05 - How To Make Money With Google Adsense

[Vita_Vee]

If you landed directly on this page, please make sure you start by reading the 1st articles of this "how to make money online" series:

01 - What You Need to Know About Business Success
02 - How To Make Money Online With Affiliate Marketing
03 - How To Make Money Online By Selling Your Own Services
04 - How To Make Money Online By Creating Info Products

PART 5 - Making Money Online With Google Adsense

Adsense is Google's contextual advertising program they bought from the original developing company back in the early 2000s. I am pretty confident almost all of you have seen Adsense ads as well as contextual ads by other companies.

Very quickly...

Adsense publishers are people who have the websites and blogs that show the contextual ads. Adsense advertisers are people running Google adwords campaigns (PPC) and have elected to also advertise in the 'content network.' The advertiser tells Google how much they are willing to pay when someone, a reader/surfer, clicks on their Adsense ads on a publisher's site.

The lure of Adsense.

There is a lot of history attached to Adsense, and it is possible some of the history contributes to at least an initial attraction for many people new to IM. Back in the day, there was an incredible run in which people were absolutely killing it with Adsense. I mean, 5 - $10,000 a month in Adsense earnings was almost nothing for many people. There were people making 25 - $50,000 per month, and more than a few making 50-$100,000 a month in Adsense earnings alone.

This is actually with adsense that I first started to make money online in 2006. Not as much as the big players but I never took the blackhat route. With my very first attempt (a pretty thin website) I was earning a nice side income (I was still working as a programmer at the time):



Then my thin site got slapped.

Just about everyone was gaming the system. There was a tremendous effort toward massive automation producing huge numbers of worthless "scraper" sites containing thousands of pages.

So you combine that with the relative ease of ranking higher 5-7 years ago with "much" higher Adsense CPC, how much the publisher was paid per click, and the end result was total insanity.

To make a long story short, everything has changed and is different.

Google's algorithm has been through many "dances" since then, and search engine optimization is different. The amount a publisher was paid per click fell through the floor and burned a whole in the earth. Google turned control over what an advertiser paid per click "to the advertiser."

It was a blood-bath when Google started cleaning house to get rid of all those scraped sites. Mass de-indexing of thousands of sites. All those fabulous monthly incomes suddenly disappeared - literally overnight. Many people were financially ruined in less than a week.

What happened with Adsense holds several important lessons for everyone.

But still... Adsense attracts many people because of the promise of hands-off income. That is a myth by the way. Just like other areas, you can build it to the point of becoming much less time intensive. But you will still need to do the work before you arrive at that point.

Can you make good money with Adsense? Can it be worth all the hard work?

The short answers are, yes and yes, with about a dozen caveats!

By the way, as you read this keep a few things uppermost in your mind. You will notice many things you must do to make money with Adsense will enable you to make money with other monetization methods. That is a huge point to realize mainly because if you plan your strategy well, then you can become "lighter on your feet." You will be able to move from one monetization method to another with relative ease.

Remember what I just said a few lines above about "important lessons."

What is possible, income-wise?

You can build an Adsense (only) business to a low six figure business. How quickly you can do that depends on many factors. It is hard to know what everybody has done because not everyone talks about their business. But I know of people who have accomplished $100,000 in Adsense earnings in 1-2 years.

I am aware of quite a few people who are easily on-track to 30-50,000 per year in Adsense income. Some of them are achieving that in less than six months.

How fast you do it is 100% up to you. What will make the difference is your level of knowledge - which is controlled by you, and how much effort you put into it - again, controlled by you.

There are far more people who make nothing or almost next to nothing.

But one thing I have noticed about many of the very low earners is they seem to take the opposite approach as the higher earners. Keep in mind that I am generalizing a little bit. I am telling you my impressions based on many things I've read.

There seems to be two main approaches with Adsense.

The first strategy is about many sites producing a small Adsense income per month. When you add them up you'll realize a decent to good monthly income. Speed and quantity is important with varying degrees of quality from low to "not as good as it can be." I'm trying to be somewhat generous, here. The approach varies from low quality autoblogs and non-auto sites to those who make more of an effort.

Also, this approach includes what Google considers "very thin" sites that are extremely targeted to primarily one well-researched keyword phrase. I've seen some references to these sites as "microsites." But keep in mind that Google openly states they do not prefer thin sites. To my knowledge there has not been any radical moves such as mass de-indexing. But a microsite would not necessarily be a good long-term strategy, in my opinion. So take that for what it's worth to you.

The qualities of speed and quantity also imply the general mindset behind it. You can build as many of these sites as possible per month, let's say. Then you get them ranked highly and see what happens. You keep the losers and run with the winners. Often times you will be looking at a few dollars per day in Adsense. Of course some of them can earn you 20 to $50 per day, but with this approach most will earn less. One or two may earn more - it just all depends on how much you produce so you can see what happens.

The second general approach is basically the opposite of the first one.

This strategy involves building a much higher quality site, either static HTML site or blog. Everything about these sites represents higher quality. You will have to plan them well which means good, accurate market research, keyword research, on-page SEO, and well-optimized Adsense ads.

These sites can also be called authority sites. The goal is to give the visitors what Google wants you to give them - a rich experience with your content and overall site. This approach also implies these sites are long-term investments meant to get ranked all the way to the top and then stay there for years.

Sound impossible? It is not impossible. As always, it comes down to what you want and what you are willing to do to get it.

It is these types of authority sites that really do offer you the greatest amount of flexibility and options. You should never completely rely on just one type of monetization method such as Adsense. In time, your site will have many pages on which you can offer various types of contextual ads including Adsense. But you can also have CPA offers, physical goods, and even information products. It all depends on the site and market.

You should not restrict yourself to working with only one site or one market with this approach, either. The power of this strategy is multiplied when you are operating in as many markets as you can handle. Naturally, the ability to use outsourced help will make a difference, here.

If you do not have the funds for outsourcing, then you can focus on one or two of these sites, initially, you can also make money through other completely different IM methods, and then use some of those profits to fund outsourcing for more authority sites. You do have options if you are resourceful and willing to work at it.

Choose your strategy well before you begin.

Keyword and market research are critically important in just about all IM businesses and methods. But for Adsense and other contextual ad networks, your choice of markets and keywords will determine the money you make when an ad is clicked on your site.

Yes, we have all heard about very high paying Adsense ads such as $10 up to $50. Some ad clicks pay so much because they are in hyper-competitive markets. Naturally that means achieving a high position in the search engines will be much more difficult. I would suggest, if you are new to this, to avoid deliberately targeting such markets.

Also, as a side note, you can draw the "unwanted" attention of Google if you build a site that is obviously targeting "only" high paying Adsense ads. You need to be careful with Adsense because they have the strictest terms of service (TOS), and if you get banned it will be for life. There are ways to get another Adsense account, but we will not discuss that here.

You need to build your sites around keyword phrases that you have a very reasonable chance of ranking easily for in a relatively short period of time. You have to give yourself a chance to succeed in a decent amount of time. You want to avoid choosing phrases and markets that are not competitive at all, totally easy pickings, because that will mean the Adsense click payout will be horribly low. I mean, something like just a few cents per click.

Another consideration with very long-tail keyword phrases is the traffic they get is typically low per month. Take that and then you really almost have to rank number one in order to get decent traffic numbers.

So when you look at the above you will see more of the rationale behind building large numbers of sites that are not authority sites.

A lot of people have been using blogs and monetizing with Adsense. There are quite a few tools and resources available to help you in this area. Of course, there are many free Adsense blog themes easily found with a Google search. Other resources include Adsense related plugins, widgets, side bars, and templates. There are premium Adsense themes such as Joel Comm's Socrates theme. I belive that theme is also a Clickbank-ready theme in addition to Adsense.

What else is important?

One of the most important things you do with your Adsense sites is optimize your site for your ads. How well you do this will greatly affect your earnings. It will make a huge difference in terms of location, ad format, ad size and other considerations. Perhaps the second most important, or at least equally important, action is using Adsense tracking in the first place - and using it correctly in the second place.

Neither optimizing nor tracking are difficult to learn and implement. But taking the time to do these things will have an enormous impact on your Adsense earnings. I cannot over-emphasize that point.

There is an absolute ton of information available about Adsense.

You need to be careful, though, about what you are reading. I say that because it is very easy to find old information, but it is still ranked highly in Google for Adsense related searches. Google changes their TOS for their various programs as we all know. So the best thing to do is read the latest information on Google for their Adsense program. They are upfront about their TOS, rules, etc. So that is just a heads-up when you are reading information you surf up at Google.

Concluding thoughts:

Adsense calls into play a very common theme we have all seen in IM.

As we all know, there is the mindset that is rampant that has to do with making money fast and easy. True, there are ways to make money quickly and fairly easy. But the problem with that approach is those methods tend to be short-lived. So what happens is a person becomes something like an IM nomad, or scavenger. I do not mean that in an insulting way.

But when you are using a method that is not a business building method, then you will always need to move on and find something new at some point. Therefore, in a very real sense you are much like a nomad, and perhaps a little bit like a scavenger because you are always on the move and looking.

You can take that approach with Adsense, too.

Or, you can take the opposite strategy and work more at it. You will need to learn, take action, and have some patience. But the reward is you can build solid sites that are ranked very highly. Those sites will almost be guaranteed to remain stable throughout Google's famous dances (algorithm changes). When you have your sites properly optimized for Adsense with all the necessary tools in place - (Adsense) tracking and analytics, then you can kill it.

I will tell you that if you can build an Adsense (or contextual ad) based business that earns $100,000 per year, then there is no reason why you cannot earn more. Nothing will be stopping you from repeating that until you are earning $500,000 per year, or even more.

It is your decision.

If you do that, then you will have long-term income producing sites that are stable and solid. Plus, along the way you will have learned all the skills you need to earn money with other monetization methods.

That is powerful.

Vita Vee

PS: If you enjoyed reading this post, please link to it from your blogs, from twitter, from facebook, from other forums etc... I would appreciate it a lot.

PPS: Want to make some good money with Adsense? Participate to this Q&A Session with a Rich Adsense Guy. He's in the forum!

PPS: Click here to read the 6th article of this "How to Make Money Online" series.

[Jack]

Awesome post Vita, I really appreciate it.

Jack

[Vita_Vee]

Thanks Jack, so when do we start dominating adsense now that we have already dominated product launches?

[Jack]

Ha ha,

You said it Vita. Thanks to you I can compete with anyone in product launches. And unlike many, I have not strayed from one method to another. I have stuck with what you taught me and have pretty much mastered it. The downside is that I haven't learned a whole lot else.

As you pointed out, methods that can make quick money are often the ones that do not last. Doing product launches for a long period of time is very draining mentally. I want to learn other methods now. I look forward to learning this method and dominating. Let's do it!

Thanks again Vita. You are an IM star and in time more people will know who you are. I'm just glad I joined up with you when I did.

Jack

[Vita_Vee]

Thanks a lot Jack!

*You* are the IM star, look at your reputation here
We should change the name of this forum to Jack's Forums!

BTW I stopped using adsense a few years ago but started to use it again quite recently.
My experimental site is making about 20 euros per day right now and growing, not too bad

The model: authority sites.

[tastebud]

Adsense is the area I want to start turning into my main source of income. I have read the adsense geyser by Charles Montgomery, he bases it on finding high cpc keywords for your content, and other not so competitive words that relate to those for your traffic. I have read the adsense recipe by Cary Bergeron, actually reading it now. They both all come back to the same idea of traffic. The more targeted traffic you get, the more money you will make. But that is the trick isnt it. Vita do you recommend the theis theme? Cary Bergeron uses it on all his sites and claims it is the most seo optimized theme available. It is quite expensive though, I am looking forward to reading more on making money online. Thanks Vita.

[fastwalker1]

Great Post Vita

Thanks again for an honest and valuable insight into Adsense, just what I needed to hear.

Regards

James

[Vita_Vee]

I have never tested the thesis theme myself but according to the general consensus it's pretty good.

Thet being said I don't believe in "SEO" themes.

1st, a theme will never give you rankings, it's your content AND your backlinks that will.
2, Any theme that isn't badly coded will do the job

[javaondemand]

Hi V
I very much enjoyed this one , thanks again
Rick

[igen]

bt nowadays its very hard to get adsense account & get approved. I already try many times. but

[Phictor]

Thanks for sharing this VitaVee,

As always you are so sharp and to the point.

Lately I've been studying a couple of different courses about making money with adsense. They all agree on one thing: if you are willing to invest the time and energy, you can make a lot of steady money.

Personally I will follow John X-factor's strategies. I am just reading his new book for the second time now, and this is 'bottomline' information indeed, with a lot of warnings to not get sidetracked by non-issues such as blogs or html, or which theme is best, or which keywordtool you should use ( stay focused remember!).

Cheers

JP

[atma]

Thanks for the post, Vita, that was very informative. As for myself I prefer the authority site model as it is a long term one. Adsense is an easy way to monetize your site, but one has to put a good and relevant content on it to make the site a sustainable income source.

[Vita_Vee]

(01-12-2011 09:09 AM)igen Wrote:  bt nowadays its very hard to get adsense account & get approved. I already try many times. but

Unfortunately it seems to be more difficult to get approved now than it used to be. Even the hubpages method doesn't work anymore.

Maybe you could try to use flixya.com
It allows you to post articles, videos & photos. Try to interact with some members there and post a few things. Then enter your info to get into their adsense share revenue model, hopefully it will help you to get approved.

To make this work, make sure you don't post spammy content at all of course

(01-12-2011 09:14 AM)Phictor Wrote:  Thanks for sharing this VitaVee,

As always you are so sharp and to the point.

Lately I've been studying a couple of different courses about making money with adsense. They all agree on one thing: if you are willing to invest the time and energy, you can make a lot of steady money.

Personally I will follow John X-factor's strategies. I am just reading his new book for the second time now, and this is 'bottomline' information indeed, with a lot of warnings to not get sidetracked by non-issues such as blogs or html, or which theme is best, or which keywordtool you should use ( stay focused remember!).

Cheers

JP

Thanks a lot JP for the recommendation. I have purchased John's course but have not finished reading it yet. Looks good & down to earth (what I like).

(01-12-2011 10:31 AM)atma Wrote:  Thanks for the post, Vita, that was very informative. As for myself I prefer the authority site model as it is a long term one. Adsense is an easy way to monetize your site, but one has to put a good and relevant content on it to make the site a sustainable income source.

You're welcome Atma. I also prefer the authority model eventhough I also use thin sites for promoting specific products. But for adsense the authority model is clearly the way to go.

[faithwisdomlove]

To be honest Vita, Jack et al, dominating adsense shouldn't really be that complicated according to what you've thought us on dominating product launches because at the end of the day we are still trying to rank for a giving keyword (but within a short space of time- which makes it much fun).

Only that during product launches the pace and speed is a lot more upbeat as your trying to unseat other competitors. However, what still counts is the content and backlinks as Vita mentioned earlier. They are the most important factors for ranking and hence, the basis for making money online.

Adsense on the other hand follows the same trail of ranking for a given keyword that has lots of traffic and with high paying CPC. Only that there is no pressure whatsoever unlike product launches. And when we combine all these ingredients together we cook up a nice site that makes money.

I must emphasis here that without the knowledge and understanding that I in particular have learned and practiced on here (vitavee.com), I would have still been a lost sheep in the world of internet marketing... thanks to Vita, Jack and Infinity...

With the knowledge gained here i've been able to tackle some of the most competitive niches on the internet marketing scene. Started up an adsense site recently on insurance and student loans. Some of my marketing buddies said i was mad for going into those niches but i know within myself that when you're using Vita's methods there are no competition out there. If you put in the hardwork of link building you'll always reap the rewards and experience the difference.

Currently, my insurance site is ranking number 5 on the first page for it's main keyword and the cost per click is very encouraging as i targeted insurance companies that have huge disposable income for their adwords campaign; these are my main advertisers.

My sincere gratitude once again to Vita, Jack and Infinity as i look forward to another session of dominating with adsense.

[Jack]

Thank you. I'm glad we've been able to help you. If it weren't for Vita and this forum I would be much further behind too.

You are right that by using Vita's methods we can rank well for any keyword. The biggest difference between the keywords we target in F0TP an others is that in F0TP we are going after brand new keywords. Most of the time, this makes it very easy to rank for them at first. In time of course as others jump on board, it gets more difficult. Another thing is that because the keyword is new, Google often changes it's mind about what it think is relevant to the keyword. This is mostly based on the content of the pages/posts whose anchor text is the keyword.

So going after established keywords is very doable. Just expect it to take more time to get the ranking you want.

Jack

[faithwisdomlove]

I do agree with you Jack. Backlinking also does have a positive effect on ranking time as well as i've noticed on one of my site.

Whenever i inject some quality amount of links i often visibly notice that my page moves up the SERPS by upto 10, 15, 20 or even 100 positions. So i came to the realization that links and content relevance are paramount in reducing the amount of time it takes to get to page one. Although, Vita did teach us something along these lines...

But where it slows down is where I was about unseating a number 1 ranked site. It just seem to sit there for ages irrespective of the boost in links that i inject into my pages to outrank it. It was later i figured out the site was more relevant in terms of content quality and then i built some more pages and links into my site. Still waiting to see the outcome though.

[Vita_Vee]

Congrats on your achievements, I agree with you, no matter which way you decide to monetize a site, as long as you know how to rank it well you will make money.

For some time I stopped using adsense but after a test I ran on one of my niche sites I found that it was bringing in more money than with aff programs (despite the list I'm building and preselling to).

(01-25-2011 12:10 AM)faithwisdomlove Wrote:  But where it slows down is where I was about unseating a number 1 ranked site. It just seem to sit there for ages irrespective of the boost in links that i inject into my pages to outrank it. It was later i figured out the site was more relevant in terms of content quality and then i built some more pages and links into my site. Still waiting to see the outcome though.

That's what I called the "glue effect" in one of the threads I posted. Established sites that are ranking for specific keywords for ages are difficult to outrank, even if you have more backlinks than them. This is where we start to feel the age factor used by google in its algorithm. Be patient and persistent and you'll outrank them though.

[faithwisdomlove]

Vita,
You really should get into adsense more. It's got very huge potential with minimal effort. I just bore the hell out of my readers/ visitors that they begin to look for the nearest adsense ads to click to get out of my site quickly.

Perhaps, there might be some more advanced strategies out there to boost CTR.... Well, we'll just wait and see.

[sitelit]

(01-25-2011 02:32 PM)faithwisdomlove Wrote:  Vita,
You really should get into adsense more. It's got very huge potential with minimal effort. I just bore the hell out of my readers/ visitors that they begin to look for the nearest adsense ads to click to get out of my site quickly.

Perhaps, there might be some more advanced strategies out there to boost CTR.... Well, we'll just wait and see.

i'm also starting out with this strategy but yet to see any results, can you please tell me how you are doing with this method?

[apollo23]

Hey V2

Are you going to start a video course on Adsense income? Am getting couple of $ for every few days.

Would be happy to make $50/day!

Stephen