Planning Ahead for Link Building

"Before I start a site I will have a look at the whole neighbourhood around that subject. Sooner or later I will stumble across 'nests' of quality sites adjacent to my proposed space. Quality means in this sense that they may be quality in the way that they link out, or the way that they are linked to by an authority site, or in some other way.

Before I even start on the site, I will consider how to integrate a honeypot for those particular sites that might encourage them to link to me. Once my site is active, I will try to make them aware of that section." stever

Mine your Logs

"Analyzing 1-hop queries (visitor arrived via Google, looked at only the landing page, and left), finding clusters of terms that the landing page simply could not have satisfied well, building content to address those queries, redesigning the original page to link conveniently and naturally to the new content, and then letting the stats tell me whether I successfully created a bunch of 2-hop queries or not.

If I can analyze the logs to arrive at a per-page theory about incoming visitor needs, and then prove that theory by building content and confirming revised visitor behavior, then I'm pretty sure I'm building a valuable information source -- even if it's only recognized by individual visitors going after specific queries." ronburk

Build Value

"Get inbound links from Universities, *.edu websites." fischermx

Love your Site

"So make a site('s) and love it like your child , feed it and you will see when your child grows it will be a goldmine for you." Paki_no1

Tight Niche, High CTR

"I have noticed a lot of small things that can have a huge effect on the CTR. As someone mentioned earlier, niche pages work best - this means breaking down your hierarchy into more categories if needed (and possible)" CainIV

Increase CTR using Tightly Focused Pages

"For my 2� worth of opinion, I'd add that the difference is often how tightly focused each page you put up is. Look, your goal - beyond getting lots of traffic - is to have ads shown on your pages that are truly targeted to your topic on each individual page. Looking around the web, I see lots of pages with very generic AS ads showing. I'd bet a lot that they're the ones getting 1% or less CTR. If someone got to your site from a search engine where they searched for 'red plastic widgets' and your page is about all kinds of widgets, sure, a few will probably click your AS ads. But imagine how many more would click them if your page was all about red plastic widgets (and nothing else). They'll either buy from you, hit the back button, or click one of your highly targeted AS ads that should also be about that type of widget.

So my advice (as someone who averages well over 25% CTR on 11 sites) is to post pages that are extremely focused on one product, idea, or service. Don't stray. If you're tempted to transition into a related topic, put up another page about it! I'll bet your CTR shoots way up if you're stuck in the 1%-3% range right now." Swebbie

Traffic from Forums

"... most of mine [traffic] comes from forums etc and other sites linking to me because I have some very useful unique content on a bunch of sites / subjects. And I get 100 dollars a day average, over two years with only 1200 uniques, or 3.5k page views daily.

Good useful niche unique content pays." Nitrous

Useful Unique Content

"Average 3300 daily page views, and 3000 dollars monthly.

For two years.

Secret is GENUINE useful unique content on a few different subject niche / hobby sites. And I seldom add or update anything.
And google search hates me." Nitrous

Ad Placement

"on the few micro sites I am running (just start up things - special interests of mine) where I have placed the ads in the left hand column, the CTR and CPM have been huge - sometimes 10 times or more my usual placements of leaderboard or right hand column - this seems to me to be the hottest spot, other than stuff right in the middle of the page or 'content'." webpro00801

Test, test

"biggest pearl of wisdom i can give is the following. ...

test, test and test some more.

the google adsense hot spots are spot on .. just keep testing." OddDog

Paid Advertising

"I am currently making more off of paid and offline advertising than I do with free search result placement. Sometimes with some good serps, I make more that way. But my point is if search engines die, my business will still be there and flourishing.
Without search engines, I am making just below 1,000 a day profit.

When I see those update threads I just want to cringe.... Most people put their eggs in one basket and have no one but themselves to blame for that.

Its the free search engine traffic that got me started. But I did not let it stop there. I poured a lot of that back into paid online advertising and offline advertising.

I guess the bottom line, is to make your three year plan be as if free traffic is the thing of the past. That would be my advice.

I am doing so well in affiliate marketing that I am about to jump to the other side of the fence and actually have affiliates working for me.

Bottom line: DIVERSIFY Sites and Advertising Sources." JaySmith

Diversify

"As long as you diversify your sites AND your advertising sources, I can only see the money growing. You will never hear me cry in any of the SE update threads... The main reason I won't is that I treat those results as gravy." JaySmith

Watch your Back

"Continue to keep one, two or three steps ahead of your competition at all times. Ride new trends, even create some new trends. Always look back in the rear view mirror because there will always be someone there to take over your spot as 'hub' of whatever." davewray

Content with Personality

"Sites that put a unique spin on a topic or add personality tend to attract more repeat visitors." Margarita

Become a Niche Authority

"I fell into my niche by accident. I'm at the top of the serps not by SEO, but by simply having worked on my content, become an authority in my niche and generated a lot of regular traffic. In my case there is no shortage of quality advertisers willing to bid to be on my site. I'm also an adwords avertiser so I know what the keyword normally costs, and I'm getting WAY more than that!" david_uk

Niche is Evergreen

"It's my opinion that a carefully crafted niche site can run almost on autopilot, with very little, if any updating, and remain profitable for years." ken_b

A Content Source

"People email me info and I add it to my site. Works great, draws a bunch of traffic, isn't really that much work. Pays modestly well." ken_b

Write Articles on the Fringes

"But there may well be some aspects of your topic that are seldom discussed, or even thought about. Stuff on the fringes, stuff you might not see on every other site in your category.

Now go look at your site, are all those aspects you thought up there?

Now sit down and write, or rewrite, some relevant pages." ken_b

Good Keywords

" use your imagination.

What if you were an advertiser, for what kind of clicks would you be prepared to pay money?

The answer is that advertisors are likely to pay more money for clicks from people that are ready to order their products. People that are ready to order products are people that just have been informed properly by a quality content website and are satisfied by the information they received. So my advice would be to write an online article about something you are a real expert on. Really try to write the best article on the entire Internet about this topic. Be specific and targeted. The more you focus on very specific details, the better. In the meanwhile, be sure there are enough advertisers related to this topic.

If your article is ready, publish it and paste your adsense-code. You might find your high paying keyword this way. It worked for me..." humblebeginnings

Reinvesting AdSense

"All my money gets put back out to writers so they can write me more interesting articles." rj87uk

Motivation

"My cheques usually go straight in the bank.

I have just got back from a holiday to Greece, Italy, Switzerland and Dubai. I had a great time thanks to Adsense.

I think it was even better that I was making money while I swam, baked and had fun in the Mediterranean sun ;)" bts111

Reinvesting AdSense Money

" don't think this is quite what you mean, but my AS money goes on more and better hosting, development time, and new (photography) equipment to let my site(s) grow.

Through sound investment, all of these are really quite fun and things that I would continue to do more slowly as a public service and for fun if AS wasn't there." DamonHD

Defeat Smart Pricing

"Product reviews are another goody." Atomic

Present a New Angle

"You'll need to offer something different - an 'angle' in order to get noticed. When we started our site more than 5 years ago, we had a lot of content and features that weren't available anywhere else. So we got noticed, and linked to. You'll need to find something that we (and our competitors) aren't doing, if you want to make an impact.

We've got a small experimental site in another niche altogether (non travel) that earns more than 10 times as much per page view as our UK Travel site. As a result, we're currently diversifying into other things - we're finding niches that seem to have better earnings potential, and less competition.

Better to dominate a small area - and then branch out, than to fail to get noticed in a more general area." 7_Driver

Let Users Submit your Content

"My site (or network of sites) is a typical example of database driven, user submitted information. The key is to arrange the info submitted by users so others can easily find what they are looking for. It is not easy and certainly not just a few hours of work / day, it is an entire process, our job actually consists in programming, organizing, categorizing, validating and further optimizing the info submitted by users (members)." zoltan

Database Driven Sites!

"mine was a fluke, I had an 'in' in a specific industry, put the site online and it hit a nerve and took off like a rocket. Then it evolved over 7 years and I realized people weren't getting what they wanted easily just like they don't on the search engines so I started mining the data for them with one click search entries into the database and the search engine picked up on all these links and it just keeps escalating.

It all starts with a SUBMIT form tied to a database, my visitors actually built the database and I'm just the programmer. If you can find a way to get people interested enough to submit data to your site, you're half way to a database driven site as getting other people to do your work for you is the hard part." incrediBILL

Database Driven Site

"My site is actually a database displayed as a directory but I can organize and re-organize all my data into useful lists for my visitors based on narrowing the content displaying to more specific topics. I've pre-sifted thru most of the useful keywords and search terms and made 1 link searches so visitors can get very specific things with a single click.

Although my site may be about 'widgets' you can also find lists of 'red widgets' or 'alabama widgets' or 'new york widget repair' and on and on and on. Gives me a multitude of entry points into the search engine and everyone finds just what they want in a few clicks." incrediBILL

Enjoying Feedback Games

"The point is not that you need the most complex support system in the world, but that if you find ways to construct feedback systems for your writing, you'll likely find the task of writing more enjoyable, even for areas that are not implicitly interesting to you." ronburk

Enjoying Feedback Games

"The point is not that you need the most complex support system in the world, but that if you find ways to construct feedback systems for your writing, you'll likely find the task of writing more enjoyable, even for areas that are not implicitly interesting to you." ronburk

Make Work More Enjoyable

" Dividing the work to be done in different ways can have large effects on its enjoyability (e.g., 'mornings I do research and define work items, afternoons I build content to check off work items, and the last half-hour of the day is studying traffic trends.')." ronburk

Fill up the Keyword Space

"you can take boring topic A and map out an initial universe of a couple of hundred search terms, and begin defining work items for each of these terms (e.g., creation of new pages, enhancement of existing pages). Instead of 'I have to write about X', turn it into the construction of detailed strategy and tactics for building content that takes over the complex keyword space (much of it lying undiscovered, initially) that topic X represents." ronburk

Write Interesting Content

" basic curiosity about other human beings can translate into an interest in the wide variety of things that they inexplicably are drawn to." ronburk

Write Interesting Content

" basic curiosity about other human beings can translate into an interest in the wide variety of things that they inexplicably are drawn to." ronburk

Repackage Content by Restructuring

", you may be able to structure the boring material in a unique way, or spend more time devising graphical aids." ronburk

Write on Topics New to You

"Writing about a different topic could be unpleasant because it's unfamiliar, and it's more enjoyable to stick to an area where you already have considerable expertise. One approach to simply be aware of that problem and structure your work as a learning project. For example, when you are learning a new topic, you are in a unique position that experts in the field have lost -- you understand exactly what things newcomers are likely to find confusing and misleading. You're in a great position to write tutorials and introductions and 'how I learned about X' pieces.

In effect, for any unfamilar topic area, you are already an expert at one aspect of that topic: the problem of learning that topic. This can help reduce the challenge of tackling new subjects to enjoyable levels." ronburk

Build Stability

"For me, this is effort done largely instead of things other webmasters are doing, not in addition to. Want to spend time running a link-building campaign? I would rather form relationships with advertisers that result in very relevant one-way inbound links from what Google will likely classify as authority sites for some useful keywords. Want to spend time doing keyword value analysis? I would rather spend time analyzing which advertisers are spending the bucks and pick my keywords up right from them.

Why would I rather spend my time on this approach than the activities most commonly discussed in this forum? Because of my belief that it's exactly what the Smart Pricing system is telling me to do, and will give me more AdSense dollars for the same amount of traffic.

I think Google has been pretty clear about what behavior they're going to reward, so since I'm not smart enough to keep trying to game every new tweak in their algorithms, I would rather just work on giving them what they want. In the case of AdSense dollars, it seems clear to me that they want traffic that converts well for advertisers. In my experience with paper-based publishing, it was awfully hard to figure out what converts well for advertisers without spending some time focussing on, well, advertisers. I see no reason why AdSense should be any different in this regard." ronburk

Adsense Alternatives

"If you don't think you can build the software to display text ads or process the transactions yourself then AdBrite does it for 25% of the loot, but I do it all myself and just pay the $20/mo for the payment processing service." incrediBILL

Serve Advertisers

"The game of serving advertisers is what is going to increasingly separate the winners from the losers in AdSense. The losers are going to get the advertisers who aren't smart enough to figure out how to get the best ROI, and who are paying the least amount of money for clicks. The winners are going to become intimate partners with smart, good-paying advertisers (sometimes without their knowledge!), and are going to be in the camp of folks who notice their earnings and earnings per click going up." ronburk

Build More Sites

"I currently run 10 sites, with #11 in the building process and not indexed yet. I've paid a few writers to write quality articles built around relevant keywords to populate the pages for each site, and I have written many more myself. It's a lot of work, but honestly, it's also a learning process. I feel like I've gone to school on many of the site topics. That's what I was getting at before: don't be afraid to get in there and research a topic, then build a site about it. Time consuming? Sure, but it doesn't have to be that big of a deal. Learn as you go. I'll focus all my time on a new site for a couple of weeks, doing basically nothing else. When I have the skeleton of that site set up, it's just a matter of filling in pages, which I do a bit at a time over a couple of months, as I'm working on my other sites as well.

Remember: most of the people looking for what your site is about are not experts either. I can't tell you how often I get emails from different people thanking me for giving them very basic (but to them, important) information on one of my sites. I think too many webmasters get caught up in thinking their site has to be the end-all be-all, the final word on this or that topic. C'mon, it's a big web, right? Don't try to be everything to everyone, unless that's what you want (and there's nothing wrong with that). Just don't think that you have to be some kind of expert on a topic to build a site about it. I think THAT is what scares too many people off and prevents them from expanding their businesses into other topics.

How did experts attain that status? Someone taught them. When you do research on a site topic, you're learning from someone else. Same thing as the experts - only you're not devoting so much time to get to the expert level. You're just packaging what you've learned and (hopefully) imparting it to others who find your site from a search engine. I remember the first site I built about something I didn't know a thing about beforehand. I was afraid it would be too simple - that people finding the site would not gain anything from it. I was wrong. Trust me, even if you do a little bit of research on the topic, what you then impart will be of major help to someone who knows nothing about it. I know because I got lots of comments about that first "know nothing" site, and most of them were 'thank you' emails from someone who took away something useful from my site. That's very gratifying, and from then on I was unafraid to build sites on topics I knew little or nothing about. Just do it!

Finally, I'll say that I think I'm reaching my limits for a one-man operation. I think about 10-12 sites will be my personal limit. At that point, I'll invest more of the profits into hiring writers and maybe a webmaster to handle the time consuming aspects of running it all. Having said that, I'm sure many others can handle twice as many sites, and some probably can't handle half as many. That's another part of the learning process - you learn your limits. Just don't let the fact that you know little or nothing about something stop you. I feel certain that it does stop too many folks who don't give themselves nearly enough credit." Swebbie

Grow your Revenue Base

"There's a lot to be said for doing something well and carving out a reputation as an authority in your niche. For one thing, you'll have an opportunity to 'monetize' your content in a variety of ways--not just from AdSense. And if your content is 'evergreen,' your revenue base will grow (thereby increasing your income) month after month, year after year.

In a nutshell: There's a lot more to publishing than the Web equivalent of those weekly throwaway ad supplements that arrive on your doorstep or in your mailbox." europeforvisitors

Focus on your Cash Cow

"I have a few sites but I tend to gravitate back to the cash cow as a few updates there tend to generate WAY more revenue then spending a ton of time on the less profitable sites.

I understand the need for diversification but there is also the concept of investing the most where it pays the best, just like in the stock market." incrediBILL

Manage Many Sites

"You just have to take a big gulp and DO IT. Hire writers if you can't or won't take the time to learn enough to write content that will impart useful information. Once you get that first 'know nothing' site out of the way, you'll discover that you've developed a process that you can then repeat. Think Henry Ford and his assembly line. Simple idea that made him a gazillionaire. His IDEA, other people's SWEAT. No different here." Swebbie

Crappy is Short Lived

"In one of the heated discussions we had before on what defines a scraper site, one proponent of scraper sites proudly boasted that he/she is on the way to 7 figure income. The poster admitted that his/her sites are crap. That was a year or so ago.

A few months (or weeks?) ago, I saw a post from the same person saying that he/she now only earns a few hundred dollars or less. The poster said that his/her site took a hit when G cleaned up crappy sites.

Crappy sites = short term
Good sites = long term

Just figure out what you want a year from now. Others may want to make hay while the sun is up and churn out dozens and dozens of crappy sites. If you're for the long haul, though, you'll stick to quality sites" alika

Ideas for New Pages

"Check your logs to see the keywords that visitors are finding you with. You may be surprised with another idea for a page. Start working on another page and add it. Keep adding more pages." Sweet Cognac

Experiment

"and expiriment. That is really what has helped me; expirimenting with different ad layouts, # of ads, placement, colors, etc." uhwebs

Tips

"1- Have good extensive content.
2- Have a high link popularity." moftary

Many Sites

"My best advice is not to give up.

In the early days I could have given up so many times. I stuck with it and now have over 30 sites.

Most importantly, I love what I do and would have done it all for free.

Don't give up!" bts111

Quality First

"I'm with you 100% Freedom, I just launched my second site with that exact philosophy in mind and the traffic is rolling in nicely. I'm also noticing that people are linking to me without me even asking, they just feel that this site is a good resource to offer their visitors." petra

Quality First

"Actually, if you build a great website for the benefit of mankind, the money will follow. It's a good business plan based on the 'better mousetrap' theory. These days, I worry about the quality FIRST, and then the money, because I know if I have quality, the money will work out just fine.

So far, it seems to be working as I am on track to earn $11k this month alone." Freedom

Rare Content

"write on a topic you know about. it will help if there is not much information available on the internet on the topic. you will automatically start getting traffic from SE" caran1

Increasing Earnings

"Mostly it's just a matter of building traffic and growing your site." shiva777

GET Links

"Write 300 words on a topic related to your site's theme. Impart some truly useful information that the other guy's site visitors will like. Put a short author bio at the end, with a link to your site. Offer it to a few webmasters of sites you'd love to have a link from. Give it to them with the condition that they leave your link in place when they post it. Everybody wins. If you get a bite from a webmaster of a site you really really want a link from, offer the content on an exclusive basis. You get one-way links from great sites that are on-topic. And savvy webmasters jump all over that because you're offering something that's truly of value to them." Swebbie

Ask for Links

"The link requests that I am most likely to grant go something like this.

Hi Ken;

I own (business name) business in (city/state). We sell (some VERY related product), our website is blahblah.blah

Could we get a link from your site.

Thanks

name
business name
business address
business phone
business email address

If they're site is VERY related, I usually list it. If they want to link back, that's up to them, I don't ask." ken_b

Diversify

"The important issue is more could be done if you try, and in my eyes any amount of revenue earned ia another revenue stream you have coming in..

Never place all your eggs in one bucket as they say." Seo1

Slashdot Effect

"$99 a day for several days, right after I was Slashdotted." CheeseburgerBrown

Traffic is King

"Traffic is king brother... it's what makes the web go 'round... " wyweb

To Get Traffic

"Assuming that your site has content of intrinsic value ... you should just ...

Submit your site to the ODP, try to get links from quality sites on your topic, and wait for traffic to build via search-engine results and word of mouth." europeforvisitors

Tips

"1- Have good extensive content.
2- Have a high link popularity.
3- Have a 160x600 skyscraper that blends with your content in both position and colours." moftary

Link Low to High Paying Pages

"Turn low-paying keywords into higher-paying keywords by replacing ads with copy that routes the user elsewhere. An example:

/widget.html displays ads that are paying about .03/click, because it's a really broad term that advertisers don't want to pay much for. However, /widget-repair.html displays ads that are paying about .75/click, because advertisers have found that people who actually click on an ad for repairing widgets are likely to turn into significant paying jobs.

So, take the AdSense off of /widget.html. Instead, design your own 'advertising' whose goal is to route the visitor to /widget-repair.html. Links like 'Wondering how you would ever get your new widget fixed?' 'Learn how much it might cost if your widget breaks.' etc.

The attractiveness of this technique depends largely on the ratio between low-paying and high-paying clicks. If the ratio is big, you have little to lose by foregoing ads in favor of trying to route the user to a higher-paying page. Of course, as usual, your ability to write copy that serves the advertiser well and other factors can greatly influence the results.

The more general rule here is to be aware of the likely payout for each page of content you create, and look for opportunities to feed traffic from lower-paying pages to higher-paying pages. If you do this from the viewpoint of getting truly qualified prospects to the high-paying advertisers (as opposed to just looking at the payouts of each page), your results will be better and longer lasting." ronburk

Adsense Placement

"Adsense placement? Horizintal Adlinks at the foot of the page right after the last line of text seem to be doing quite well for me :)" send2paul

Get Traffic First

"Can't let this one pass by. It's all to do with SEO. Get the people to your pages first. Worry about 'heat maps' etc later. I read somwhere that the best thing to so with a website is get it set up - and DON'T put any ads on it to begin with. Let it get 'settled'. Create links. Increase content. Then - place ads - maybe 8 months to a year later." send2paul

Spend your Time on Content

"Don't think too much about AdSense. Don't spend too much time on it. Implement some changes now and then, then relax and forget about it for a while - follow up on changes a few weeks or a month later. Don't spend your time constantly tweaking and changing stuff, that will get you nowhere. If you absolutely need to do something, spend your time adding content or updating your existing content in stead." claus

Sandbox

"new sites don't rank well even if you get everything right. Get everything right and wait 6+ months and it should come together." seodave

Value of Links

"if your site doesn't have enough links it won't rank well" seodave

Needed PageRank Level

"PR4 sites doing really well are rare, PR5 and PR6 is where the action is." seodave

Content People

"a site can be built by a group of people who know and write about something everyday.

Education, skills, imagination (and) team power make it happen.

Also, a skilled writer can turn the dream s/he saw the other night into a 500 page book. The content may come from no other place than your brain cells alone." Alioc

Huge Content Source

"Never underestimate the power of data feeds. I am quite certain that a vast majority of those sites with more than 15.000 pages tap the magical powers of merchant-supplied information." uniqus

Content Source

" you can ... use manufacturer's descriptions of the products as content" Dantol

Strive for Traffic

"And of course you have to strive to continously increase traffic to your site." gfidan

Article Specs

"Articles are the classic revenue generators: well researched, on topic, 500-1000 words, formal ... etc" emodo

Blog Money

"Blogs are definitely worth your time! Just post a simple comment (3-4 sentences is enough) every day or two. The real key is making sure you ping it to the many blog directories so you get the links.

I have a couple of blogs that rank higher for the main kw than my related content sites. The regular updating energizes SE spiders and may even get you higher rankings. I spend no more than 15 mins per day on my blogs, and the payoff is well worth it." Swebbie

Blog Content

"evergreen content
less 'what color scented candle I lit today'
more indepth commmentary" emodo

LOVE your Content

"Before you think about money think about content and LOVE it. That is the secret" blue_eagle

Tips

"Write original content.
Set up a Google Sitemap, even if it's only in .txt.
Pray." fearlessrick

Buy & Optimize Sites

"Once you've worked out the most effective Adsense/Affiliate mix for your niche, keep your eyes open for other sites in the same niche that clearly haven't gone through the same optimization process - then buy them, fix their ads based on your accumulated know-how and watch the $$$ roll in." Edwin

AdSense for Search

"Don't turn your back on Adsense Search. The results it provides are pretty useful, so your visitors will be happy - and it can add meaningfully to your bottom line." Edwin

Affiliate Valuable Pages

"Use the channels to mine for your most valuable traffic, then go looking for affiliate programs on those topics. One particular page of my site only got a few thousand views a month and I paid it no heed at all - until I found what a click was worth! Now the affiliate ad I've set up on that page is delivering a sustained $200 CPM." Edwin

Pack it with Useful Content

"Serve the user. If your site has intrinsic value, users will come back, and you'll earn far more than you would from a single visit. (You'll also benefit from word of mouth and unsolicited links from other sites.)'

Absolutely. If the content is genuinely useful, it will be found by users. And if a site is packed with useful content, the probability of its failure over the long haul should be meager." ownerrim

Repeat Visitors

"Quality content. Give a reason for people to come back to your site." linuxguy

Add Value, do not Fool

"do try to move away from the 'fool them' type of thinking to the 'add value for them' one, it will profit you in the end." abbeyvet

Value Sites

"... about maximizing profits from a website.

Google says 'Thou shall not create a site for the purpose of displaying AdSense'. I have been following this rule, but not because Google said so. Look at it from this angle - you found a niche, like photography, where hundreds of advertisers will pay you 50 cents to 1.50 a click (we are talking max, not the average). What does it mean? It means that if advertisers are paying you that much, than these visitors are worth the money. So obviously you'd be stupid to create a site for AdSense only. Instead, why not create a resource for photographers and make money on software, e-books (tons of specialty e-books for photographers), drop shippers, paid listings, membership fees and AdSense.

The best way to maximize your AdSense profits is to think beyond AdSense. The real asset is the visitors." DavidDeprice

Operate Multiple Niche Sites

"People have been talking about this for years. Only amateurs create sites specially for AdSense and target them for lead paint, asbestos and other crap. Talk to any person who makes good money from AdSenseand you are likely find out two things - they operate multiple websites and their websites are niche. In fact, there is a simple way to find out if a nich you are targeting is good or not. If you picked the niche correctly, AdSense WILL NOT be your only (and likely not to be major) source of revenue. You'll be able to make money through affiliate sales, drop shippers, referrer fees, etc - depends on the industry." DavidDeprice

Find a Good Niche

"but find a niche that would have a number of keywords that pay 50 cents to 1.50 or above.

The fact is that there are hundreds of niches like that - many had great success with photography and DVD. But you have no know what you are doing - for instance - digital cameras are one thing and Photoshop are another. Also different brands of digital cameras pay differently. What you are looking for is to find a niche that would have subniches and would guarantee that there is large enough pool of advertisers so your website will bring in money for years to come.

For instance (real world example) - photography is excellent niche. In it, there are other subniches that pay well - digital cameras, photo equipment,Photoshop (and other software), image recovery, red eye removal (that one isn't very profitable), wedding photography ... There are hundreds of advertisers, so you'll never go broke and are likely to average 20 - 30 cents a click, provided you attract quality audience." DavidDeprice

An Article a Day

"long ago, i also tried something like this. i tried a few pages on a few very high paying keywords that. my average click value was not more than 3 cents ever.

then i prefered to stick to my niche with click valie of 10 to 15 cents ,writing one article a day.

running after high paying keywords doesnt make long term sense.

only if you are highly knowledgable about the 'high value word' feild, make a site focused on that.. write hundreds of articles on that.. you shall see very high value epc. and u may get ur 82 dollars also.

No shortcuts apply here in long run." Sobriquet

Pre-Content SEO

"Don't spin your wheels when adding new content. Do some research and find out which keywords that are related to your site topic actually get searched for a fair number of times at the major SE's. The old saying 'I work smarter, not harder' applies in spades here. You'll spend roughly the same amount of time writing each new page of content, so it only makes sense to do so with keywords that have a good chance of bringing your traffic." Swebbie

Buzz Effect

"I personally never cared what keywords get searched for at the major SE's. My advice is: Don't rely on SE's and create a website that people will talk about." John Carpenter

"Thats the ticket!" l3vi

More Fresh Content

"write your stuff EVERY DAY, grow EVERYDAY, and you will make more money than 10k a month" jimilives

SEO Takes Time

"Basic seo is the key, most over look it and look for fast easy tricks. Its a long road, great stuff does not come from over night, and is not easy." l3vi

Pages + SEO = Traffic

"I'm getting over a million page views per month and have never spent a dime on advertizing. I do have 1,400+ pages though. But 'basic seo' is what has driven the page views." ken_b

Pure SEO

"Believe it or not, many webmasters here have managed to get their websites on top of the search engines in various keywords without spending a dime to achieve million or so pageviews.

We don't do PPC ever; we don't buy text links on other websites but we are well placed in not one but hundreds of well-trafficked keywords. Just plain white hat SEO (heck, we don't even have H1 or whatever on our website yet we are doing extremely well on the search engines). Word of mouth, longevity of the site, quality of the site that makes other people link to you without you asking them are some of the factors that can help a website win via pure basic SEO.

It CAN be done. ... And many Adsense publishers are doing just that." alika

Link Building

"Since you are after highly relevant links I am going to assume you are in the game for the long haul with your website. Best advice I can give you is create content for your site that will naturally attract industry links." Justilien

Starting is Harder

"The biggest knowledge I can empart is that getting from $1-$20 is much harder than getting from $20-$100" emodo!

$60K/month

"there are people making more than $2000 a day" Zygoot

Buy Sites

"Yipee, this morning i have just for the first time broken through the 10K barrier! what a kick it gives you. I'll be smiling through each hour of this day. last month was just below 9K.
I have a portfolio of about 10 sites covering many subjects. Traffic for the total is 2 million page views. Nothing tricky, all above board. Just hard sweat and long hours at the keyboard. My traffic became so heavy for my multi-domain hosting account that

I have moved over to my own server which is administrated for a low fee by a superb hosting company. My bandwidth useage is now around 130 Gig per month.

My advice is that as soon as you can afford to, leave your employment and do this for your living. Buy established domains from sedo that are under- optimized, do your SEO on them, keep link building, keep experimenting, and see the Adsense income steadily build up." somerset

Buy Sites

"The way I see it is that the easiest by far way to generate significant revenue from adsense, is to simply buy established websites that have been around a while and have a history of traffic. Place adsense on them if it is not already there, and away we go.

Scratch building websites or pages is not in my view the way to go.

So in summary my look on this subject is to establish a portfolio of established websites, covering just about any topic, the topic does not matter as long as it is not violating the TOS. By doing this it is perfectly possible to have a composite impression rate of 1 million impressions a day, if not a lot more than that ,and if one gets say 2% clickthrough at say even 5 cents a go, then that is a significant income with very little ongoing overhead." James

Good Money

"I do make around $4500 each month from just a SINGLE site that is currently hosted just for $4.95 per month. Homepage not in cache of G at this moment of writing. Incredible, but real." GuluGulu

The Long Road

"I so much agree, back in the day when I was a newbie I counted by days by dollars and hoped that I ended the month with 50 more then I had before. Now of days I count in the 6-10k growth a month, I expect it, I want it, its all I think about while others spend their time mucking around wondering how to get it cheap and easy.

You can do is the sneaky way and try to run faster and faster till you lose, or you can take the long road and make a site like no one else has ever done before!" l3vi

Visualize

"This game starts in the mind. If you can't imagine that kind of growth I guarantee - guarantee! - you won't get it.

Once you start seeing how this is possible, then you start imagining what you need to do to get there... and away you go down the road." Undead Hunter

Work & Earn

"A 100 clicks a day? How about a thousand? Three thousand? Easy. be nice and good and honest and hardworking and reading WW and thats all you need.

Not one trick, not one borderline experiment - plain, clean content and basic SEO." wanderingmind

Planning

"Doing the math really worked for me! Knowing how much I wanted to make, finding the amount of the average click, then figuring out what I had to do to generate enough quality traffic/clicks to reach the goal. Piece of Cake (but a lot of work...not for the weak)" TammyJo

$80K/month

"A Good site in a nice market can easly make 80k a month if you know what your doing and are good with SEO." l3vi

Returning Visitors

"Give your users a reason to come back and you should make a lot more money then you would by just adding more content." markus007

Display High CTR Ads First

"More blocks on the page actually works to your advantage. The key is in understanding the way that google serve ads:-

They serve the highest paying ads first.

Understanding that is critical to making good money on the AdSense program.

You want your highest CTR channel ads in your HTML code first.

Having three blocks on each page becomes extremely valuable when you've adapated your page layouts to cater for that.

Look at your page code and see which blocks are being requested first. Redesign your pages to ensure that the highest CTR positions are requesting ads from the server first in the page code." trillianjedi

Experiment with Low Sites

"Experiment with sites you don't have much other use for. Apply learnings to future sites." Sierra_Dad

Static URLs for Dynamic Pages

"Use good title and description tags, plus Urls that look static even on a dynamic site. Helpful not just for Adsense, but to get search engine traffic as well." Sierra_Dad

Targeted Articles & Ads

"It really helps if your article is targeted and the ads shown are what your visitors are looking for." Atomic

Sequential Content

"Create sequentially related content spanning multiple related pages and encourage visitor flow." justgowithit

Format Content Neatly

"Use proper grammar and spelling so that your articles are professional. Use bullet points and bold headings for sections." Atomic

Traffic Stats, Focused Articles

" Watch your server logs - I have noticed that sometimes I will just mention something in an article for one sentence that brings in a lot of visitors so I go and write an entire article on that subject. The results have been stellar. You've been given a big hint that people are interested in this and if you ignore it you are missing a big opportunity. I have more than a few articles that have been linked to all over the web because they are almost the only decent material on this subject.

Write content that is as specific as possible. Don't write an article that is super long unless it is necessary. If you can break it up if it seems logical to do so." Atomic

Ad Targetting & SEO go Together

"Think of AdSense as somewhat of a window into the soul of the search engine and fixing the targetting on AdSense will have SEO benefits as well. If your AdSense ads are completely off target your SERPs can't be as good as you think either.

<title> </title> Fix your spider food, <h1> </h1><h2> content etc. to highlight the page content properly and reinforce the right keywords and not only will you fix AdSense targetting but you will most likey improve your SERPs." incrediBILL

Static Names for Dynamic Pages

"If you have a site generating dynamic pages then you should issue a unique page name for every page displayed if possible." incrediBILL

Write about Searched for Topics

"Write about things people are actively searching for. This should be obvious, but so many sites seem to forget." arrowman

Use Channels

"Use channels to analyze. My best performing pages do 100 times better than the worst. Know where to spend your time." arrowman

Split Long Pages

"split long pages into several smaller pages with one ad block on each page. Optimize for slightly different keywords (within subject) on pages." sailorjwd

Link to High EPC Pages

"remove adsense from low EPC pages. ...

advertise your high EPC pages with link on the low epc pages" sailorjwd

Reinvest your Earnings

"Plough your income back into content. Think of every $ you don't spend on pizza now as $10 next year." vincevincevince

Weed Off Low Performing Ads

"Don't be tempted to splatter each and every page on your site with three adsense banners, one adlinks banner and a google search box! Use channels to track every banner, and if it isn't paying then dump it. The resulting increase in CTR will probably feed through to an increase in earnings." david_uk

Widely Test Content

"Also, experiment with different topics for content. I create 30-40 pages of content on a similar topic for a new section. You will make amazing discoveries about your site's revenue potential." wanderingmind

Expand to Well Paying Sub-Topics

"Broaden your view of your content topic(s). Some very well paying, very relevant, subjects are completely missing on many sites.

Often, it isn't any kind of stretch to include some or all of these sub-topics. It's just that they don't pop up often in general discussions, so some (I'd say many) webmasters don't realize the value of commenting on them on their websites." ken_b

Track Keyword Performance

"Use channels to track pages which are triggering different keywords than the bulk of your site. See if you're getting a better EPC for those pages. Make more pages like that." universetoday

Exhaust the Subject when Writing Content

"When it comes to content, take the time write the best article you can. Don't write a bunch of rehashed garbage ... Write something fresh and recent with new sources. Also, don't make the article short just because you don't like to write. Write until you've exhausted the subject. This will help you avoid duplicate content penalities, increase the stickyness to your site, and put out more 3,4,5, etc. keyword combinations that you can pick up traffic on." Freedom

Improving on Revenue

"There are several ways to boost revenue like trying different ad sizes, colors, positions, more ads, less ads, adlinks, ... But don't forget to publish new content and try to get more traffic." Zygoot

Add More Pages

"In terms of numbers of pages ...

1 - You can write pages of content yourself, devoting a few hours every workday to it.

2 - You can farm out the writing chores by using one of the many online freelance writer services (will cost you about $5-$7 per 300-word page in most cases if you don't require a lot of rules to be followed)." Swebbie

Build Pages around Good Keywords

"Lastly, you'll want to build each of your pages around one or two useful keyword phrases (different phrases for each page). This is perhaps the most crucial part. Don't pick keywords randomly - you may end up with very little traffic. Use a service that tells you which keywords get a good number of searches." Swebbie

Diversify for Stability

"But I digress. I'll echo the others here by suggesting that you build more sites and vary the topics to spread out both your appeal and your risk" Swebbie

Unique Content

"Content that is not available ANYWHERE is all thats important, and good sharp tageting with accurate careful seo brings a good 11 to 13 percent click thru as well. And I use one block, one tower per page and take notice of googles heat map, but not to the detriment of your visitors.
...
Be genuine make sites for visitors with a passion, about things you understand and give valuable information and you will eventually do well, with any add company long after google has gone." Nitrous

Funny Advertising for More Traffic

"'how can someone attain a higher level of revenue?'

Get a few thousand visitors a day instead of a few hundred would be a good start.

I find good cheap advertising works, like standing at a busy instersection during rush hour wearing a sandwich billboard with my web site name on it while swinging a cat over my head and screaming like a chicken 'CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK!' at passing cars. It's a real good form of viral marketing and they tend to remember the site name when you show up on the 6 o'clock news being straight-jacketed and dragged off for observation." incrediBILL

Good Content More Traffic

"traffic..
making good content, people will visit and revenue goes up.. there is no other way." webnoob

High Stability Sites

"'Fire and forget' sites.....

1. Lots of content. Lots of keywords/phrases - not just the high paying keywords, (with which you will be in loads of competition for), but also the 'lower paying' keywords/phrases where there is less competition - but a chance of making a more regular income.

2. NO LINKS OUT - absolutely vital. Forget about link building, two-traffic, reciprocal linking etc.

The secret is......

Your content, and your SEO should be soooo good that the only links out are the Google Adsense ads generated by the content of your webpage. If someone wants to know more about what you've written about - they'll have to click on a Google Adsense ad to find out - neat, eh?" send2paul

Comprehensive Coverage

"I think that my secret is that my primary blog -- which generates probably 3/4 of the income -- is about a real niche hobby. While there are lots of sites touching on various aspects of the hobby, mine is the only one that brings it all together. The blog is a year old now, and I've put up 1,500 posts in that time (mostly a few sentences, in the blog style)." jretzer

Buy Sites for Growth

"I've bought sites." homeblock

Forums Performance

"Forum sites generally don't do well with AS" Freedom

Low CTR

"I've noticed that sites with internet-smart visitors make $0.00." neonrider

What are you Obsessed with?

"I was completely obsessed with my website and would do it for free 24/7, with adsense I get to have my cake and eat it too ;) " petra

Content Rich + Time = Popular

"as your website gets older, it will become popular. Make sure you have content rich website. And make sure you are passionate about what you do. Find something that you are obsessed with and make a website about it. I can tell you by heart georaza, that's the surest way to success - be obsessed with what you do. And don't do it for money, because you will be frustrated. Do it for the love of it, and something will come up, and you will succeed. " Mohammad_R

Alternative Sources for Content

"all my articles are in english, there are close to 450 historical articles in my database. Approximately, 25% of all articles were written by me in bosnian language and translated by my students in English language. Other articles are from my students who wrote them and translated them in English" Mohammad_R

Alternative Traffic Sources

"I had close to 33,000 clicks in May and around 600,000 AdSense impressions. My average pay per click comes roughly less than 30 cents or so. Unique visitors 187,000 according to my awstats. Roughly 80% of my traffic referrals comes from 7 major universities (4 American, 2 Canadian, 1 Swedish) who included link to my site in various journal/article references and abstracts on their pages. I assume that most of my traffic is comprised of students." Mohammad_R

Optimize for Humans

"Write your pages for human visitors! Your whole site will benefit. " grandpa

Add Fresh Content

"Jan $6
Feb $30
Mar $40
Apr $55
May $185

The jump between April and May was due to a handful of seasonal pages I put up late in April. That money's about to go away, but it's given me an idea for a new set of seasonal pages with a longer peak. It's also convinced me that I CAN make AdSense work for me--if I get off my butt and put out new pages. Hard work, the key to success" Curiosity

Think Big and Expand

"Fair enough. Think small, stay small.

If you want to make big bucks... you'll need to find ways to expand and you'll need to do it outside your 'niche' if you've already saturated that. " oddsod

Work Hard

"Look at your own stats, learn and practice better optimisation techniques, build links, market and promote. Nobodys crops grew bigger and better whilst watching their neighbours. " peewhy

Offline Marketing

"I've built quite a nice business not worrying about whether the latest Google spider finds me. I've never submitted to search engines, and think of anything that comes from a search engine as gravy.

So, what's my secret?

Old Fashioned Marketing. I have a few well placed online ads, print ads for my target audience, and I attend and exhibit at trade shows where people can meet me and see the site.

You can spend all your time optimizing a web site for Google, only to have Google miss you one month. I've read too many horror stories from people here who have relied solely on search engines. " txbakers

Lots of Content - Longtime Success

"I have a regular process that I go through every day to keep my website up to date. That usually adds 6-10 new pages every day, not to mention work on the forum. After 6 years, I've got thousands of pages and plenty of traffic from Google and the other search engines. " universetoday

Diversify

"It was mentioned earlier in the thread, but diversity is the key imo. Some seo here, aff marketing there, and a few ad words and you'll be on your way. �0 to �3k a month in 9 months has been tricky with a 'real' job to do, but very possible.
Once you've mastered the basics, spread out into other markets and use everythig you've learnt." brightspark

Just do it

"The important thing I learned is, do not feel like you have to read every single e-book on affiliate marketing, or that you have to read every single message on this (and other) forums. You'll definitely learn as you go. " rfung

Boost Traffic with Newsletters

"... from the perspective of continuing to build loyalty from our visitors, the newsletter is an awesome tool. Out of the 30,000+ subscribers, our unsubscribes are always less than 5. So now, our way of monetizing the newsletter is indirectly -- we lead them back to the site for the full articles where we have text and banner advertising. Our Adsense income, for example, are always its highest on Tues and Wed after sending out the newsletter on Tues. " alika

Increase your CTR

"CTR depends on

1- Ad placement/colors/size/numbers
2- Type of site content
3- Use of PPC
4- Visitor type
5- Referrer site (can be noticed in site stats) " shafaki

Do Systematic Ad Tests, Get High CRT

"CTR is King, as far as I'm concerned. Do systematic tests of all the things you can control (# of ad blocks, size of ad blocks, color combinations, positions, etc.). All I can tell you is that when you take the time to do that, you might be blown away by how big a difference it can make. Get your CTR up into double digits and watch your bottom line fatten up nicely. " Swebbie

Many Niche Sites

" 'What types of website generate CTR's > 15%?'

Yep, niche sites in my case. I find tight niches that get a decent number of searches for the main keywords and build content pages around the relevant keywords. I don't even think about AdSense when determining what my next site project will be - I focus instead on finding good affiliate programs for selling the products directly. Then I add AdSense if I find there are some good AS advertisers and if my product affiliates aren't converting my traffic well enough.

Having said that, my sites are all over the board in terms of CTR. Overall, they avg. 17%-26% day-to-day, but individual sites can be as low as 2% and as high as 45%.

I like the 'many sites' niche approach, but it is very labor intensive and playing webmaster is like a second job. Not for the faint of heart or the 'part-timers' among us. :-) " Swebbie

Let Others Write Your Content

"Do you realize how much time you spend just adding a content?

You could learn to speed up the process a bit. Who says you have to be the only person that creates the content for your site? Learn to speed up the process. Learn to get others (visitors, websiteowners, businesses) to work for YOU! (Unless your site is very unique) Rather than be a 'laborer' for your company get others to do the grunt work so all you have to do is OWN IT, MANAGE IT, and PROMOTE IT.

Use the law of multiplicity for goodness sake." It arubicus

Chop Down Large Topics to Smaller Pages

" 'Instead of a 20 paragraph page, breaking it up into 3 or 4 pages that each address the subheadings of the topic will garner more traffic and more adsense revenue.'

BINGO! This is spot on. It's all about multiple traffic streams and leveraging content you're going to write anyway. Turn one long page into several pages, and focus like a laser beam on just one or two related keywords per page. Search engines love that, and it makes your AS ads very targeted.

Look at it this way: you want your visitors to get value out of what you write, and they will whether you give them one long page to read or several pages of shorter length. In fact, I've found (from reader feedback mostly) that visitors appreciate smaller chunks of content. So that, alone, is reason enough to make more pages of shorter length. But what really makes it a no-brainer is that instead of one page with the chance to rank highly at the search engines, you now have 3-4 (or more) pages that focus on only one or two keywords each instead of a bunch. The result will be (usually, but not always) new traffic streams from searchers looking for EACH of those keywords instead of just from the generic topic. In my experience, this is virtually always the better way to go for the long haul." Swebbie

Spend 15 Hours a Day Creating Content

"... for the last week (and for the next 100 days) I work 12-15 hours a day making new content for my site without any increase in revenue.

Once I have a good amount of evergreen content I can stop or slow work on the site and it will continue to generate the same level of income.

I have tested this theory on my site and atleast in my niche I was able to not touch my site for 6 months without any decrease in adsense revenue." zulufox

Break it down to Subtopics

"additional content continues to strengthen your position.

I've noticed that google is getting much more particular on which pages will be pulled for a search phrase. That is, the algo seems to be getting more specific. As a result, you need to create more pages with different titles that address various aspects of a topic. Instead of a 20 paragraph page, breaking it up into 3 or 4 pages that each address the subheadings of the topic will garner more traffic and more adsense revenue.

More work, of course, but more reward." ownerrim

Add Content to Multiply Money

"The more content and more authority you become the more people linking to your content.

You create more entry keywords by adding more content.

You strengthen your theme and your main keywords by adding more content. This help move yourself up in rankings.

The money starts to multiply after a time. Once content is added it creates a residual income. In other words you don't have to do much of anything and still make money on it. 1 year 2 years 3 years. That adds up to a chunk. " arubicus

Dare to Dream

"I started three months ago, and have built only one site up to 180US per month, ever month and growing,
I knew absolutly nothing about being a webmaster,
now I own my own server, and am about to buy antoher 3000gb bandwidth, all supported from AS,
This is for those that dare to dream, and believe in themselves" synth78

Diversify for More Stability

"DIVERSIFICATION! That concept cannot be stressed enough for 99% of AdSense publishers. I've been a publisher for about a year now and the one constant I've seen throughout is that those with many sites on different topics don't have nearly the huge revenue swings that others who have only one big site do.

The other important concept is to keep adding quality content and putting the AdSense JS on those pages. Look, you can hope for higher pay-outs per click, or you can ignore that entirely and just keep on keeping on (adding more pages). Put your nose to the grindstone and write (or pay others to write for you). PUBLISH!

Think of it as planting seeds. Each page of quality content that you add is a flower ready to bloom in a few weeks or months. Follow all the Google rules and keep adding content!

I've gone from nothing to a steady monthly increase by following this simple model. Build pages around keywords that get a decent number of searches at the engines, plant those seeds (publish!), and stop pulling out your hair over the statistics." Swebbie

CTR vs Traffic

"Earnings are directly tied to click through rate - traffic is an issue, but you can do $$ more by focusing on click through rate than you can raw traffic.
7% ctr vs 1% ctr is the difference between a $1500 a month adsense income and a $200 a month income. " Brett_Tabke

Move Up

"Keep reading
Keep writing
Do a little keyword research" sailorjwd

Translate by Humans

"I have one of my sites translated into a foreign language by human translators.

Some months I do better with those than the English pages!

I wouldn't do a machine-translated site. In my opinion, you're better off English-only than with poorly translated pages.

It's especially true if you want people to return to your site. A promise of a French or German site might lure people to visit your site and maybe follow an AdSense link out, but how likely will they be to return to your site again?

If you're trying to be an authority site for anything, a site where you want people to return for information again and again, you're not going to get that with lousy translations.

If you want visitors to take you seriously, you have to take them seriously. You have to show them that you respect them, and a poor translation will not convey that.

If you think your content is valuable, if you make money off of the quality of your content, don't negate its value with bad translations. Spend the money to have a human translator do it, or don't do it at all. " ccDan

Outsource

"Outsource some of the lesser importance content writing as well as link work. I've done this and it's help me grow by 200 percent.

During that 100 days, commit yourself to writing 1 quality page per day. By quality I mean using 4-5 sources and making it at the very, very minium, 750 words. I've been doing this and I've got a new site that is really coming along great.

By the end of the day, when I finished the article and don't feel like writing anymore, I start preparing for the next day's article. I do thorough research all over the internet and using speciality search engines, as well as checking forums and usegroups, save everything to a folder and then print it out to read before I go to bed.

After you done all that, decide if you can interview anyone (live person) and hunt them down.

One other tip, if you are really in a crunch for content, try those student essay for sale websites where they sell book reports already written or offer to write your content for $20/page.

Once you have 50 pages, look for translators on the contractor venues. You'd be surprised at how cheap they can be. For $600, I got a 25 page site translated into 4 languages which produced 100 more pages.

I'm quite certain you can get a site to at least $50/day in 100 days, but sounds like you need to hire some help to get to $100/day. Give the lesser important work to the hirees and do the rough stuff yourself." Freedom

Delay putting ads on new sites

"First I created content rich pages (around 400 pages) with no images. Uploaded and manually submitted in major search engines and directories. Waited for the 2 months. My site is indexed in google and other search engines. Then I put google ads on it. in one month I earned nearly 100$ just from that site.

Don't be hurry to put ads as soon as you upload the site." Murali

Low Investment

"I put in $10/year for my domain, and $5/month for hosting. Thats a grand total of $70 for the year. After about 9 months of marketing my site for free and by myself, I am almost at $1000/month. True, it took me 9 months, and starting from scratch not knowing anything when you start out can be brutal. But nevertheless, I am still close to the goal of $1000 without spending big bucks on my site." chopin2256

WordTracker.com

"The key to making lots of 'white hat' AdSense income...In a word, WORDTRACKERThat place is a gold mine if you know how to use it. Spend some time there (just add a dott com) pinning down high-traffic keyword phrases and add content built around those phrases." Swebbie

How Many Impressions?

"30 million page views a month may not be alot compared to some networks but to us it has taken many years to build up this type of traffic" drall

Growth Rate

"I remember when I was at that point. I think it was easier to jump from $20/day to $100/day than to get to $20 in the first place." wellzy

Site Maintainability

"I would add that when starting a site, consider its maintainability, if the site is going to work longer term you don't want to create a monster that takes all of your effort in maintenance.

Ease of maintenance is one of the most important things for long term site growth." IanTurner

Getting Links

"I would say that the most important thing afterwards would be inbound links. I contacted over 300 sites in the span of a year. Find out what sites link to your competitors, then ask them to link to you. Obviously the better content you have, the better luck you will have with getting webmasters to link to you.So, content again." rfung

Value of Links

"For about a month and a half I've been paying to advertise my least-popular articles. The result has been that some pages that got a hundred hits a month now get a thousand.

I recently calculated that the links others have given me have over the years been worth from one hundred to one thousand dollars EACH! If you can advertise in such a way as to build repeat visitors and links, then advertising is much more worthwhile." MichaelCrawford

"... it's having a site that's worth someone's time and effort to link to. It's having a site that makes people WANT to link it."

"I think ads discourage linking. Once you do publish ads, test them for a week or two and then remove them from all the nonperforming pages. A page without adsense still gets linked, drives up the pagerank of your site and is a gateway to your other pages. " MichaelCrawford

Motivation

"If you have half a brain you can make a great living from the Internet - whether from AdSense or from some other simple idea. Just get on and do it. I started with AdSense in late 2003. I now see monthly revenue of 70,000 US and plenty more from other affiliate programmes. Making £1m or $2m from affiliate marketing is very achievable for anyone who is smart and has a few years experience." affi

Experiment

"You need to experiment. Try different positions. Try different ad types. Try different colors. Make the ads blend in. Make the ads stand out. Run each different variation for a week, make notes, and go with the one that performs best.... " hunderdown

Content

"As a sweeping generalization, sites that have a steady stream of visitors looking for information about specific products or services will tend to do best with AdSense." hunderdown

TV

"My AdSense revenue is up 1700% for the past few days, and it looks like it may continue for a few weeks ... Have your website featured on TV. " CheeseburgerBrown

Fresh Tips

• "put together a website that caters for your visitors, and not high paying keywords." Chris_H
  
• "pages that are writtenn so they motivate a reader to ask questions, or to want a specific item/service seem to attract great ads most of time. My experience has been that those pages get great a CTR and eCPM." ken_b
• "I started cutting all second rate advertisors (for my main site)using the Competitive URL ad filter . ... In that time my EPC has nearly doubled from it's lows" dauction

AdSense Digest

The goal of this blog is to provide a digest of high value content that appears a result of heavy posting in the AdSense forum hosted by Webmaster World.