After about a month of research, I started my site in early January. I now have about 30 pages of content, and just got approved into adsense a few days ago. Currently I only have about 10 visitors a day, but that is largely due to the fact that only 4 of my pages are included into the SE directories. The majority of my traffic is what I would call "artificial" such as that from forums. So, my question is: How long did it take you from the time you placed your first page on the net to begin seeing a decent return from adsense? I would define a good return as $5-10 per day.
Too vague - it depends what your site is about. If it's a site with high paying ads you could make $5-10 per day with only 5 or 10 clicks. An average click through rate is in the region of 3-5%, so you'd need about 150-200 uniques to achieve this if your ads were optimised well. I think you could probably get this increase in traffic within 2 months if you put your mind to it. Most people would love to earn $5-10 per day but it's fair to warn you that very few (maybe 5% of ALL publishers) can actually sustain this modest income.
Nobody can answer your exactly, I can tell you that it is possible in the next 10 years maybe you'll achieve your goal in the next ten days, who know? p.l.u.r.
I am just curious as to how long it took the average person on this forum. I realize the variables are many.
Getting a site started and also wondering how long it'll take to begin making good money are two different, although related, things. First things first, you have to get your pages indexed by the search engines, get those pages ranked highly for important keywords, get some backlinks to your site, pay for some advertising, promote your site on forums -- all to get traffic. Then, with traffic, you have to optimize your use of Adsense to create good ad placement, high ad relevancy to your keywords, and keywords that pay more than a few cents per click -- all to get high CTR and high CPC. The time-consuming part is getting traffic. The rest will depend on the type of site you have (forums don't generally do very well, as an example), the type of visitors you get (technical types don't click very often, as an example), and the type of keywords you're targeting ("free web templates" doesn't pay well, as an example). When I first started with Adsense, my site was already up and running, with a few years of traffic and good SE rankings, had many backlinks, was targeted to good paying keywords, and got highly relevant ads. How long did it take me to begin making good money from Adsense? Almost instantly, because I had already gotten past the hard part. My advice: worry about traffic first, then about making money.
1. Write good content. 2. Optimize it for search engines. 3. Put adsense. 4. Optimize adsense by reading in DP forums and some experimentation. 5. Enjoy the fruits of labor.
Well, you could have a website for years and not make that much money with adsense. It depends on how much effort you invest on your website and how useful it is. With a great deal of hard work, you can make that much money within a few weeks. You'll have to sustain that effort until your website gets somehow popular. If you just trust the search engines to bring you traffic without much effort on your part, you won't make it. By the way, I noticed that you are from Kentucky. Where in Kentucky??? I used to live in Louisville, KY and I am a UofL graduate.
most sites dont start getting decent traffic until after a year or so. When I started my website in January '06 I didn't plan on getting any 'real' traffic or making any real money until after a year.. but by doing all the 'right' things I ended up doing quite well after about 4 months. It took a LOT of work and effort, but it's possible.. So many new website owners think they can toss together a website, slap some Adsense on it and get rich the next day ... it just doesn't work that way..
Ablaye, I am a UK grad and live in Ashland. Go Cats! Anyway, It really is all across the board on how long it takes people to make it. It does seem to be a consensus that you must be patient and wait for the SE to pick you up and bring you traffic. I am suspicious of those who claim they put up a site and its got loads of traffic and generates loads of cash within a month. I am impatient by nature, but I expect my site to do well within 6-8 months. By then I expect to have 75+ pages of quality content.
For starters - don't focus on SE's to much at first. Do get a few links, so you know google knows you exist. But aside from that - make great content and promote it wherever you can. That will get you links and visitors, which in the longer run will get you ranked. If your content is really unique, you may even want to consider actively advertising it through adwords. Just to get your name out there. I started my website (at it's current URL) 4 years before putting on adsense, so I made over $100 in my first month. But that domain is pre-sandbox, already had decent backlinks and regular visitors.
I have now got my site for like 14 months and it still doesnt make $5 a day (around half of it now). It all depends on your niche, amount of visitors, design, etc, etc.
like several "old-timers" stated below I had my site nearly 8 years up and a few thousand unique visitors per day before I started adsense some 2 yrs ago hence my first half months check was 3 digits - and next full months even more I added more content and used only a few for adsense but increased the number of pages/ad units and optimized in steps every now and then the formats and placements to double traffic as a result of more content and to double / multiply adsense $ as a result of placement / formats optimization according to G' ublished success stories and recommendations/heat maps, etc after G recent mails and requests for rectangles / ATF http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=231312 another full site update in formats and placements brought another 50% increase instantly it is the large and increasing number of traffic as a result of thousands of content pages that is and always was the key to a stable revenue - now I am soon 10 years (in april 2007 ) into content creation/publishing and all runs smooth and fine as a result/product of ten thousands of hours productivity the first many years I never even thought of making any ads or ad-relevant revenue - the revenue came from real services / content offered. the first many years I was far too busy in creating/producing what I knew needed to be done there was no time to even think about sitting back and getting $ before job done imagine a song writer - starting a new hit - after 10 seconds of music written - he thinks of sellling the 10 seconds on CD and asks how much can I charge for my first 10 seconds ?? nothing at all until song finished .... and ready to be a hit as a whole song on radio/TV and dance floor same with web sites
It takes atleast 3,4 months with constant struggle .... You can earn a lot and may be in the first month If you know all its ins and outs
Im suprised with a few of the comments here... It took me around a month to start earning (with a lot of submissions to directories etc) - get the traffic in and you will start seeing clicks. Also, aim to optimise the placement of the ads, use heat maps etc to help you. I was earning $1-5 a day up until Feb this year and now i expect $6-10 a day. I don't get heaps of traffic, but i am number one on Google for my chosen keywords. Ive found that by trend, I earn less on weekends than weekdays too