Donna's got great coverage of a WMW post that discusses the problems with the recent gain in notoriety of big AdSense earners (Shoemoney being foremost in my mind).
For two years, I did my time. I never did find a “real” job, and the two years I spent juggling bills and avoiding creditors was not fun. However, I also wasn’t sitting on my butt, watching soap operas all day. I wasn’t making much money, but I was learning HOW to make money, and I was working hard to achieve success.
Eventually, I branched out. I’d learned much more about SEO than I’d ever thought possible, and I began to take on clients. I also began creating websites that didn’t involve writing ColdFusion applications. At that point, I tried every idea that crossed my brain, and trust me, I had a LOT of ideas. The thought was that I’d throw all the ideas at the wall, and whichever ones “stuck” would be the keepers. The rest would die on the vine.
The trial and error system of growing AdSense earnings or growing a business overall is what makes web entrepreneurship such an exciting place to be. At SEOmoz, our business was not always smooth sailing and like Donna, we experienced exceptionally rough times (particularly after the dot-com crash), but we stuck to it, and today, we're able to give something back. I'm looking forward to having even more of that in the future.
Hi Rand,
I am glad you made this a topic. I find it interesting how so many forum groupies seem to know people who have done real well creating Adsense content sites. When asked “how well” they respond by remarkably telling me they all seem to be making the same amount, $250,000 a month!
Folks, yes there are people in this business who could achieve such superb results. But these internet gurus aren’t buying $99 off the shelf Blogger generators. These are people who are in this business doing this kind of work 24/7. These are people who take internet marketing as serious as an architect is about designing a building.
While at SES-NY, I heard countless stories from people who had purchased these tools. I had to tell them that by the time these tools are sold to the general public, they are useless. Think about it for a second, why would someone sell their tools that are making them tons of cash for just a few bucks? Then I would wait for it to hit them... Oh yea.. you got a point.
Sigh…
I hear theres gold up in them thar hills!
Why yes there is, you should buy my Goldalizer! It will tell you exactly where the gold is and even dig it up for you! Just $99 and you’ll be rich rich rich.
Great point! All this "for only $9.99 I'll give you my new book that will guarantee you learn to make a fortune" is a bunch of b.s! I hate it all. And anyone who makes these offers I ignore and laugh at.
This isn't easy ground to sit on. I've been building a half adsense site on a topic of interest, but the trouble is that it only generates about .5 a click. The smart ones use the traffic estimator and the Google CPC tool to figure out what keywords sell. Even Ken Giddens only really made about 600 to 800 in adsense and he was good at it. The rest came from affiliate sales.
For me the idea is to start with Adsense (or similar) and then as the site builds, move over to custom ads for businesses that want to advertise directly. It should be more proffitable and reduces the reliance on third parties. Of course it also takes more work to manage the program. I have a site that I'm launching in the next couple weeks that has this approach built into the model. We'll see how it goes.
There's something I don't like about the AdSense model, though. It doesn't feel "safe" to me for long term earnings. I get the distinct impression that a "Google collapse" or an ad confidence meltdown would destroy many of these businesses.
If I were to start fresh and build for the long term, I'd want a site where I knew the revenue couldn't be affected by "ad blinders" or fluctuations in that market.
Thanks for the link Rand. I'm glad too you're bringing attention to this topic. Not a day goes by when someone doesn't ask me for the magic formula to AdSense or SEO that will turn their $50 template site into a million dollar business overnight. If I or anyone else could do that we would and not be consulting for a living.
There always have been and always will be people looking for get rich quick schemes. Some will even make those millions, usually the ones who came up with a unique idea. Most though won't.
I think money can certainly be made with AdSense or any other kind of business. I thinking however the amount of money usually correlates directly with how much one is willing to put into the business whether it's time, money, or both.
I feel the same way, Rand.
I'm thinking, if one was to build for an advertising-based model, that the ads would have to be *so* helpful and *so* on-target that the public utilized them. It would also, of course, be most helpful if the site gained enough exposure/prominence that advertisers came to you ... which means you wouldn't be depending solely upon Adsense and its brothers.