Right around a year ago now, I made my first cent online. It was literally a cent — $0.01 — and it showed up in my Google AdSense account after a certain number of people had viewed an ad for dog food or a shiatsu massager or whatever on my old humor blog.
That first cent was exciting, because it proved that you really could make money online in the way it seemed that everyone said you could — by creating sites populated with ads, and then sitting back and letting the earnings pile up. Then, if the gurus were to be believed, it was only a matter of time before I would be living in Hawaii, while bikini girls used the Mona Lisa to wax my Lamborghini.
So I read a ton about how to use AdSense, took a few courses, and built a bunch of little search-engine-optimized niche websites. I worked and worked and built and built, and eventually I amassed a couple dozen of these little moneymakers.
Slowly, visitors began to come to my sites, click on the expensive Google ads for lawyers and insurance, and make me some money. Then, reasonably content with my Google army, I put those sites on “set it and forget it” mode (like a Ronco Rotisserie) and started something new.
A different way to do it
Specifically, in April of last year, I started the Johnny B. Truant biz. The business model basically consisted of trying to write funny blog posts and generally just hanging out online, and then parlaying that good will into its logical succession, which is, of course, technology services.
I worked very hard, but it didn’t feel like work — especially compared to what I had been doing on the niche sites. It felt like being an amiable jackass in the right places, and meeting people, and kind of screwing around. Eventually it also started to feel like building a business, but that happened slowly and by degrees.
Nine months passed, with both venues making me money in their own unique way.
At the end of 2009, I recorded my second five-figure month in the JBT technology biz, after building between eighty and a hundred blogs for clients in December.
And at around the same time, I got my first ever AdSense check from Google. It was for $111.
The best way to “make money online” is probably not what you think.
Spend a few minutes Googling around for ways to make money online. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
If you didn’t do that search just now, it’s probably because you’ve tried it before and already knew what you would find. Almost every site, course, and guru out there will tell you that to make money online, you should sign up for AdSense (or maybe for a large advertiser’s affiliate program), rustle up some long-tail keywords, and start gaming Google traffic.
I’m not going to tell you that doesn’t work . . . but I am going to tell you that it didn’t work for me, and that it’s unlikely to work for you if you’re even one iota like me.
Here’s why I don’t like the AdSense strategy as a business model:
It’s not a business model. Any time you can talk about “monetization,” you’re probably not talking about a real business because “monetizing” a business is redundant. “Monetizing” is slapping a moneymaker on top of something that doesn’t naturally produce income. The way that 99.99% of people dive into AdSense, they’re simply putting something out there and waiting for the dollars to roll in. There is no real planning, no accounting forecasts, no intention down the road to improve workflow or expand offerings or enlarge the sales funnel, no exploiting the best abilities of yourself and partners to create benefit for others.
It doesn’t add value. Technicalities aside, there is no real product or service in the way most AdSense “make money online” campaigns are run. There is simply arbitrage. You’re not increasing widget sales; you’re trying to make sure more of the existing sales will occur through your ads. I learned my lesson trying to play the stock market (and failing) and then investing in real estate (and failing at an epic level): Sustainable incomes come from using your talents to create value for others, not from gambling and playing the numbers.
It contradicts the way the Net is supposed to work. Yes, yes, I know . . . some people blog in a heartfelt manner about cabinetry and run cabinetry ads, and visitors click them to buy cabinets and the site owner makes money. But most AdSense strategies are all about gaming the system. When I was creating insurance niche sites, I couldn’t have cared less about insurance. I was simply trying to draw traffic away from the legit insurance sites so that people would click on my ads instead of finding an insurance company a different way. That’s not the way that the Web is supposed to work . . . which is to efficiently connect the searcher and what she’s searching for.
It’s anonymous. Few “make money online” strategies will tell you to blog under your own name, include your own picture, and make a big deal about being the guy or gal who created this site. In fact, I spent a lot of my time trying to obscure who I was. Many courses even tell you to use hosting that will generate random, non-sequential IP addresses for each site, so that even Google won’t know that one person owns them all. Anonymity conflicts directly with what I consider to be the most important reasons for my success, which are honesty, authenticity, trust-building, and transparency.
You can do better, no matter who you are
I worked really, really, really hard on those AdSense sites. I worked 15-hour days; I wrote keyword-laced post after keyword-laced post; I entered them in article directories and put them through social media bulk submitters; I launched site after site, tweaked, customized, and researched.
And by doing that, I made $111 in a year.
Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Maybe I used the wrong system. Maybe, if someone else had done it, they might have done it twice as well. And maybe that same person would have done it for three times as long as I did, building sites for the whole year instead of only doing it for four months.
So yeah, maybe that super-ambitious person might have made $888.
Now, stop and think about that for a second.
Anyone who doesn’t believe that they could start a business today, being themselves, playing to their own strengths, and creating value for others, and not make more than $888 in a year should . . . well, those people should really just stop reading about business right now.
Am I saying that you can’t use AdSense to make money online? No. Am I saying that every “system” for striking it rich on the Net — like creating anonymous niche sites that use AdWords ads to draw traffic to affiliate products — is an impossible scam? No.
I’m just saying that the average person is probably going to have better luck building a real business. Meaning:
One that you can stand behind publicly.
One that’s based on helping others in exchange for pay.
One that benefits from being a real, authentic person.
One that matches your best abilities to the needs of others.
This Third Tribe thing? This new internet era of being real and honest and open in business and marketing rather than relying on tricks, games, yellow-highlighted text, and the hard sell? It’s real, folks. And at least for me, using that approach turned my Google earnings into an afterthought.
®
I don't own this text©
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
warnings
Warnings
*If you don't have any content, Google will have to guess what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant.
*Do not click your ads. If Google catches you, they will suspend your account and retain any earnings you might have. However, if you, by mistakes, click your ads for one or two times, Google will keep that earning but rather not to punish you as long as it doesn't happen constantly.
*In early internet days, you may see a site notice asking everyone to click the ads. The day has gone long time ago. If Google detects possible cheating, there is no such thing as presumption of innocence. They assume that you are guilty.
*Google has a lot of restrictions on how the ads have to be displayed. One of the major reasons for account suspension is that webmasters tried to blur the ads and mislead others to think that it's "content". For simplicity, never attempt to use CSS to hide Google's logo unless you're authorized to do it.
*If you don't have any content, Google will have to guess what your page is about. It may guess wrong, and so the ads that it displays may not be relevant.
*Do not click your ads. If Google catches you, they will suspend your account and retain any earnings you might have. However, if you, by mistakes, click your ads for one or two times, Google will keep that earning but rather not to punish you as long as it doesn't happen constantly.
*In early internet days, you may see a site notice asking everyone to click the ads. The day has gone long time ago. If Google detects possible cheating, there is no such thing as presumption of innocence. They assume that you are guilty.
*Google has a lot of restrictions on how the ads have to be displayed. One of the major reasons for account suspension is that webmasters tried to blur the ads and mislead others to think that it's "content". For simplicity, never attempt to use CSS to hide Google's logo unless you're authorized to do it.
Tips for ad-sense
Tips
* Quality is the most important part of any web site. If your site does not contain the content of expected quality the visitor might not come back,
* A great resource for earning money is using traffic driving sites like Flixya. You can sign up for Google Adsense and Flixya, without the costs or time needed to build traffic or your own site.
* Avoid non-English characters on English pages. There is a bug which can cause these pages to show irrelevant French ads.
* Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do say that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags.
Thank you for reading!
* Quality is the most important part of any web site. If your site does not contain the content of expected quality the visitor might not come back,
* A great resource for earning money is using traffic driving sites like Flixya. You can sign up for Google Adsense and Flixya, without the costs or time needed to build traffic or your own site.
* Avoid non-English characters on English pages. There is a bug which can cause these pages to show irrelevant French ads.
* Although Google doesn't release exact details as to how they determine the ads to serve on a given page, they do say that it's the text content of the page that matters, not the meta tags.
Thank you for reading!
Google ad-Sense How to earn money
1
Consider that to earn $1 a day per page, you need, per page…
visitors, 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5c payout.
Or 200 visitors, 10% CTR and an average 5c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 10% CTR, and an average 10c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 5% CTR, and an average 20c payout
2
Consider whether these goals will be possible given your site. While an average 5c payout is likely attainable, 5-10% CTR is often seemed unrealistic in most websites. In the days when Google adsense shows up everywhere, users seem lesser eagar in clicking them. 0.5% CTR is fairly common, 3% is ideal , 5% is bordering on unrealistic goals. Try to create more sites, each attracting some traffic.
3
Be realistic: Forget about the fantasy story you read on internet about earning big money from Google. If you think of making a website and getting to be instant rich, it is likely to disappoint you. Imagine that if you build a small website with 100,000 page views per month with 0.5% CTR and 5c average payout, you will only get US$25 (100,000 x 0.5% x 0.5c). To achieve 100,000 page views a month, you possibly need 500-1000 users. By theory, your website can reach more than billions of internet users in the whole world, but there are also 100 millions of websites competing for users.
4
Start building keyword-rich pages containing well researched, profitable keywords, and get lots of high quality links to your site. For example, if your site is about topics such as debt consolidation, web hosting or asbestos-related cancer, you’ll earn much more per click than if it’s about free things. On the other hand, if you concentrate only on top-paying keywords, you’ll face an awful lot of tough competition. What you want are keywords that are high in demand and low in supply, So do some careful keyword research before you build your pages.
Thank you for reading!
Consider that to earn $1 a day per page, you need, per page…
visitors, 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5c payout.
Or 200 visitors, 10% CTR and an average 5c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 10% CTR, and an average 10c payout.
Or 100 visitors, 5% CTR, and an average 20c payout
2
Consider whether these goals will be possible given your site. While an average 5c payout is likely attainable, 5-10% CTR is often seemed unrealistic in most websites. In the days when Google adsense shows up everywhere, users seem lesser eagar in clicking them. 0.5% CTR is fairly common, 3% is ideal , 5% is bordering on unrealistic goals. Try to create more sites, each attracting some traffic.
3
Be realistic: Forget about the fantasy story you read on internet about earning big money from Google. If you think of making a website and getting to be instant rich, it is likely to disappoint you. Imagine that if you build a small website with 100,000 page views per month with 0.5% CTR and 5c average payout, you will only get US$25 (100,000 x 0.5% x 0.5c). To achieve 100,000 page views a month, you possibly need 500-1000 users. By theory, your website can reach more than billions of internet users in the whole world, but there are also 100 millions of websites competing for users.
4
Start building keyword-rich pages containing well researched, profitable keywords, and get lots of high quality links to your site. For example, if your site is about topics such as debt consolidation, web hosting or asbestos-related cancer, you’ll earn much more per click than if it’s about free things. On the other hand, if you concentrate only on top-paying keywords, you’ll face an awful lot of tough competition. What you want are keywords that are high in demand and low in supply, So do some careful keyword research before you build your pages.
Thank you for reading!
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