Google Adsense Earnings
Is it possible to make money online? You bet!!! In fact, I have several sites set up with Google Adsense, and I’ve made… about $32 total since last February. Since their payout threshold is $100, I figure I only have about 19 more months before my big payout. Actually, that’s not fair to Google. None of my sites are optimized, and most aren’t even about topics that would lend themselves to doing well in an Adsense campaign. Most of the sites average about 0.4% to 0.5% click rate on the Adsense ads. One site is around 2% though, and another is almost at almost 3%. The question is, what should I do to increase my earnings? Obviously I should work at increasing traffic, but what is the best use of my time?
I have two sites that get the majority of my traffic. Both of these have click rates of around 0.4%. One of them is an Alumni site for my old High School and the other documents my activities in one of my hobbies. Putting a lot of time into the High School Alumni site is probably a waste of effort. Even though it’s in the first position of Google search results for a certain term (high school name alumni), the content doesn’t lend itself to targeted Google ads, and the people visiting the page are interested in connecting with former classmates, not buying something. My hobby site also ranks well for certain search terms, but the vast majority of the traffic is to one specific page that happens to have EBay listings (more on that next time). I don’t want to mess around with it too much and screw up my EBay earnings.
The two sites with fairly good click rates don’t rank well in Google but still manage to draw a fair amount of traffic. They are also about subjects that have better potential both for traffic and well targeted Google ads than my other sites. It would be better to optimize these sites according to Adsense guidelines and try to increase traffic. I also just launched a new web site that has excellent potential for traffic and targeted ads. I’m anxious to see how it does over time. It would be nice to earn $100 each month instead of $100 every 28 months.
Sincerely,
Xiaohua