how to make money with adsense

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post called “Monetize Blog” about monetizing a blog with Adsense and affiliate programs. The purpose of the post was more about trying to rank in Google for the search term “monetize blog” than anything else. It wasn’t that this particular keyword is worth much money with only 700 searches in Google every month but there are few keywords in the “Make Money Online” niche that I feel capable of taking on with this blog and my meager skills. Thinking that I had a chance of ranking for this I gave it a shot.

So I made the post and got a couple of links anchored as “monetize blog” from a couple of other sites to let Google know that the post existed and to re-enforce the topic it covered. I had planned on getting more quality backlinks to really give it a boost but I have been busy so that’s all it got.

At this point when I search for Monetize Blog from the UK I’m 7th in Google but only 33rd from the USA. Not a bad result I suppose and I’m going to put in a little more effort to see if I can get closer to the top, but why would I go to all this trouble to get ranked in Google for a keyword that isn’t much cash?

Considering the “Make Money With Adsense” and “Make Money Online” niches are such hard nuts to crack I don’t think I can hope to get anywhere near an interesting position in Google without doing things in a roundabout way. I figure that if I can start to rank for easy keywords first then Google will maybe sit up and take notice and maybe at some point in the future I might be able to start making tracks in the Make Money Online results pages.

Although I never started this make money blog with the intent of crushing the MMO SERPs it will make an interesting experiment for me at least, if not for anyone else.

I’ve done some searches in Scroogle.org just to see where I’m sitting at the moment for certain terms so that in the future we can check up to so how things have progressed.

1. How To Make Money With Adsense — 9th in SERPS
2. Make Money With Adsense — 12th in SERPS
3. Earn Money With Adsense — 8th in SERPS
4. Make Money Online — 211th in SERPS — I’ve got a little bit of work to do here!
5. Monetize Blog — 9th — Woot!! I’m going to try and take Steve Pavlina’s No.2 spot for this keyword just for fun.

As an aside, I have to say that I’m pleased with the increase in search engine traffic that I have seen over the past few weeks on Adsense | Make Money Online. A lot of it has to do with fact I have installed the KeywordLuv and dofollow plugins on the blog meaning anyone who leaves a comment on a post gets a valuable link back to their own site. Other traffic that finds its way here is searchers from Google who are using long tail keywords relating to a few general topics, namely:

1. Make money with Adsense / Google
2. dofollow links
3. The Keyword Academy

Recent Keywords used to find this site

As I continue to add posts here I expect to see in increase in the variety of long tail keywords used by searchers who find this blog. My hope is that at some point I begin to get guaranteed targeted traffic on a regular basis for some of the big money keywords. Only time will tell.

You probably noticed that in the first sentence of this post I linked the Keyword “Monetize Blog” back to my old post with the same name. Hopefully by doing so I’ve given Google more information to chew on which will result in that post ranking higher. If I can combine that with getting a few more quality backlinks we should see it climb up Google a few more spots.

Adsense Revenue – June

Having a load of things to do over the last 3 weeks including thinking about doing the 100 posts in 30 days challenge so I didn’t get round to posting an Adsense Revenue update for June. Although if I remember rightly I hinted that my Adsense earnings were on track for nearly $400 in a post towards the end of the month. As it turned out I actually broke through the $400 mark to get to a nice healthy income of $407 for the month which was a vast improvement on all previous months.

Google Deindexed My Site

A bit of a nightmare situation occurred for me at the beginning of this month when my best earning site was deindexed from Google. It was my oldest site that I originally build nearly a year ago, long before I had ever heard of the keyword academy or before it even existed for that matter. The site was in the loans niche starting to do really well thanks to all the keyword academy techniques I had learnt over the last few months but I has stupidly disregarded the need to modifying the site itself and concentrated on on getting it up the SERPs.

Well with good search engine results in such a competitive niche comes scrutiny from you competitors, one of whom obviously saw my site, decided it was a bit spammy and reported it to Google. The site was built in a manner that deserved to get it deindexed, a fact that is now clear to me. The keyword density was far too high on the home page and the navigation was crap. I had actually planned on changing it over from a static site to a wordpress blog but had become complacent because it was starting to make me some good money, around $150 in Adsense earnings last month.

Anyway that was a big hit to take and quite frankly I felt like I had just taken a huge step backwards in my quest to make money online. Losing your best earning site is no fun but it has taught me two things. Firstly, you have to stay on your toes and ensure that your sites can stand up to an inspection from a Google engineer and secondly, we have to diversify in this game and never put all your eggs in the one basket. Build a whole load of sites and monetize them in different ways. I’ll continue to build “Make Money With Adsense” sites but I’m also going to look into learning how extract the maximum from sites built for affiliate products.

As things have turned out it looks like I’m going make nearly the same this month as I did in June so feel like I’ve recovered a bit from the shock of the site deindexing. Other sites that I’ve built are starting to get traffic and therefore produce Adsense clicks and a little revenue. I’ve also put Amazon affiliate widgets on a few sites and one of them has had quite a few sales so things are looking up. Hopefully by next month I’ll see increased Adsense earnings again after this months small hiccup.

I’ve been putting a bit of thought recently into the possibility of trying to make money writing to supplement the meager amount of cash I’m generating from my Internet Marketing activities. Admittedly things with my niche sites are heading in the right direction but as I don’t have a job in the real world it would be good to have a solid income that would give me extra money to put fuel in my motorcycle.

I think its a road that many people who are trying to earn money online consider due to the fact that most of us are attempting to avoid doing a real job at all costs and sitting in front of the computer at home typing articles seems a hell of a lot more appealing that getting to the office for 8:30 every morning. To our advantage most of us have been working on our article writing skills so we might as well put them to good use and make some fast cash to tide us over.

The problem of course is that any time I spend writing articles to make money will mean less time spent on my own sites but I reckon I waste so much time every day reading forum posts and generally faffing about. Having something to throw myself at which would generate immediate income has its attractions and it might keep me focused for the time that I do spend on my own projects.

So I’ve been researching how to make money writing through various channels, mostly searching Google for “make money writing online” and reading the forums at the Keyword Academy. From what I can gather my best bet seems to be to join up with a marketplace for freelance writers such as textbroker.com. Textbroker look like a nice professional outfit that I’d be happy to give a shot if only they accepted applicants from outside the US. They say they have plans to do so in the near future but for the moment their program is out of bounds for me but if you are in the States I suggest you give them a try and let me know how you get on.

The only other freelance writing jobs marketplaces I can find that might suit the bill are oDesk and Elance. Both look half way reasonable but the going rate for anyone willing to write for money looks to be pretty low from what I have seen. I think many people looking to get work done at these places are searching for someone who lives in a developing country who’s willing to work for under $8 a hour. Needless to say that kind of money isn’t exciting me.

At least at textbrokers you get paid dependent on the quality of your writing. Its not that I consider myself to be some sort of Shakespeare but I value my time more than many are willing to pay so I’m really going to have to do some digging to try and find writing jobs that pay something I’m willing to accept.

If anyone knows of an article writing marketplace similar to textbrokers where I can ply my well honed make money online and keyword aware writing skills from outside the USA then give me a shout and point me in the right direction. I’m also open to hearing about any other money making ideas that any of you may have, just leave a comment.