Writing for Your Wealth

2009 was the first year my Google Adsense earnings didn’t increase significantly, but they didn’t drop either. Considering my sites sat on the back burner for the second half of the year (as you can see from the lack of recent posts here, I shifted gears for a while, spending more time on writing fiction than blogging), I really can’t complain. I’ve noticed others in the industry (webmasters and bloggers running Adsense) saying that there have been big hits to online advertising spending and their earnings have been down significantly.

In this post, I’ll share why I believe my earnings held up and what I think you can do to keep (or increase) your own Adsense earnings, even in troubled times.

Why My Adsense Earnings Didn’t Drop in 2009

I’d like to say that I had brilliant prescience back in 2004-2005 when I was picking my niches, but any brilliance was accidental. I have a short attention span, which led me to diversify my site topics. I’ve done a bit with fitness and travel, but many of my niches are in the home improvement arena, which is a pretty broad and flexible area. Today there may be fewer people reading my posts on luxury steam showers and $10,000 hot tubs, but there’s plenty of interest in my articles on home security, heating with wood stoves, and renovating on a budget. In short, I picked niches that were adaptable and could be popular in good times and bad times.

How You Can Make Good Money from Adsense Today (even if the economy gets worse)

If you’re just starting out and trying to pick a niche to write about, you might go the same route, choosing a subject that is going to be popular in any economy. What do people always want? What do they splurge on no matter how tight the budget gets? Beauty and dieting? Entertainment? Alcohol? Health care (lots of aging baby boomers out there)?

Also, what might they buy if they believe there isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel and the economy will be down for some time? Information on self-sufficiency? Fuel-efficient cars? Growing their own food?

You’ll have to do your own research for the niches you’re interested in. Use keyword tools (such as the Adwords Keyword Tool) to determine the popularity of niches and what advertisers are bidding for clicks. Remember, it’s not just about choosing a popular niche. It’s about choosing one that’s profitable, too!

To do well with Adsense, you need people searching for information on products and services in your niche, finding your site, reading your content, clicking your ads, and occasionally buying from the merchant.

If you’ve already picked your niche, and you’ve built a website, look at how you can make posts that are applicable for today’s economy. Also, if you want to score with Adsense, don’t forget to focus at least some of your posts on consumer-related topics. Someone reading your blog post about growing strawberries might click on one of the nearby ads, but someone reading your product review of the Ultra-Gizmo Space-Saving Strawberry Planter is a surer thing (people searching for product reviews are usually in buy-mode and are thinking of making a purchase before they even get to your site).

For more on doing well with Adsense, please check out some of my older articles:

• How Can You Make Money with Adsense (without spending any money)?
• What It Takes to Make $100,000 a Year from Adsense
• Why Your Google Adsense Earnings Suck