Comments on: Full Time IM – Not Quite What I Hoped

By: Carrie

Carrie — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:48:30 +0000

Hi Joseph,

I applied for eBay awhile back and was turned down so I haven’t thought about trying again. I actually used an older, established website so not sure what their reasoning was.

I finally joined CJ and there are some affiliates there that match with my adsense site duds, so I’ll try that route for now. And yes, I am in the USA.

If the sites still aren’t profitable I’ll let the domains expire and move the content to Hubpages or Info Barrel. That’s what I am doing with another site I gave up on. Hate to let decent content go to waste.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 06:06:49 +0000

Carrie, great commenting going on here!

You are with Amazon.com or .co.uk, right? If Adsense is not working after fiddling around with it for while then try out Amazon products?

Personally, my own favorite is eBay. Its much tougher to join their affiliate scheme now than ever before, but it can be worth making the effort for sure – a dud adsense site can be a hot eBay products site in short shrift!

Regards
Joseph

By: Carrie

Carrie — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:28:55 +0000

Hi Kelly,

The ~$200 per month comes from one medium size personal site I set up many years ago plus a smaller niche site plus eHow articles. My total number of sites is in flux right now as I am planning to build some new ones and ditch some older ones which just aren’t doing much.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:35:05 +0000

Hi Carrie,
I am new to the site-I just came across your site, and I have to say I totally agree with Flippa Chick. I have to have a schedule and it is actually taped to my computer screen-if not I would browse blogs and forums all day long!!

I quit my job 3 years ago–good for you I noticed that in one of your posts. I quit mine for content sites not just per say for building Niche sites. I just switch over to sniper sites (well in a couple of weeks I will be )

I was curious how many sites you have-$200 seems pretty good!
-Kelly

By: Yuan

Yuan — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:00:01 +0000

What is missing in your Adsense business is: high CPC (should be $0.25+), and high CTR (should be at least 10% to 20%), with this two factors in place, you sites can be profitable with very little traffic (e.g. 200 uv / mo).

By: Carrie

Carrie — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:04:14 +0000

Good point, Nat. I probably need to work on driving traffic to inner pages which having more of a buying or urgency type of keyword.

By: nat

nat — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:38:27 +0000

I think it is difficult to anticipate what will be the response of the visitors to your website. I have several adsense-based websites myself, and while they may all have a similar template, some of them show a high click through rate, while others have barely any click for the same number of impressions.

I think the reason is that some niche bring visitors that are only there to learn about the topic . Those people are less likely to click on an add than visitors that are looking for a product, a thing to buy or try.

Making websites is a hit and miss, you just have to keep trying.

By: Hatch

Hatch — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:29:17 +0000

I wouldn’t feel too bad about choosing niches. I’ve been doing this for a year now, and I still occasionally choose a niche that I’m absolutely “sure” will make money, only to watch to flop around with low adsense.

Just keep practicing, you’ll get the hang of it. Eventually you’ll stumble on to a method that works for you, and your income will really start to climb.

By: Carrie

Carrie — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:09:05 +0000

I may have removed the sidebar block when I tried the big rectangle but now I can’t remember. Usually my adsense links match the theme color but I do think I tried another color also. I did the usual things to increase CTR but nothing seem to help.

I won’t do the adsense block under the title. Google is a bit ambiguous about when this is allowed and is not, and if the title is confusing (“cheap widgets on sale”) then that is against their rules. Rather than worry about whether one of my titles is improper, I just don’t mess with it.

I am more conservative than most with adsense. I don’t want to do anything that could potentially risk my account so I play it very safe. I have another site that does get clicks that was set up the same as the one that doesn’t get clicks. I tend to think it is a niche issue although I am sure there are ways I could have done better.

I actually have a smaller site in the same general niche which still has adsense on it. It has gotten at least a couple of clicks, though not many, so I may just tweak that site a bit and see what happens.

Thanks for your advice!

By: Shelly

Shelly — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:38:51 +0000

Try removing the sidebar adsense. Have just one adsense unit per page, and make it the big rectangle in between the post title and the post body.

What color are your adsense links? The color can make a big difference.

Here’s one of Amy’s sites – hxxp://www.getridofpimples.org/

See how she has the adsense placed between the post title and the post body? This is what you want but I recommend going with different link color, a brighter blue. Changing the post text on your site from black to a dark gray will make your adsense links stand out more and will help with CTR.

I don’t use 3 column themes, the less links on a site the better, I want people to click on the adsense links.