The $3000 per month Google Adsense Project...

[jordanmcclements]

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)]

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]

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)]

Looks good!

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

[incrediblehelp]

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]

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]

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.

[jtracking]

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.

I make 7 bucks a month on my adsense projects - im RICH! seriously though, i get about 70 hits a month of my one site and make very little cash - it would be nice to make $1500 as the other posted claimed...

[jordanmcclements]

Hi.

For along time - I made less than that from my main photo web site...

You have to have to put in a lot of time and effort to get a LOT more traffic before you can start earning proper beer money...

I'll be posting my June earnings soon (looking very similar to May at present).

[collusion]

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!

The go9500i website was down for a couple days. There was database trouble after an upgrade. It has since been fixed.