'Gray Googlers' strike gold

atldaredevil · #1 (**permalink**) 10-31-2007, 11:49 PM

Greetings,

I read this article in USA Toaday and was inspired http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallb...-adsense_N.htm

Can you adsense really make you 120k a year off a handyman website that looks like a total rookie designed it? Only in America.

Regards,

Tim

Bingo · #2 (**permalink**) 11-01-2007, 02:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by atldaredevil

Can you adsense really make you 120k a year off a handyman website that looks like a total rookie designed it?

Its very possible which is why most of us are working on it.

TechieGuy · #3 (**permalink**) 11-01-2007, 06:11 AM

He obviously found awinning formula with that site. There wasn't anything fancy about it, but he must provide the necessary information people are looking for.

lisa · #4 (**permalink**) 11-01-2007, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TechieGuy

He obviously found awinning formula with that site. There wasn't anything fancy about it, but he must provide the necessary information people are looking for.

Bingo! And that's what it's all about. Design is important from an aesthetic standpoint, but when it comes down to it, many people use the web to search for info. And if you can provide the kind of advice people are looking for, you can strike gold.

Google doesn't care about what your design looks like. They care if people are linking to your site and if they are... it must mean you are providing useful info.

lisa · #5 (**permalink**) 11-01-2007, 12:55 PM

I just went back to read some of the comments from the article. Geez people are harsh. One guy says you need a million hits before you make $1,000 in AdSense. Well thank goodness that's not the case or I would have quit a long time ago! LOL

Bingo · #6 (**permalink**) 11-01-2007, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisa

One guy says you need a million hits before you make $1,000 in AdSense.

If there was any truth in that I wouldn't be wasting my time right now. Either he was banned from Adsense or just couldn't put the effort into the work.

lisa · #7 (**permalink**) 11-01-2007, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavin

Either he was banned from Adsense or just couldn't put the effort into the work.

I would vote "yes" to both of those.

atldaredevil · #8 (**permalink**) 11-02-2007, 02:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisa

I would vote "yes" to both of those.

Thank you all so much for the feedback. That USATODAY article got me thinking so I began surfing the web. That was how I found this site. I love how friendly, informative, and smart you all are. I have some ideas for some sites I want to create and look forward to learning from you all.

lisa · #9 (**permalink**) 11-02-2007, 11:40 AM

That's great, just post your ideas in the "Brainstorming" forum here and we'll all be happy to provide you with suggestions.

webdev · #10 (**permalink**) 11-02-2007, 09:02 PM

Quote:

One guy says you need a million hits before you make $1,000 in AdSense. Well thank goodness that's not the case or I would have quit a long time ago! LOL

Yep that is untrue. But to reach those fugures, you need loots of traffic and high click per earnings.

I did some calculations with my stats and what i have been hearing from other people that the average click per earning is usually between $.10 - $.30. So, to earn $100,000 a year, you need 1 million hits averaging at $.10 a click.

The average ctr is usually between 1-2% (mine is between that). So, to get 1 million hits a year, you need 100 million pageviews. In my opinion that might be hard to achieve for even any top niche content site (unless you're a big news site like bbc)

Now, i personally think this guy had way much higher CTR than 1%-2% and way high click per earning than $.10 to reach those numbers.

What do you guys think?

ssmorgan · #11 (**permalink**) 11-03-2007, 02:16 AM

You bring up a mathematically interesting issue, webdev...

I remember that the first half of this year, I was somewhat aggressively (but legally) experimenting with Adsense. But since I never really focused on Adense income alone, I never really paid much attention to the stats.

Out of curiosity I went back to my old Adsense data and to my surprise, between January 2007 and June 2007, my CTR was 9.08% (several days my CTR was 20+%) and average earning per click is $0.45

Working with my stats, this guy would need 6100 page views per day (which is still a lot of traffic, but doable). Of course, he may have been getting much higher CTR and earning per click, and eCPM, which would make his earning very reasonable.

Among other things, I think ad placement significantly affects CTR... and the value of the keywords in page that trigger the ads can have a huge impact on the earning per click. So if his formula maximized both of these parameters, then his numbers/earnings may be very reasonable.

webdev · #12 (**permalink**) 11-03-2007, 11:00 AM

Quote:

Out of curiosity I went back to my old Adsense data and to my surprise, between January 2007 and June 2007, my CTR was 9.08% (several days my CTR was 20+%) and average earning per click is $0.45

Holy molly! I would kill to have that kind of CTR. Sreif, you wanna share what niche you're in...hehehhe. just kidding

Quote:

Working with my stats, this guy would need 6100 page views per day (which is still a lot of traffic, but doable).

6100 is quite doable. For example, Lisa earns a good money from here sites with these kind of stats. But I'm not quite sure if you can get a good income from any site even with with good traffic as I'm seeing from my site.

With approximately 1000 page views a day, i earn $1-$2 on average. My ctr and earning are really really low with my niche site and I'm not quite sure if its my niche or my site for such low earnings and with those stats I'm beginning to wonder if i should continue with it.

lisa · #13 (**permalink**) 11-03-2007, 03:32 PM

Hey Webdev

I think a lot has to do with your niche. My audience is sort of similar to yours but less experienced and I get about 1-2% CTR.

But my fitness site gets about half as much traffic as my website creation site, but some days the AdSense earnings are higher than 2create because my CTR is like 7%! So if my fitness site ever makes it to 5500 to 6000 visits/day like 2create then that money will be sweet.

So I definitely think sites that cater toward other webmasters tend to yield lower click thrus because our audience is often immune to advertisements and AdSense compared to other niches.

webdev · #14 (**permalink**) 11-03-2007, 05:24 PM

Lisa, I've also noticed that in my niche there are less content ads to serve. Usually i get repetitive ads on the same page and ads that have nothing to with php or web development. Ads like guitar strings, window repair and replacements, toilet repairs, etc...lol

If you type in php tutorials in google you will see no ads. Now, if you type in learn php in google, you will at max of 4 to 5 ads. lol even the word PHP only brings up one ad. The ads in the content network probably are in the same volume.

I think the only way to make money with my PHP site for now is to offer my programming services and do freelancing.

Maybe one day when i start to get 1000000 pageviews a month, i can have a real shot at making any decent with adsense and private advertising but for now i'm gonna keep adding tutorials to the site (i've already come this far) and keep reading on affiliate marketing to look for other methods or possibly niches to test and try out.

lisa · #15 (**permalink**) 11-03-2007, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by webdev

Lisa, I've also noticed that in my niche there are less content ads to serve. Usually i get repetitive ads on the same page and ads that have nothing to with php or web development. Ads like guitar strings, window repair and replacements, toilet repairs, etc...lol

Oh wow! Yeah you do have it much tougher. I will say that my ads are generally pretty well targeted. Never seen any toilets on my site. LOL

Your niche is pretty tough, eh? Good lesson for all of us, I guess. But it's all about trying and learning. That's how you learn what works and what doesn't. But I do think you could do great with freelancing. Lots of folks want things done and don't want to learn how to program so that could definitely work.

And as you said, just keeping working on your good content and the hits will come in and drive that AdSense revenue up. I just saw where you wrote you get 1,000 hits per day. That's great! One thing's for sure, you seem to be making steady progress. It took me like 2 years to get to that level with my site.

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