Hello, I have a huge problem in from of me. Probably a life changing problem (I wish). As this is my last summer vacation (going to a university next year), I was thinking if should take another low paying summer job that would hardly drag me thru summer or, or i should start madly investing my time into Adsense. I have no money what so ever to invest into Adsense. I have some experience in webdevelopment. I know PHP and MySQL in some extent. I'm pretty much in the dark with SEO and pretty much everything that would gather some traffic. I have a few blogs from some time ago that I haven't messed with for months and they bring in virtually nothing at the moment. So I'd start with a clean sheet. Is it possible to start with 0$ and achieve something great in 3 months? Would investing 3 months of my time into Adsense give me any results in the future? Would it be a wise choice to do? Would risking my whole summer of fun and games benefit me ? Should I do it? Would you do it? What would you do in my place? I am like a sponge - I will learn and I have determination. This is a great community where i can and have lean so so much. Thank you!
Absolutely you can accomplish this in 10 easy steps: 1) Choose the right niche to base your blog/site on. And when I say "right" I don't mean one with high-paying keywords, but rather one that you can post about every day with the same enthusiasm as yesterday, because that's what it's going to take. 2) Learn SEO. It is extremely important to get your blog/site into the search engines (Google most of all) within a week of registering your domain and putting the site online. I can get a brand spanking new site in Google within 2 days. If you can't accomplish this, target a week. If you can't do it in a week, you don't know SEO so I suggest you learn it. 3) Link exchange with other webmasters who run like-minded sites. Very, very important to get quality backlinks. I.e. don't waste your time with all those link directories made by some kid with a link directory template. Complete waste of time. 4) If you're running a blog, find instant traffic sites like Technorait, Shoutwire, Digg, etc, and submit your stories. Technorati, in particular, is good for 50 uniques a day even if you don't have an Earth-shattering post that day. If you're using Wordpress, ping every new update/post to Technorati. And if you do plan to go with a blog, register a domain and 2 months hosting from Godaddy for $10, then use Wordpress to blog. Don't go the cheap and noob way with a generic Blogger template site. 5) And probably the most important, add content every day. And I do mean every day. If you can, add at least 5 entries that first day. But you should add at least one entry a day. It doesn't have to be a 1000-word article, but something relevant to the topic you have chosen. 6) to 9) Add content, content, and more content. 10) Repeat steps 5 to 9. I'm not guaranteeing that you'll make your projected goal within 3 months using the steps above, but I am saying I've done it over and over, and I've helped friends do likewise, and the minimum goal was always $20/daywithin 3 months. So if you follow these steps, you should be able to achieve what they did -- and they aren't even computer savvy at all. EDIT: My bad, I meant $20 a DAY, not a MONTH.
Hey Valence, I'd actually say, do both. Find a summer job that suits you well - even if it's low paying, find something you like to do, that you enjoying (or at least don't hate) going to every day. For Adsense, Jack's tips above are great - he's awesome. Other than that, I think it's reasonable to do adsense on the side - I like many people here have a full time 40-50+hour/week job but also work on adsense sites on the side. True, more time invested into working on your sites can mean better payoff in the end, but in terms of having instant cash for the summer with adsense, it may take a while to get there. Like Jack said, 20$/more day is doable within 3 months, but at the beginning at least, a job may pay better. So I'd say, go for both, if you can! Find a job you like to do, and work on adsense as a spare project in the meanwhile, putting as much or as little time as you want into it. If you find it starts becoming really profitable really fast, you can quit the job... but at least you have that to start out with/fall back on. Just my 2 coppers, hope this is helpful
Thank you jackburton2006 for a very useful post. The only thing that is holding me back is myself. I'll start my journey today! (Maybe I should also start a blog about my journey from 0$ to *. Update it each week. Motivate more people? The world is your oyster... Right?) --- Also thank you Telmari for the wise words. And I am not hoping to earn very much in the first 3 months, but it is the only time that I have to get the ball rollin. If you have the taste of money in your mouth you can't stop anymore.
Sorry, guys, meant to say, $20 a DAY, not a MONTH. Edited my original post to reflect the correction.
I have to agree with you, Telmari. I still keep my low earning job. Actually, it's home family bussiness. I 'work' for my adsense on the night. 2 hours sitting in front of my computer need no energy.