The $3000 per month Google Adsense Project...

jordanmcclements · #1 (**permalink**) 06-13-2007, 11:32 AM

First of all - apologies for shamelessly ripping off this idea from the following post:-

http://www.webproworld.com/google-ad...e-project.html

There are a number of differences to this post though...

I have one reasonably well established domain / couple of subdomains.
I get a fair amount of traffic already.
My sites are definitely NOT MFA sites (and I am not saying that the ones in the other post ARE MFA sites by the way).
I am less optimistic about how much I can earn and how much effort it will take.

Is there much interest in a detailed post / blog about this at all?

Does anyone have any advice about how much info I can safely publish without incurring the wrath of Google?
(I know they don't allow publishing of CTR - so if I published page views per month along with earnings - would this amount to the same thing?)

Is there any point to doing any of this - or will it just be counterproductive and construed 'bragging' (although what I make at present is NOT anything to brag about considering how much work I have put into it in my spare time).

Do you all promise not to shoot me down in flames / misconstrue any comments I make?

Give me some feedback and maybe I'll get the ball rolling in the near future...

Thanks.

Jerry · #2 (**permalink**) 06-13-2007, 05:07 PM

I'd be interested in seeing what you can do. I know that so far AdSense hasn't played any sort of significant part of my 'net income

Peter (IMC) · #3 (**permalink**) 06-13-2007, 06:00 PM

I think I saw one of your sites and they´re not very suitable for your adsense project.

In order for an adsense link to be clicked on they need to be useful for the visitor.
In order for adsense links to be useful to the visitor, he needs to be looking for something to buy (because most adsense links offer products or services).
In order to atract visitors that are looking for something to buy, you need to have the right type of website.

It all comes back to what type of website you have.

A product review site for example will be likely to have a decent CTR to obtain your goal. But if your offer exactly what the visitor is looking for he has no reason to click on adsense and he won't,.... no matter how much you throw the ads in his face.

And unforntunately for you, those types of sites require a lot of work,.

webmaster@vzmedia.com · #4 (**permalink**) 06-13-2007, 09:43 PM

I'd be very interested to see a blog or some posts about the results. I am definitely not an expert, as my (lack of) success in getting paid for clicks proves (not a significant share of my revenue either). I would really like to see what someone else, with a slightly larger budget could do.

I think anyone looking at photos or backgrounds (the sites linked at the bottom of your post) could attract people who might purchase books, videos, or other memorabilia that relate to Ireland or Canada, etc. Possibly they might also click to find other types of screen savers or other computer "utilities", etc, etc, etc.

If you try it, please tell us about it.

Thanks,
John.

irvingsolnik · #5 (**permalink**) 06-13-2007, 11:24 PM

I am a Toronto lawyer who is been in industry for many years and two years ago I returned to the practice of law full time. Obviously the major question was how to obtain clients and in less than two years my practice exceed most lawyers who have practiced for ten or more years. You can obviously do a search for me on the internet and will find that I have over 2000 blogs that brings me more clients I ever imagined. I am interested what you are doing and would like to learn more on some type of mutually satisfactory basis. If interested please conact me at irvingsolnik@lawyer.com or (416) 932-8509. You can even search google, yahoo and msn for the "best torontolawyer" without the quotation marks as well as searching for me personally. If interested please contact me.

Irving Solnik

irvingsolnik · #6 (**permalink**) 06-13-2007, 11:26 PM

PS-I am grossing over $500,000.00 yearly at present and anticipate that it will double or even triple within another year or so.

Irving Solnik

chadhaajay · #7 (**permalink**) 06-14-2007, 02:03 AM

I've started using adsense about 6 months ago on the demo section of our website and by the god's grace, its making up about $1500 a month.

Good luck to you as well...!

Sincerely,

Ajay Chadha (Director)
Chadha Software Technologies

jordanmcclements · #8 (**permalink**) 06-14-2007, 08:56 AM

Thanks for the feedback so far...

Peter - I agree 90% with what you are saying (oh how I wish I had started an electronic gadget review web site years ago! - not only would adsense work well but 'Auction Ads' probably would too.. )

But I still think it is possible to achieve the goal from my current web sites (mainly Free Northern Ireland Photos / Desktop Backgrounds / Wallpaper ) - although I am under no illusions that it will be easy, and I will almost certainly need to pay for more than 300 GB Bandwidth per month (mostly because my images are free to download and there are no restrictions on hotlinking).

One thing I know for certain I can disclose is overall earnings for May - $520 (although this was my best month so far by a good bit and looks like June earnings will be down a bit..) - and if you added up the time I have spent so far in my spare time then I have been working for a lot less than the minimum wage so far....

Before I post much more - I would feel a lot happier to have a response to the email below sent to adsense support:-

I am considering posting to forums / blogging about my adsense earnings..

As I understand it - it is OK to state exact earnings. But after extensive searching - I am still about exactly what else I can disclose...

i.e.

Can I disclose the earnings of specific URLs or only site wide earnings during a specific period?
Can I disclose number of visits during that period?
Can I disclose number of page views during that period?

Does anyone know if this is at all likely in the near future?
(I have searched the internet (including official adsense stuff) in vain for a concrete answer to the above questions...).

Thanks.

MikeinFlorida · #9 (**permalink**) 06-14-2007, 10:34 AM

I've been watching your project with keen interest. Did you give up on it ? When I just went to your main home page again it said "no posts" matched inquiry. Just thought you'd want to know if nothing else.

Good luck!

jordanmcclements · #10 (**permalink**) 06-14-2007, 10:39 AM

Sorry - I think you meant to comment on the '$30000' rather than the '$3000' post??

jordanmcclements · #11 (**permalink**) 06-14-2007, 04:36 PM

Got a reply from the Adsense team:-

Hello Jordan,

Thank you for your email.

You are welcome to disclose information about your gross earnings with
AdSense. However, we ask that you please refrain from disclosing other
account information, including but not limited to, page views, number of
clicks, and your click-through rate.

We appreciate your cooperation.

For additional questions, I'd encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Centre ( Google AdSense Help Center ), our complete resource
centre for all AdSense topics. Alternatively, feel free to post your
question on the forum just for AdSense publishers: the AdSense Help Group
( AdSense Help | Google Groups ).

Sincerely,

Siobhán
The Google AdSense Team

This does sort of tie your hands ever so slightly....

Peter (IMC) · #12 (**permalink**) 06-14-2007, 10:33 PM

In my experience, if you want to make money of Adsense (but not through an MFA (Made For Adsense) site) it´s simply a number game. More pages means more visits means more clicks means more money.

Optimizing for those couple of phrases that will bring in visitors by the hundreds of thousands,.... little chance.

It´s all about content. And make sure it´s not MFA. (i.e. nonsense content without any real value)

jordanmcclements · #13 (**permalink**) 06-15-2007, 08:23 AM

Peter - you are right about it being difficult to corner the market for popular search terms on the google 'web' results.

But this is not the case on google 'Image' results. e.g. look at the following searches and you should see my images come fairly near the top of the search results (the ones with ni-photos.jmcwd.com under them):-

labrador - Google Image Search

ireland - Google Image Search

irish desktop backgrounds - Google Image Search

Bearing in mind the official email from google - I am not allowed to say how many page views etc I get through the above sort of searches but it the vast majority of my traffic - and a significant amount..

NB - I currently have something like 70 pages that have adsense on them, and around 580 photos that are free to download and hot link to.

I have also dabbled with various other affiliate stuff including azoogle, auction ads, calendars.com and a few others - and I have found that at least for my type of web sites - NOTHING comes close to what I can earn with adsense..

Earnings From Adsense (In US Dollars):-

May 2006 - 10
Jun 2006 - 40
Jul 2006 - 57
Aug 2006 - 59
Sep 2006 - 58
Oct 2006 - 121
Nov 2006 - 161
Dec 2006 - 157

Jan 2007 - 215
Feb 2007 - 271
Mar 2007 - 377
Apr 2007 - 375
May 2007 - 525

You should note that I put a LOT of work into taking, categorising, naming, and uploading a LOT of photos a long way prior to May 2006 before starting to try and make money from Adsense.

So it is not like you can upload a few photos and get good earnings the next week.

NB - I have also found that when I do upload new photos - it can take 3 months or more before they are picked up by google images.

All my photos are 1024x768 in resolution which makes them acceptable for use as myspace backgrounds / desktop backgrounds by the majority of people. (Bear in mind that about 99% of my visitors have no clue about resolution - so will not be put off by the fact that their monitor is actually 1280x1024 or 1280x800).

Other things to bear in mind when doing this sort of thing:-

You need a host that provides with a LOT of bandwidth - I am with register1.net which currently allows 200GB / month with their VDS pro account.

If you want people to actually look at your page when searching from google images - you need to mess around with .htaccess so that when they click on the link for 'full size image' they are redirected to a similar picture with text asking them to visit the site for a version without the text e.g. :-

http://www.jmcwd.com/redirected-images/sky.jpg

Total amount spent so far:-

Domain name reservations, and hosting account for 3 years = approx $800
Paint Shop Pro 8, + Upgrade to PSP X = approx $90
Namo Web Editor = approx $90
NB I dont recommend Namo at all - you can achieve the same results for free with PSPAD and FileZilla - but please make donations if you use them.
Fuji s9500/s9000 Camera + filters, memory etc = approx $900
NB - you can now buy the new version - the S9600/s9100 which is even better for approx $520 - which I DO recommend..
Total Outlay = Approx $2000

Errr.. now I add it up - that is a lot more than I had thought... But hey - I would have got the camera anyway regardless if I ever did a web site or not...

OK - this post is getting a bit long now.

Peter (IMC) · #14 (**permalink**) 06-15-2007, 02:58 PM

Looks good!

This is the kind of information that is helpful to the visitors of this forum!

**incrediblehelp** · #15 (**permalink**) 06-15-2007, 03:00 PM

Jordan,

Just my opinion but any website that is good enough to make solid earnings from AdSense probably could make even more without using AdSense ads. Yes use them on my blog now, but they are there as more of just a filler. My blog isn't there exactly to produce revenue but more of communication tool with people in the industry. Using them on real websites selling products/services doesn't make much sense to me.

jordanmcclements · #16 (**permalink**) 06-16-2007, 05:05 AM

Incredible... I am sure you are 100% correct.

But the the reason I am going down the Adsense / organic results route is - it is completely hassle free...

I COULD go down the route of setting up an online shop, printing, framing, shipping photos and using Adwords to market them - but that would be a lot of extra work, investment and hassle..

I think that certainly as a part time money making exercise - the Adsense route makes sense at least so far.... I'll be sure to keep you all informed if this changes!

Thanks.

jordanmcclements · #17 (**permalink**) 06-20-2007, 10:30 AM

I have started a blog on this topic at :-

Making Money Online From Photos

I will come back here at least once a month also - and post updates..

Thanks.