Writing for Your Wealth

If there’s one question I get a lot when people find out I make a living from running Google Adsense on my sites, it’s the one along the lines of, “Why do my earnings suck?”

Some people are so disheartened from trying to make money online that they’ll flat out state that a normal person can’t make money with Adsense, or you have to have tons and tons of traffic to make anything. Well, I’m not sure how normal I am, but I don’t get zillions of page views a month to my site, and while Google isn’t the only way I make money, I do make enough from that program alone to cover all my monthly living expenses.

So…. what’s the secret?

There are lots of places where people go wrong, but here are perhaps the three most common problems I see, AKA, “Why your Adsense earnings suck.”

1. Site isn’t a good tie-in for pay-per-click revenue

This is the biggest one and honestly the hardest to fix. (2 can easily be changed and 3 isn’t that bad either.)

Sites that don’t have a clear commercial tie-in don’t tend to do well with Adsense. For example, if you blog about writing, exactly what products would people buy related to that? Heck if I know (books and other not very expensive items, I’d guess), and that’s why I don’t have Adsense on this site.

This doesn’t mean that sites focusing more on teaching and less on consumer-oriented stuff can’t make money (some people make a lot of money creating their own information products and selling them), but sometimes it’s not even worth putting Adsense ads on such sites.

I love Adsense because it’s perfect for introverts like me who don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling products, but you really do have to choose a niche and write content with related products and services in mind if you want to do well with the program.

2. Horrible ad placement

This is probably my favorite Adsense “problem,” because it’s such an easy fix. If you want to make good money with Adsense, you really need to get your ads as close to the content as possible. It’s a bad idea to “trick” people into clicking, but you don’t want them to easily ignore those ads either.

The small 480×90 banner ads are easy to ignore (the Internet has “grown up” with that banner size, and we’re all pretty good at blocking it out), and tower ads aren’t particularly effective if they’re stuck over in the side bar. It gets even worse if your ads are below the fold (meaning that people have to scroll down to even have a shot at noticing them).

What really does work is the 250×250, 300×250, or the monster 336×280 ads wrapped right into the content of your article or blog post. It’s hard to miss, and you’ll get a lot more clicks with this type of Adsense layout.

A lot of people don’t want to stick these big ads in right next to their content for fear of looking spammy or perhaps alienating a community of readers. It’s your choice, but if you want to make money, size of ads and placement can make a huge different. Putting ads where “they won’t bother people” is the same as putting ads where nobody will notice (and click) on them.

3. Not enough search engine traffic

You don’t have to get zillions or even millions of page views a month to make a nice living from Adsense (I average a little over 10,000 views a day, across all the sites I run Adsense on). You do, however, have to have some traffic.

And ideally that traffic will come from the search engines.

I know we all like to go out and comment on each others’ blogs so they’ll comment on our blogs and we’ll look popular, but someone returning a comment isn’t a likely candidate to click an ad and buy something from the shop on the other end.

You want someone who typed in “how to make mead” and landed on your blog post on “How to Get Started Making Mead in Your Own Kitchen.” They’re a much better candidate to click on the nearby ads for home brewing kits. They found your site because they were specifically thinking of getting into home brewing, not because they were just returning a comment to be cordial.

The best way to fix a lack of traffic (especially a lack of search engine traffic) is the tried and true method: get links to your site. This can be done through article marketing, guest blogging, forum posting, blog carnivals, and other methods. Pick one you like and put some quality time into working it.

Make sure your site follows all these rules (okay, they’re just guidelines… suggestions, if you will), and your Adsense earnings won’t “suck” any more!

Last month, I wrote a couple of posts on buying websites to get a head start in the earning-money-online business, so I figured it’d make sense to talk about when selling sites is practical. Fair’s fair, right?

I’m not big on selling sites myself–I’m more of the buy-and-hold type than the buy-and-flip (or build-and-flip) sort, but I’ve sold a couple of my sites over the years. Sometimes it just makes sense.

Reasons for selling one of your websites

1. You’ve lost interest in the niche

It happens. Some folks are lucky enough to find their passion early on and also make that passion profitable. Then there are the niche-hoppers like me. I started with history (no money there), moved onto fitness, then got into home improvement. Today my interests are changing again, and I’m trying new things while I continue to maintain the “pay dirt” sites.

A shift in your interests doesn’t necessarily mean you should have a fire sale and liquidate all your old websites. Even when I’ve slowed down on (or quit) producing content in a niche, I’m loathe to sell. These quasi-abandoned sites still bring in tens to hundreds of dollars a month with Adsense, and I always hate to see my bottom line go down. Also I like to allow the possibility that the interest will one day be rekindled. If I decide to delve into that niche again, it’s easier to bring an established site back to life than start one from scratch.

But if you’re tired of looking at a site, or it’d be too much work to revamp it and bring it in line with your older-and-wiser standards, then it might be a candidate for a sale.

2. Future trends aren’t looking good for your niche

If you’re immersed in your niche, and you pay attention to the news, you may have a good idea of what the future will bring. And it may not be looking good.

For example, let’s say you have a blog on SUVs. It was a star for you for a few years, but things changed last summer when gas got so expensive. Readership dropped and advertisers stopped paying well. Gas prices have since come down, but if you believe that we’re heading into an era where oil demand will outstrip supply, it might make more sense to start blogging about hybrids and alternative-fuel cars instead.

Don’t just give up on the old blog though. Sell it if you want to cash out. There will likely still be buyers.

Often when you’re immersed in a niche, you see trends that aren’t apparent to outsiders or newcomers. Also someone might want to buy your established, authority site even knowing the trends (people sometimes buy sites in niches they have no interest in just to sell links).

A note on trends: just because something may go out of fashion, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to abandon it. A solid site with a lot of incoming links is going to be an authority in the search engine’s eyes no matter what popular trends are. Rather than starting over, you might be able to use that authority status and just shift the focus of your blog to the new trends. The SUV blog could expand and cover hybrid SUVs or smaller vehicles. The search engines really don’t care if your niche evolves over time.

3. Your site has become more work than its worth

Sometimes its our success and not our failures that create hurdles in this business. When you get a site that becomes popular, suddenly you can be inundated with news tips, email questions, comments to moderate, requests to buy advertising, the pressure to blog daily, etc. etc. etc.

If you’re the entrepreneurial type, this is usually when it makes sense to hire someone else or at least outsource some of the simple things. However, let’s be blunt: a lot of us writers aren’t that interested in becoming business owners.

I know I fall into that category myself. I actually prefer creating the simple article sites that may rank well for a couple of search terms but that aren’t going to turn into the next Gizmodo. My style is to make a good living while committing myself to as little time at the computer as possible (which is why I have a stack of email in my box right now that still needs to be answered…).

There’s also the chance that your site, though popular, isn’t making much money. This is often the case with sites where the owner didn’t set out with a clear monetization plan in place from the beginning. In this case, outsourcing may not be an option.

If the site has grown popular, you’re always going to be able to make money selling it. If it’s taking too much of your time for what you’re getting out of it, this is a third case where it might make sense to sell.

4. You’ve been plugging away at your site, but it just isn’t making you money

Speaking of sites not making much money…

I’m sure I’m not the only one who came to realize that my first niche wasn’t profitable. Looking back, the reasons were obvious, but we often need to learn the hard way, no matter how many expert bloggers there are out there to advise us otherwise!

If you’ve been religiously writing content for–and promoting–your site for several months or even a year, and you’re just not seeing the earnings you hoped for, then it may be time to walk away from the project. It’s worth getting outside advice to see whether you’re just missing something obvious (ad placement, not enough commercial tie-in, etc.), but there are plenty of niches that just aren’t that easy to monetize.

Again, rather than just abandoning the site, you may want to see if someone would be willing to pay for it. You ought to get something for all the work you put into it after all!

5. You need the money

I’d be reluctant to sell a site out of desperation, but we are living in desperate times. One of the perks of having multiple websites–and multiple streams of income–is that selling off one is always an option in tight times.

To make up for the monthly income you’d lose, you can make a deal with yourself to put more work into your other sites (ones that have the potential to become good moneymakers but perhaps haven’t hit their full stride yet).

And if your spouse has lost his or her job, and the mortgage payment is due soon, you might be surprised how much you can get for your original content, especially if you’ve focused on one niche and built up links to your site. Just make sure you give yourself a few days to market the site and a few more for it to “close.” Buyers will often insist on using escrow, and it takes time for money to transfer. Also, it usually takes a couple days with both parties going back and forth with emails and transferring files and domain names and what not.

If it is in your cards to sell your website, you can try auctioning it on the Sitepoint or Digitalpoint forums, or–if you’re not in any hurry and will only sell if you get an offer you like–you could just list “this site for sale” or some such in the menu. You never know what kinds of offers you might get that way.

If you’ve been promoting your websites (or eHow articles, Squidoo lenses, etc.) for a while, you may have already tried posting in forums to drive traffic. If you haven’t gotten much out of it, this article is for you. If you haven’t tried it at all, this article is also for you. If you’re just bored at work and looking for something to read, this article is for you too. (What can I say? I don’t like to discriminate.)

A busy forum already gets a lot of daily visitors. The idea is to leverage that site’s popularity and send some of those visitors your direction.

Here are the steps to make forum posting an effective mode of promotion:

1. Find the best forums in your niche

If the forum isn’t related to your niche (or doesn’t at least have the same demographic of readers), then posting there is going to be a waste of time insofar as promoting your site goes. So if you’re a writer blogging about triathlons, it behooves you to hang out in the triathlon forum instead of (or in addition to) all those writer forums.

Try Googling “niche + forum” or “niche + message board” to find popular ones in your field.

Good forums that can send you a lot of traffic will probably have thousands of members and tens of thousands of posts. Not only are you hoping those members might visit your site, but you might also get some “lurkers” and people who find the posts via search engine results.

Forums do come and go though so make sure the one you’re thinking of joining has people visiting today, not just at some distant point in the past.

2. Create a signature with a link to your site

The way you’ll get traffic from a forum is by posting a signature with a link to your site (most forum software allows you to create a blurb that automatically shows up under all your posts).

Before you get too excited about any particular forum you find, scan through the threads and make sure you see signatures with links at the bottoms of people’s posts. You want to be able to add an active link to your website. If you don’t see folks posting links in signatures, it’s likely the forum has terms of service that forbid it. You can usually find a “stickie” post or FAQ somewhere that states the rules of the forum, so you can double check there.

If your primary goal is to drive traffic to your site, it’s not worth participating in a forum that doesn’t allow signature links. Feel free to give these forums a virtual middle finger as you click the back button on your browser.

Creating an effective signature tag

As for the signature tag itself, the best way to find out what works is to change your blurb every couple weeks. See what entices the most people to click through.

For one of my early sites on home gyms, I posted in fitness forums to get visitors (hoping they’d come join my forum and chat it up).

A signature that worked well for me was along the lines of “Read [link]real people’s reviews of the Bowflex[/link] home gym, and get your questions answered in our [link]Bowflex forum[/link].” ( I was working out on a used Bowflex at the time, so I had written reviews and information on several of the company’s models for my site.)

It wasn’t brilliant copywriting but what it did well was ensure I only got visitors who were interested in what my site was about (Bowflex), and it also told folks exactly what they could find if they clicked (something useful). I got a lot of traffic that way, in part because I was posting on an already-popular site, and in part because my posts and signature attracted people who were interested in what my site was about.

While I’ve since moved on to other niches and that site has died off (and I’ve given away the Bowflex and joined a tennis club), I still find forum posting to be an excellent way to bring new visitors to a site.

But how do you make sure your signature links are noticed in the first place?

3. Become a thought leader in the community

This is where a lot of people fail when it comes to driving traffic through forum posting. They post “me too” comments, or they write intelligent posts… that are located half way down the 18th page in a thread.

If you want to be noticed, start topics instead of just contributing to others. And start topics that will catch people’s attention.

Watch the forum for a while and ferret out the trends. What are people interested in and how can you say something useful and original on that topic? (If this forum is related to the niche you already write about, this shouldn’t be that hard!)

Start threads that are helpful or controversial.

Helpful threads (i.e. How-to posts) attract a lot of eyeballs, because people are always looking for specifics on how to do things. A few months ago, I got a ton of visitors from a post I did at the Warrior Forum, which was named something like “Top Tips from a Six-Figure-a-Year Adsense Publisher.” Since it was in the Adsense section of the forum, you can guess there were a lot of readers looking for just those kinds of tips.

Controversial threads also attract a lot of eyeballs because people are eager to contribute when they have strong opinions.

The idea is to be on top of a thread that gets a lot of visitors and a lot of posts (the more people post, the longer your thread will be on the first page of the forum). This increases the chances of you (and your signature link) being noticed.

Now… go forth and post!