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I started working with Adsense on October 19th, 2005. As of yesterday, April 22nd 2007 I finally had my first $100 day. I know there are people here who average more than that but for me it's a milestone and I want to celebrate (Margarita's tonight!) I also wanted to give something back to the webmaster community. I know I haven't posted much here but I have lurked quite a bit and it's been helpful. <br />What has helped me... <br /><br /><br />Maintain site maps and keep them up to date <br /><br />Cultivate visitor loyalty - most of my visitors (usually around 2/3) are people using bookmarks to come back <br /><br />Make content that people really want to see <br /><br />When I see a way to do something better than what is currently available, do it. <br /><br />When I see a way to substantially improve what I already have out there, do it (but sometimes this has backfired) <br /><br />Keep 4 or 5 new things in the pipeline at all times. The cycle for my content is typically a month or two of slow build-up, then a quick (100 ~ 300%/week) spike, followed by a small decline (~ 10%/week) and then a plateau. The best content I have continues a gentle rise from the plateau. Lesser content tends to have a sharper decline after the peak (20 ~ 30%) followed by stagnation or a gradual decay. Once I had enough new stuff in works I started getting a steady stream of peaks which seem to make the daily revenue more uniform. <br />What did not really help me... <br />(I realize the things which did not work out well for me probably do great by some people.) <br /><br /><br />Link swapping with other websites <br /><br />Attempting to manipulate search engine results by artificial means. <br /><br />Using ads to drive traffic to my sites (I turned $50 into a nickel in one day) <br /><br />Banner ads across the top of a page (thousands of impressions, no clicks) <br /><br />The Adsense "heat map" - my best results are coming from sites with navigation on the left, content in the middle and single a column of ads on the right of tall pages or a single rectangle in the upper right corner of shorter pages. <br /><br />Excessive number of ads per page. At first I was putting them everywhere possible but in my case too many ads seemed to be causing a decline in the number of return visitors <br /><br />Attempting to perform well with "high paying keywords" by covering topics that I am not really passionate about. I just don't care much about asbestos and structured settlements <br /><br />Parked domains <br /><br />If all I can do is make something the same as what is currently available, don't bother; my "me too" sites have never run a close second, more like 999th. <br />About the work... |
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