Adsense seems like an unviable monetization method for the average SEO'er

[Ranko Jones]

I was getting some tips off indiaphile today and he were discussing how unfeasible adsense is as a full time income unless you are pulling extreme numbers probably on hundreds of sites.

As such there must be much easier monetization methods.

So I don't know why people on here were advising me to have adsense as my recommendation startup monetization method. I suspect they didn't know what they were talking about.

I was rather disappointed by this since I liked the hands off idea of just working on SEO while raking in the money tho some quick calculations shows how unrealistic that is for the pathetic pennies you get from adsense for the effort you'd have to put in.

So why does everyone on here say that is the best one to start with?

I'm thinking clickbank products would be better again now (what warriorforum guys originally advised to me) as they give a decent commission.

Any other more realistic monetization methods welcome.

 

[dragonrage01]

Adsense is pretty good.

 

[Ranko Jones]

Would you care to give your reasoning...?

I was reading around more and there do indeed seem to be higher paying clicks than others- my 1st click was only 11c.

 

[reinie]

Ranko
I hear you on your statement..
I make my income from adsense alone. First of you need to target a bulk amount of easy keywords. Thus, ranking on top should be possible just by making a post or maybe adding a few links pointing to it. Like everyone always says, its a volume game, so i your site gets a lot of visitors from a broaf range of niche related keywords, then adsense is the perfect solution.

If I have a site ranking for a difficult, specific keyword, i would prob also not put adsense on it first of all to be safe since ranking a mfa site on a difficult keyword will draw too much attention, and secondly, cpa or products will be much more profitable on sucj a site.

I

 

[chrisnkay]

I like adsense. I feel like so many clickbank products are junk, and while you can make ore per sale, in the long run with adsense, you can definitely make more per click. You might have to get 100 clicks on a clickbank offer to make a sale while 100 adsense clicks might make you anywhere between $50 and $200 if you know what you are doing.

 

[Ranko Jones]

Hmm, so are you saying ranking for tons and tons of low comp/longtailers might be a better option for adsense? still that mgiht be even worse than high traffic keywords since you would have to do sooo many more to make it worthwhile.

I actually have alot of easy keywords on my list of keywords for my niches however they would only get a few visitors a day which would equal 0 clicks...

I would really like to make adsense work if I could since it seems the most appealing hands off approach as I mentioned I am just pessimistic now since weighing up the stats earlier.

I wouldn't mind if it meant more SEO work for the same reward cos SEO is what I love (vs. 'building a list' and constantly trying to 'hustle' products directly which makes me shudder at the thought of- reminds me of dreaded cold calling albeit they are partly warm- so warm calling).

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

Al of that depends on your niche... I generate about 8K a month from adsense these days and most of my 40 sites are Business, Finance and Employment.

 

[BFHoodn!nja]

Try ranking with images you can do this with free blogs I reckon. One of my site suddently started recieving a really big amount of visitors all day that I did not target. They where all coming from google image results. I then started upgrading my whole site towards the "Picture" macro-niche and its paying of pretty nice. Its about 500-900 Visitors a day just from pictures, using a frame breaker that redirects people to the picture page that translates into a 1-3% conversion rate depending on how much viral stuff there is going on about my niche (Celebrity Niche).

You have to be creative and also go deep with your keyword research.

 

[Ranko Jones]

I like adsense. I feel like so many clickbank products are junk, and while you can make ore per sale, in the long run with adsense, you can definitely make more per click. You might have to get 100 clicks on a clickbank offer to make a sale while 100 adsense clicks might make you anywhere between $50 and $200 if you know what you are doing.

Could you explain the know what you are doing part?

I'm interested in knowing if it is going to be viable for me starting out bearing in mind that I have very little to invest right now (tho alot of time for SEO and the standard programs).

It seems like it could be a possibility if you can get $1+ per clickbut I don't know how regular that is and I'm assuming those are gonna be higher comp the higher they pay per click thus harder.

For future answers from peeps can I hear more the stats side of what makes it viable rather than just 'I like it' .

 

[MKelly]

I have a site with adsense that only has about 20-30 visits per day, but I get around $8-$11 per click from it, I average around 3 clicks a day, but sometimes it goes up to 7-8 clicks per day.

The bottom line is that you don't need a high amount of traffic, you just need to do some clever keyword research.

That particular keyword I found from a personal hobby of mine, I just happened to check out the competition out of curiosity. I found a small gap where I could slide in the market, and slotted into it with my own exact match domain, and some great handwritten pages on the site.

I never use black hat directly on adsense sites purely out of experience, the autoblogs & spam people spit out eventually get caught.

My advice for people starting out would be:

Don't think about what you can promote at first, like adsense, clickbank e.t.c... Before you decide that, find some good keywords and dig deep into keyword research.

Once you have your keywords THEN look for an affiliate program, product e.t.c.. that you could promote, it could be a digital product on Amazon, a book, video game, a dating website.... ANYTHING, if the adsense keyword pays high enough to make it worthwhile, then you could use that.

 

[jb2008]

I think Ranko is talking about the standard micro niche method, you know, find a low competition keyword, build a small site and rank it. For all that work, you will be lucky to get $1 a day. I'm saying this because G is making it harder and harder to rank new domains particularly for high volume keywords. Even what you would consider low competition requires a fair amount of time before G lets you at the top even if you do have more and better links than the rest. I also stay away from adsense because unless you have more than 1 account with different details, it just gives another thing for them to link you by and one day ban your ass. I would much prefer to get into the business of making sales since affiliate programs are widespread, while CPC not so much, adsense being the only one you could possibly make substantial income from.

The only viable method I see (cost and time efficient) is getting mega keyword lists, low competition with EMD ideally available, making a small site around each of those, many sites on one hosting plan (but even domain costs will hurt your profits for so many sites), blasting the crap out of each site with SB and xrumer, blasting your profile links to index them, and then wait 6 months until you get out of the sandbox. Then if you're lucky you will make $1 a day per site in adsense.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

The only viable method I see (cost and time efficient) is getting mega keyword lists, low competition with EMD ideally available, making a small site around each of those, many sites on one hosting plan (but even domain costs will hurt your profits for so many sites), blasting the crap out of each site with SB and xrumer, blasting your profile links to index them, and then wait 6 months until you get out of the sandbox. Then if you're lucky you will make $1 a day per site in adsense.

That is pretty much what I do except I use that mega KW list and build a huge site around them... my backlinking strategy is different than you mention though.

Building one huge site gets you a lot of cross traffic; for instance if someone is searching for breast cancer symptoms and you have a site with a different symptom on each page, your visitor could possibly spend time reading all those pages and thus giving you an opportunity to have them click an ad.

Kind of like making more than one "sales" call on each visitor.

 

[theindiaphile]

Interesting thread, full of great honest advice, with no bs.

BassTracker, 8k a month is ridiculously impressive. A bow in your direction.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

Interesting thread, full of great honest advice, with no bs.

BassTracker, 8k a month is ridiculously impressive. A bow in your direction.

I'll skype a link to one of my latest projects and you'll see how I do it.

The one I am sending you is 8 weeks old, gets 250 uv a day and makes about 80.00 a day from adsense.

 

[mootonandy]

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

 

[mootonandy]

I've been at this for about 4 and a half years... also I would never suggest anyone use only adsense for their income... spread it around. I also use CJ, CB and Amazon.

I started about a year ago. I have recently starting trying to do CB with youtube - ill have 2 c how it goes. Do you reccommend CTR theme by the way?

 

[Ranko Jones]

So does clickbank sound like a better option?

I'm thinking the 'review site' deal might be a middle ground where I can still keep a relatively hands off approach while staying knee deep in my SEO.

Anything but having to build a list as that shit makes me shudder even if it means more SEO work to make up for it- which is the part I love.

There seems to be alot more successful clickbank pushers than adsense- at least starting out. Adsense seem like the badboy you go into once you are long in the tooth in this game and you can just do it as a hobby once you can funnel large investments into your projects; that's the impression I get anyhow.

 

[StiflersMom]

@Ranko ... I totally understand your concerns.

I just recently started to throw a handful of MFA sites into the mix. Coming from pure affiliate marketing (always pushing a specific product) I was used to at least 1 signup/conversion for about 200 visitors averaging like $30-$80 ... assuming a CTR of ~15%.

My MFA sites are starting to rank for some "ok" terms now and I'm seeing between 30 and 100 uniques a day per domain now from G. But at a CTR of ~2% I'm pulling in just a little over $1 per day on average for all 3 sites combined!

Considering the amount of time I've put into creating content and building backlinks I don't see a big ROI here yetokey:

 

[Ranko Jones]

What is MFA from the context I'm presuming it's adsense?

So stiflersmom would you say, coming form that arena, that affiliate marketing would be a better bet in my position (with no money to invest really and alot of time).

Hmm one signup per 200 that sounds like a doable goal to me. So was this without a list? Please say yes!

Ye see I see how people can complain that $dollar a day isn't shit for adsense ones but if you can do that x200 you could be laughing cos then they are on auto and you can be free and easy to scale up and refine at your leisure. Maybe it isn't that simple. You have to rank for each one for sure but that's why I think it would be more viable when you had more money to invest cos then you could outsource alto of it.

Anyhow tell about the CB track as that has gained my attention again now .