Before I go further, I’d just like to show off to you a pathetic snapshot of my first ever AdSense cheque which I’ve received earlier this month (and a wonderful New Year’s surprise it was!).
I was in a rush preparing for my son’s first day of school for the year, and only managed to take this picture while I was driving to the bank to cash it out. It takes a month for that US$124.15 cheque to clear. Why not use Western Union? That is a story for another day. Anyway, I’ll be getting another cheque at the end of February just from that one arts and crafts site I mentioned and yet to reveal.
Apart from paid posts and playing forex, making money online takes hard work, action, and patience. I’ve bought e-books and implemented the advice of many Internet guru programs, both locally (in Malaysia) and internationally, that promise you to make money online, and I ended up getting frustrated each time. As many have claimed, they are mostly crap.
More annoying is the fact that, at one point, I bought some e-book on profit blogger from one of those Malaysian Internet marketing “experts”, only to find out that I actually knew all the techniques he pointed out during my first month of blogging. What a bunch of bull.
Luckily, my early days of blogging introduced me to RT at Untwisted Vortex [link to defunct website removed] (who also happens to be one of the first people to comment on my blog), who, through his many posts, introduced me to two most invaluable web sites on making money online. Best of all, they’re totally free!
I based my niche site development through the advice I get from Court Tuttle’s Internet Marketing School [link to defunct site removed] and his new site called The Keyword Academy [link to defunct site removed] (co-run by Mark Butler). Due to their advice, I was able to increase search engine visitors to my web sites triple-fold. I started using Court’s techniques since late August 2008, and my traffic at that time was 900 unique visits a month. By end of November that year, traffic surged to around 3,000 uniques a month, and as of January 2009 is now close to 6,000. More importantly, my visit-to-clicks conversion for my ads are steadily improving. I realize I was in a low-paying niche, but it doesn’t stop me from getting that $1.50/day AdSense earning (and it continues to increase — imagine if I had 20 of those sites…). You need to subscribe to Court’s two sites right now, as he and Mark are currently releasing a series of very critical posts on how to improve keyword content on your sites. One of his recent posts featured a demo web site [link to defunct site removed] which you can follow exactly to the dot for your next niche site.
The other site I refer to for specific AdSense advice is Grizzly’s How To Make Money Online For Beginners [link to defunct site removed]. Don’t let the blog title and fugly design fool you — no matter how seasoned you are in AdSense, you’ll always benefit from Grizzly’s insights on making money with AdSense and other programs and methods. He continually convinced me that we should be chasing organic (a.k.a. search engine) traffic instead of social traffic if we’re seriously into the making money online business.
One of his recent eye-opening advices is that you may make more money by not posting [link to defunct site removed]. It makes sense, and this seems to be true for my case. My subscribers have jumped more than triple in the last couple of months, mostly obtained through organic traffic, and 80% subscribed via e-mail (the rest are RSS aggregators and search engine updaters). I only spend one hour a week updating my niche site, posting 3 original content at the most per update. Yet, by doing so, I still get more search engine visits every day.
The nice thing about it is that even during my month-long hiatus in December, traffic is constantly increasing without me updating the site. Chasing organic traffic also helped me increase my ads earning from Chitika, AdBrite, and shockingly, Amazon.com! I’m not eligible for eBay affiliate for some reason, but I’ll keep trying to apply until I get it. I’d hazard a guess that revenue from eBay could burst through the roof 🙂
In any case, enjoy Grizz’s long and valuable posts, and for those who’d like to get started making money online, he has a set of tutorials for you to refer to. Just scroll down the navigation bar on the right until you see the sections called “Make Money Blogging” and “AdSense Lessons”.
I’m checking out another program to see its effectiveness, but I’m taking my time on this fella. I’m going to work full-time starting next week, so I’m sure there’s a lot of things going on for me soon.
Besides, I’m starting two more blogs. Yeah, can you believe it? As if I’m not busy enough with my 30 other blogs! WebGrrrl.net (this site) will focus more on technology, the Internet and WordPress. Blogging Fu is going to be my space for exposing my techniques on how I actually update my 30+ blogs, as well as tutorials on how to start a blog. Lastly, Looking For Niches is a site that tells you how I go about researching and making money from my niche sites, as well as the tools I used to do my research. Both Blogging Fu [defunct] and Looking For Niches [defunct] will be launched as early as mid-Feb, so stay tuned!
Check out my other posts: « Bookmark: Useful online tools / Juggling my love for life and blogging »
Thanks for the props Lorna. I’m so happy to hear that the money is starting to flow. You have already figured out the next step – rinse and repeat. More blogs equals more traffic equals more money. I couldn’t agree more when it comes to Court and Mark. They understand keywords and niche blogging as well as anyone online and their advice is gold.
Well done and I hope your income soars in 09.
All the best and thanks again.
Griz
cool… I learn something today 😀
Great info. I’ve been trying my hand out in earning through blogs too but I’ve been stuck with Adsense (and have not earned anything yet). I’ll take a look at Grizzly’s How To Make Money Online For Beginners. Hope it does help me like it helped you. I’d like to hear about the “other program” you want to try out soon!
hi, nice blog. I didn’t see any google adsense ads on this site. How do you earn your adsense income?
Congrats Lorna. Its nice to have that cheque coming right. I long change the payout to Western union coz its so easy and fast.. like less an hour 🙂
Anyway, yep.. for me.. among all, Grizzly is the best for me and for others too. I have been reading his “ugly blogspot” for a long time already.. silently. He is the best for me.
I still remember the time where I gone AWOL, missing in action, my adsense jumped double. then I said, hey.. this site got potential, so i work on theme and update as frequent as I can… well what do you know.. the adsense stagnant… in fact in some days, the adsense down. the clicks i mean. Whats wrong I thought. Then the email arrived from Grizzly on his updates. I read and then I understood.. to make money with adsense… give them the exit as soon as possible.. hahhaha sounds funny.. but the exit click is to the adsense itself. Damn.. so logical.
Ok, i think i commented long here.. but just want to share your joy on adsense too. Grizzly is the man and i just wish I have more time to build more niche sites. good luck Lorna 🙂
Wow, Webgrrrl, I just read that you are Malaysian. Way to go. I am Malaysian too from KL.
I totally agree with your insight on the posting and I believe it’s a good Idea to let the post sink in a little with the search engine. Also if you have alot of sites it’s really hard to post every other day! I probably take it too far though by not posting for more than a month or so and I need to do better than that though!
Honestly, I’m amazed by amount of sites that you handle alone. Before this i do have 5-7 blogs. Right now just focus on 3 main blog including my personal blog in Malay language.
Congrats on the adsense income. I think there actually are a lot of great resources that show how to make money online. The problem for me is that I get started on one thing, stop and start another thing that looks better, etc.
The most important thing, once you’ve found something that works, is just to stay focused on that.
May I offer my congratulations on the AdSense check too? Good for you. I have yet to get my first check, but then, I haven’t really worked at it. 30 blogs? Wow, how do you do it? I have two and they seem to take up a lot of my time.
I like your point about useless ebooks and other paid crap. I have never bought any such books and “guides” as I prefer personal experience of my own 🙂 . I’m using AdSense too and I remember that at old ages I was earning maybe $50-$100 per month.
I was a dreamer that time and thanks to dreaming I was able to work on things harder. I pushed hard and it showed to be good for the income. It’s not about income only, of course. It’s about learning, understanding visitors and making them happy.
BTW, you could move the antispam plugin higher… When I submitted the comment first time I didn’t realise that there is a spam protection.
you say that it take a month to get the cash ” from the check ” for me it take 2 months and half to get it !!
but after western union it be ok ” just 1 day to get it ” .
I’m gonna try the Grizzly guy out. You have convinced me. I’m always looking to improve myself….and my blogs.
my congratulations!!!!!
Cool! When I got my first Adsense payment, i purposely opt for a Check payment because I want to smell and feel the ‘realness’.. LoL!
Great recommendations Lorna. I will be sure to check em out soon. And FYI, PaPaJoneh has been a sort of unexpected Guru for me 🙂
Go PaPa! he he he..
Thank for you honest recommendation of the two sites that I considered more favorable to read on.
My online friends are always talking also about it.
Thank for you honest recommendation of the two sites that I considered more favorable to read on.