Thanks for the kind words everybody. I had read enough posts from people who's Adsense accounts were banned just before they were due to receive their first payment, that I was getting a bit nervous. I don't even tell my family or friends my site's URL, for fear they will somehow get me banned, even though their intention might be to help me make money. It was pretty exciting to have received payment for the first time! Someone asked how many sites/blogs do I have? I only have one static site. My site is only about 20% complete, but I've been so lazy, I haven't worked on it for a month. Good thing the pages are static, so I am under no pressure to update it regularly, like for blogs. OK, here's my tip for getting traffic, which works very well for new sites. 1. Wikipedia. For anybody who provides very specific information on niche products, put a link in the relevant wikipedia article, and if the article doesn't exist, create the wiki article and put a link to your site. The worst that can happen is that someone thinks your spamming and deletes your link(or article). Wikipedia provides me with about 60% of my traffic now. At the beginning, it provided 100%, before I started using forums. 2. Forums. A really great way to get traffic. I get about 10% of traffic from forums. At the very beginning, forums provided about 40%. The trick is not to flood the forums with too many of your links. In total, I've only got about 20 links spread over about 10 forums, and now I only add a link in my posts about once or twice a month. I prefer to just create alot of posts, and then put my link in a signature, and then never make another posts again. People who come across my posts via search or browsing the forum will see my links. 3. Digg. This provides me with about 10 times more traffic than other sites like Stumbleupon, delicious etc. For all intents and purposes, Stumbleupon and delicious have provided me with virtually zero traffic, although I've read they've worked for other people - I am guessing this depends on niche. I also some traffic from yahoo answers. All of the above 3 methods will provide you with traffic and backlinks. The trick is not to overdo any of them. Be patient. I've got some PMs asking for tips, so that's why I've posted this. Please don't send me any more PMs, because I don't have the time or motivation to respond to one-to-one, or to answer any further questions in this thread. That's all from me. I hope this thread has motivated all the newbies, and provided some helpful hints. Good luck to everybody!
Congrats! Thats got to feel good. And it looks like you're on your way to better payouts as well! Good luck to you.
Congratulations! It feels good to get that first adsense payment for basically doing nothing doesn't it?