The Perils of Earning Money from Adsense

Skinnylatte

Youtube, blogging, web design, cash back
Joined
Feb 9, 2014
Messages
237
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www.great-happy-birthday-ideas.com
I have adsense activated on my Youtube channel and also one of my websites. Google AdSense is a free, simple way for website publishers to earn money by displaying targeted Google ads on their websites.

However you do need a lot of visitors to your site to generate a decent income, and in the initial stage of your new venture the focus must be on building an audience and traffic to your site. My first payment was £69.60 In October 2010, there is a minimum payout of £60 and it took me from July 2010 to reach this!

These are my earnings for January 2014
£339.89 Youtube Adsense earnings (621460 video views)
£111.30 Website Adsense earnings (402806 page views click though rate 2.28%)
£6.07 ebook sales Kindle Publishing


Looking back my highest ever payment was in September 2013 a total of £772.13 ( £600.70 from Youtube and £171.42 from the website)

The obvious issue here is that my income is on the decline, for several reasons including...

1. I had video that was viral for 2 years, views have dropped dramatically, it has simply run out of steam. I don't know what to do about this apart from keep uploading new content in the hope that one of them takes off in the same way

2. Traffic to my website has dropped, this is due to Google changing the way it ranks websites, Google launched a serious of updates called Penguin/Phantom/Panda which caused quite a stir on the world of search engine optimization marketing, and certainly impacted me. I need to update the site and supply some fresh content. I also made the error of purchasing some dubious back links in the past and I think this may have affected rankings.

The moral of the story is...

Do not rely on Adsense for your livelihood
Do not try and take shortcuts!
 

Jon

Money Making Megastar!
Joined
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Messages
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Skinnylatte said:
I have adsense activated on my Youtube channel and also one of my websites. Google AdSense is a free, simple way for website publishers to earn money by displaying targeted Google ads on their websites.

However you do need a lot of visitors to your site to generate a decent income, and in the initial stage of your new venture the focus must be on building an audience and traffic to your site. My first payment was £69.60 In October 2010, there is a minimum payout of £60 and it took me from July 2010 to reach this!

These are my earnings for January 2014
£339.89 Youtube Adsense earnings (621460 video views)
£111.30 Website Adsense earnings (402806 page views click though rate 2.28%)
£6.07 ebook sales Kindle Publishing


Looking back my highest ever payment was in September 2013 a total of £772.13 ( £600.70 from Youtube and £171.42 from the website)

The obvious issue here is that my income is on the decline, for several reasons including...

1. I had video that was viral for 2 years, views have dropped dramatically, it has simply run out of steam. I don't know what to do about this apart from keep uploading new content in the hope that one of them takes off in the same way

2. Traffic to my website has dropped, this is due to Google changing the way it ranks websites, Google launched a serious of updates called Penguin/Phantom/Panda which caused quite a stir on the world of search engine optimization marketing, and certainly impacted me. I need to update the site and supply some fresh content. I also made the error of purchasing some dubious back links in the past and I think this may have affected rankings.

The moral of the story is...

Do not rely on Adsense for your livelihood
Do not try and take shortcuts!

Whatever is happening your YouTube income is still very impressive. You must be earning enough to pay Self Employed National Insurance (think the threshold is £5,725 a year)

Google Updates are a pain at the moment.

Due to my zero advertising budget for this site I rely entirely on backlinks and word of mouth. I was originally targeting people who search 'Earn Money online UK' and we were happy on page 4 but seem to have gone done quite a few. BUT if you search 'earn money online' (which is a far better generic search term to be found via) we have appeared on page 5 which I am happy with. It still annoys me that 1 page blogs/bait'n switch/scambait sites rank higher than The Money Shed which says to me that Google still doesn't have a sure fire method that can't be manipulated in terms of getting crap sites/pages to the top.

Actually if you search that term you will see a YouTube video at the top of page 2 - Imagine how much money that brings in!

I don't want it to become an obsession with me anyway as I Can see from Google Analytics that people find us far easier by searching for 'Field Agent UK', 'Roamler UK', ''Work for 63336' etc. which was my plan all along anyway. I just need to work harder at getting those views into members and only good content that lures people into contribute will do that - It's like a never ending circle.

I wouldn't say there are shortcuts for SEO but it appears if you have enough £££ you can get to the top much quicker no matter how rubbish your content is
 

mbmetro100

Internet Marketing, SEO, Web Design, Horse Racing
Joined
Feb 19, 2014
Messages
193
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26
Location
Marske by the Sea
Website
www.racing-winners.com
There certainly seems to be more "meat and potatoes" in adsense with You Tube videos against blog earnings. I have a few review videos which get a decent amount of views and my monthly figure is growing due to this. Your own earnings are still very impressive and my aim is to get £100+ pm from it and perhaps grow it from there (if possible).

Google updates are on the increase and one of the more recent updates is "Hummingbird" in which their bots look for more topic focused sites/blogs as opposed to keyword phrases, so if you have a blog which is specifically about "Dog Walking" or "Learning The Piano" and has a few specific pages then, you should do well according to Matt Cutts and the Google programming gang.
 

Skinnylatte

Youtube, blogging, web design, cash back
Joined
Feb 9, 2014
Messages
237
Points
38
Location
York
Website
www.great-happy-birthday-ideas.com
Thanks for that update mbmetro100, since I got panda'd and penguined, and nothing I did to the site seemed to make much difference, I sort of gave up and stopped following the related forums, so it's just on autopilot now. It looks like I was effected by Hummingbird too, as things definitely changed after September. I concentrate most efforts on Youtube now, as you say the returns are better. making a video is also much more interesting than writing articles!!

BTW mbmetro100, I've just downloaded your free book, there loads of really usefull stuff in there - thank you ;D
 

mbmetro100

Internet Marketing, SEO, Web Design, Horse Racing
Joined
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Messages
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www.racing-winners.com
Skinnylatte said:
Thanks for that update mbmetro100, since I got panda'd and penguined, and nothing I did to the site seemed to make much difference, I sort of gave up and stopped following the related forums, so it's just on autopilot now. It looks like I was effected by Hummingbird too, as things definitely changed after September. I concentrate most efforts on Youtube now, as you say the returns are better. making a video is also much more interesting than writing articles!!

BTW mbmetro100, I've just downloaded your free book, there loads of really usefull stuff in there - thank you ;D

Cheers and I hope you like it. What I noticed after the "Hummingbird update was that, the sites that I have in the horse racing niche still remained in the top three positions of Google for their main keyword phrase and the other sites which weren't specifically focused on one thing like for example my Free Bets website suffered. Who knows what the future will bring with big G, but one things for sure, if you want to stay in the game then, you'll have to adapt your site to suit their updates or watch or watch some of the organic traffic disappear completely.
 

Jon

Money Making Megastar!
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OK so I am interested - What do you think Forums such as this one can do to get a higher ranking.

The content is mostly typed by other people rather than myself so apart from starting keyword focused threads (which would need to look organic) I am interested in what more I can do to get a higher ranking (beyond backlinks and social media)
 

mbmetro100

Internet Marketing, SEO, Web Design, Horse Racing
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Jon@TheMoneyShed said:
OK so I am interested - What do you think Forums such as this one can do to get a higher ranking.

The content is mostly typed by other people rather than myself so apart from starting keyword focused threads (which would need to look organic) I am interested in what more I can do to get a higher ranking (beyond backlinks and social media)

I don't really know about forums tbh, but certainly having a FB page, Twitter feed, Google +1, Pinterest account and a few good quality PR backlinks wouldn't do you any harm. The problem with Google and all their unecessary updates is that, what's good and works today might be useless tomorrow. I think the people at Google and in particular their programmers are flexing their muscle and showing everyone the power they have - probably on some sort of an ego trip!
 

Skinnylatte

Youtube, blogging, web design, cash back
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Messages
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Location
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I agree with mbmetro100 using social media, do you have a fb book page or twitter? Also just keep doing what you're doing, and make sure the content is excellent. When people find this site you want them to become absorbed and involved in it. it needs to offer lots and grow organically. One of the reasons the green site is so popular, apart from the fact it's so huge, is that it offers so much information, and there's no spam!
There's a lot of good stuff in mbmetro100's ebook too if you've not downloaded it yet.
Have you thought about starting a diaries section?
Also trying to keep threads on topic, we've wandered...!
 

Jon

Money Making Megastar!
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Skinnylatte said:
I agree with mbmetro100 using social media, do you have a fb book page or twitter? Also just keep doing what you're doing, and make sure the content is excellent. When people find this site you want them to become absorbed and involved in it. it needs to offer lots and grow organically. One of the reasons the green site is so popular, apart from the fact it's so huge, is that it offers so much information, and there's no spam!
There's a lot of good stuff in mbmetro100's ebook too if you've not downloaded it yet.
Have you thought about starting a diaries section?
Also trying to keep threads on topic, we've wandered...!

Yes we have @themoneyshed on twitter and facebook.com/themoneyshed on facebook

I will take a look at the ebook ;)

Threads naturally go off topic - better do some pruning I guess
 

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