websites to get to that spot and then see the status of earnings in my account. Out of the leftover 3 websites two are in first page of SERPs and one is in 3rd spot for a heavily competitive niche keyword (two letter word with competition from 203,000,000 other results, i am just anxious about this site and i know it might take me another year and lots of hard work to get this to that spot, but then this might be my jackpot).

The end of it all this is a number game, get to the first spot on google and advertisers send the money to your way and bids for the highest spot in your website, this is what i feel, this is just from my experience and i dont know how google adwords works, i have never used it. I have seen it happening, with websites which jumped from $3 per day to $40 per day on climbing from 2nd spot to 1st spot in Google.

Now what i did for the promotions:
Well i run an article submission service myself, i have a full business set up with staff running the submission service for my clients, i have large corporate clients spending 1000's of dollars on these promotions (adsense is not my primary earner but this service earns me 10 times more than that, but the point here is adsense has NIL overheads while running these kind of services has huge overheads and other associated headaches that come up occassionally to make your life uncomfortable). So to start with i used these services for my own websites, the strategy i used is to send out two article submissions every month, once in every fortnight to be precise and continued with this every month without fail (and do it even today with the site sitting in first spot in google), kept adding content to my sites as and when possible, even today all the sites gets content, the least being at least two posts per month or some sites (like the heavily competitive one) gets 15 posts per month.

I keep looking for unique services in DP services section, you will find guys coming up with unique ways of link building, bought few of them once in a while to make the backlinks have link diversity.

This is all i did, so what is it effectively, roughly 70% of my links come from articles sites or through article submissions and 30% comes from a range of other sites which includes forums, profiles, blog comments, social bookmarks, blogposts (bought from DP itself) and whatever form of link building that i could see for or think for.

Now here i want to point out one fact, once you are at first spot in Google, you just needs to stay there for a couple of months and then you dont even need to build backlinks to your sites as the natural link building kicks in, yes, this is true, whenever a discussion is ongoing on the topic or niche of your site, people do linkback to your site or pages when they refer to that topic and you will find at least a couple of backlinks appearing on daily basis and from a varied range of places and this also gives you ideas for promoting your other websites.

Last but not the least, Adsense is a waiting game, no way you can get rich quick here, you need to work hard, toil and persist with your effort, i did it for more than 2 years and it is paying me now, but when it starts paying it is almost like on autopilot, you hardly need to do anything, other than adding few valuable pieces of content once in a while and some backlinks to keep it there on first spot and then move on to building new sites in new niches or promoting those already developed sites.

Well, this is the result of hardwork of 2 years plus, businessese online or offline needs nurturing and constant attention and hard work towards it, it starts paying you only once you have spend the time and efforts towards it, so go guys, start working today and dont think about time, failures, yes that is how you learn the mistakes. Dont think that to reach this spot i never met failure, i have listed some of my failures here:
#I might have also made 10 more websites which i later found that will not work or the niches are not good enough for traffic or money so i dumped them
#I have bought 'n' number of scripts to run various kinds of websites, failed
#I have lost one domain to a hacker which was earning me at least $300 per month at the time of losing it
#I have bought services which never was what i thought it to be or to be plain, got scammed
#Bought e-books thinking of earning quick
#Tried to automate many stuff, ultimately resorting to manual.

Yes i too have failed, but i never gave up. An attitude with adsense that can make you succeed "NEVER EVER GIVE UP, COME WHAT MAY AND WHATEVER TIME IT TAKES, ONE DAY IT HAS TO PAY YOU", Yes this is a battle of nerves, who loses the waiting game first, ADSENSE or YOU, if Adsense fails (the waiting game) you start earning decent money and if you fail, well, back to 9 - 5.
....Cheers!

 

Tricks and key ingredients are always same for adsense success, and they chipped in for your success as well, but the main thing is that, its really good to see someone posting something nice and "REAL" after so long. You know? Just so tired of "Hey! Look at me, I earn truckload of shyt, im so cool" types of posts here!
Keep up the good work, and keep kicking!

 

Very true, actually i used to be around the adsense forum here for quite a long time before shifting my focus to the services forum, and to be very frank i got motivated regularly through the forums here, but nowadays, every other guy comes around here and posts about earning "so much" money without giving any details or someone will ask a stupid question "how to earn so much money" without even doing a search around the forum on the topic and then you will find guys blasting around "i earn so much" threads competing to decide whether the screenshots are fake or real, so i had decided whenever i post my story i will provide the full details except for those details which needs to be kept a secret for my business success and to comply with Adsense ToS.

 

Really Inspiring one for sure. My goals is to reach this kind of Income level in coming 6 months to one year. Is there way you will be able to Guide me which all Niche can pay the Highest on Adsense these days & how to maintain ranking on the search Engines once it is achieved. Looking forward to discuss more with you on this Subject, also let me know if you do paid consulting for how to make money online, i am willing to learn that way also.

 

I hope this continues for you and that it will get better. Indeed, not another "I get 2000$ per day - period" post. You actually explained a lot of stuff that works and didn't work for you.

You have made me think about article submission and I'll start doing it again. Started with eZine a few months ago then just forgot about that.

Thanks!

 

I can only let you know the niches where i have worked and have succeeded:
Health
Fashion
Beauty
Finance

Another point here is never target long tail keywords in these niches, go for the broad keywords, 2 to 3 phrases keywords, your rankings might come late, in some cases as late as 2-3 years, but once you are there, then you will be a regular at web hosting sub-forum of DP looking to hire servers

As i said in my Opening Post, i use article submission services a lot and that has been the backbone of my backlinks, basically because i have support staff who can help me in doing that, so it was easier for me, for long tail keywords you can walk into first page of google SERPs with the article submissions only. BTW, just submitting to ezine will not work anymore as every other guy is doing that, you need to find new ways and means to do the submissions too, basically just think out of the box.

 

Very good work. Slowly and be consistent eventually will lead you to win the race.
congratulations friend!

May i know how many unique traffic you get daily?

 

Traffic details screenshot, this is for the highest earning website:

 

Good post, and congrats. A rare post on here at DP by the way. I also agree with you on concentrate on a few sites and forget all those micro niche sites...

Can you elaborate more on your article submission strategy? I also knew Ezine is getting less powerful, because every guy and his dog is submitting there every single day.

Also, although you now make money, but you listed many of your failures too. Can you share how much roughly you have spent on your business, all these years?

Congrats again!

 

Actually, there is nothing new to learn from the OP. The things are still the same. Create a good site, one that worth linking to, and then SEO it smartly. Once you get good rankings, you WILL make money. Focus on few sites, make them big, you will be surprised how much money you can make with a big site.

I was just curious on how much the OP spent on links and outsourcing, because he/she must have spent a lot to get the site to where it is....

Definitely a lot of either time spent/ money spent/ or both.

 

From the time i started, i had a modest offline business earning the profits of which i used to utilise here for the online earnings, you can say roughly i might have spend close to $5k to reach where i am today, this spend has been over a period of 2.5 years. Half of it went waste due to my failure, i ended up buying large number of scripts, or even ready made sites etc or whatever looked interesting and worthy of earning money in my opinion, almost all of them failed except for one script which i am still using for a site and the site is picking up slowly but steadily. Of course, around 60% of that money also included outsourcing of link building, i used to do all the efforts of link building myself (though now i have staff to do it), all the major forms of backlink building was carried out by me personally at that stage and only those which i found cheaper and easier to get it done rather than doing it myself did i use to outsource it, that too i only bought from DP and from nowhere else. But from the 3rd month onward i started receiving earnings which i used to put it back on to promotions and backlink building and it went into profit in about one year from starting.

Yes, the whole purpose of the story was to keep you guys motivated. Just keep working and forget about the money, you will get it one day, your time you put in has to have some worth, right.

It was more of time spent because back then i didn't have much to invest. Also, though i spent $5k during these 2.5 years, i must admit i must have actually spent only around $2k from my pocket, rest of it came from the earnings which i had been investing back, which even today i do, at least $500 goes into buying various services around here to keep the sites there and to promote the new sites. As i said earlier, any business needs nurturing, it is immaterial whether it is a offline or online business, it is all the same.

Yes, i am also in India and i receive the cheques in Indian Rupees only

 

I actually spent much more than you, but in the beginning I registered many useless domains and bought many useless ones too that were scams. That cost me a few thousand $$$ at least. Things like "traffic domains" for parking >> Parking is almost useless unless you have great domains, but still, the domain can earn a lot more with a proper website.

Lately, I have been focusing on a few sites and now I begin to see their potential and how worthwhile it is to update them and keep working them. As a result income has increased for me too.

I don't go chasing after new shiny things as much as before.

Your story confirms and validates my experience as well....

Kudos, you can be proud of your achievements.

 

COBSolutions,

Congrats and keep going. That's what I believe in, to achieve the success in adsense or IM required thing are patience, dedication towards the work, investment where it required and proper mindset.

 

Interesting read and well done!

I have a few questions regarding your adsense set-up:

1) Which ad block do you use the most 336 x 280 etc
2) How many ads do you use per page?
3) Do you use link units?
4) Where do you place your ads, top, bottom etc on your pages?
5) Do you have interest base ads turned on or off?
6) Finally do you use all the Certified Ad Networks or block them all?

Sorry for all the questions, bur I would be very graeful if you could answer them.

Thanks

 

Here are your answers:

1) Which ad block do you use the most 336 x 280 etc - Yes, this one for the static html pages and the other rectangle unit (dont remember the size) for blogposts

2) How many ads do you use per page? - Depends on the content available on the page, if the content is of only 300 words then i use only one adblock, if content is around 600 words, then i use two blocks and if the content is more than 1000 words, then i use 3 ad blocks, it is always better to use two adblocks only since, that helps in targeting the best paying ads on top in the first adblock itself, which draws the maximum clicks.

3) Do you use link units? - Yes, i do use link units (matching the overall color theme of the site) and they do pay well sometimes (not always, dunno why though)

4) Where do you place your ads, top, bottom etc on your pages? - I place one block just after the first sentence of content in the page, it may or may not be above the fold, but then i like to keep my visitors mood also in mind

5) Do you have interest base ads turned on or off? - I keep it off, it is not possible to keep it on in my niche, like health and beauty, because assume the visitor in my site was earlier looking to buy "cheap airline tickets" and then he does another search to buy some health related stuff or "pill" and land up in my health site and when my health site is supposed to display "pill" ads pertaining to the "keyword" through which he came to my site, with interest based ads on, my site also end up displaying ads on "cheap airline tickets", which ad do you think will pay more

6) Finally do you use all the Certified Ad Networks or block them all? - I haven't blocked any, why should I, let Google choose the best for me and when we earn more google too earns more, so i assume Big G will provide me the best

 

Wow didn't expect such a quick response!

Thanks

 

Inspiring! IM can get very frustrating , but reading your posts like yours gets me back on the road. One question I have about article submission. Is it ok to submit same article to diifferent directories? Are the backlinks from these articles worthy in the eyes of the search engine?

 

Yes, it is possible, as that also varies from niche to niche, for some it works well with certified networks while for some certified networks have better advertisers so it is an option which one must try out and see how it works.

For anything to work, everything should look a bit different, it might sound funny, but it makes sense to sometimes submit one article to many article sites and then on some other occassions spin the articles and submit to all the article sites and on a different occassion just submit on article to 25 sites and repeat with a fresh article for each batch of 25 article sites and keep rediscovering the wheel here , link diversity is something which needs to be stressed upon here.

 

Can you please a few questions?

1. How often did you update your site in the beginning, in the middle when Google started rewarding and now?
2. Can you share the website address though pm or here?
3. Will you be able to help us (budding IMs) in giving suggestions or advising us on our site?

Thanks,
leela

 

Here are the answers:

1. How often did you update your site in the beginning, in the middle when Google started rewarding and now? _ At the beginning what i did was to check the content already existing with the competitors of my keywords and then at least get half the number of pages/content written for my sites from a good writer. You can find some good writers at DP itself. Depending on the niche i get at least 50-100 pages of content in the beginning, then keep adding to it in the next couple of months, these are static html pages mind you, not any CMS. After 4-6 months, i added a blog in sub-folder of the domain and hired a blogger to write 5-15 blogposts a month depending on the competitors number of pages/content on site

2. Can you share the website address though pm or here? - Sorry dear, that cannot happen, you know why

3. Will you be able to help us (budding IMs) in giving suggestions or advising us on our site? - Yes, why not and that was the actual purpose of this thread