Treat AdSense Like a Business
People don’t like to hear me say that AdSense is a business
because it sounds too much like work is involved. And we all know
people hate to work. They want to become rich with as little
effort as possible. ☺
After all, it sounds much better to hear me say you can
easily make money by putting Google ads on your site or
blog than it does to say, “You have to build a ton of content,
learn how to optimize every page for the search engines, and
market your site or blog like crazy.”
Who wants to hear that?
But the truth is, the reason most people never make much with AdSense is they
don’t realize this is all about learning how to draw enough targeted traffic to your
site or blog to make any worthwhile money. And that’s purely marketing.
If you can’t generate at least 100 unique visitors per day to your site, you’re
probably not going to earn enough AdSense revenue to make this process worth
your time.
People aren’t just going to stumble upon your site or blog just because you
created it. It’s not like offline, where you can throw up a Lemonade Stand in the
middle of a busy street and thirsty people will just find you and buy your
lemonade.
The Web is much different. People find websites and blogs by
searching for information in a search engine like Google. And
Google only “recommends” sites that provide useful information
and are recommended by other related sites.
And when I say “Google recommends sites” understand that I mean ranks. So
when you see a site ranked #1 for a particular keyword phrase in Google, it’s
because Google can tell how many other related and authority sites are linked to
them using the keyword phrase that was searched.
What do I mean by authority sites? These are sites that have been deemed
popular by Google because of their high traffic and quality inbound links (other
sites linking to them.)
So if you are building a site on how to negotiate a new car deal then it would be
beneficial for you to get recommended by (or linked from) the popular site
CarBuyingTips.com.
At the time I’m writing this, they rank #1 for the phrase car buying tips in Google
so that lets you know they must be a pretty popular site for keywords related to
car buying. And they earned that number 1 rank by years of building useful,
unique tips on car buying that no other site offers.
Over time other sites and blogs related to buying cars thought this was a useful
site so they link back to them, many of them voluntarily. Part of Google’s
formula for ranking sites is to calculate how many other sites link to a certain
Web site and what keywords are used to describe that site.
For example, do a search on Google now for gardening tips.
What shows up? Generally sites that have a great deal of information on
gardening. The sites closest to the top are probably sites that are linked from
many other respected sites related to gardening.
Those people on the left side of Google’s results (the natural results) are not
paying Google for that rank. They earned it through their useful content and by
other sites linking to them.
So your goal with AdSense is to become THAT site people recommend in
whatever niche/subject you choose to focus on. You want people to say “Hey,
this is a cool site. I’m going to tell my visitors about them.” Voila! They’ve
provided you with a free link without you having to ask.
Not only is this free traffic, but Google looks at it this way…
Site A is linking to Site B. So that must mean Site A thinks Site B is a pretty
useful/interesting site on “topic X”. The more links you get to your site like this,
the greater chance Google will rank you higher for whatever keywords your site
focuses on. Any time a related site links to you, it’s sort of like a vote for
your site in the search engine’s eyes.
My site, www.flat-stomach-exercises.com gets found every month for over
25,000 different keywords related to fitness and flattening the stomach. A big
reason for that traffic is because people voluntarily link to me from their sites,
blogs, etc. Often times I don’t even know they’ve done it until I check my traffic
stats.
That’s the importance of building unique sites that offer a great deal of useful
information on a specific topic. People will want to link to you.
So while I would love to tell you that making money with AdSense is about
quickly slapping some ads and publishing your Web site or Blog. It’s so
much more than that because without the traffic, you’ll never make any
money.
And you definitely have to earn that traffic.
1) After you’ve created your site, you have to take the time to learn how to
generate that wonderful, free search engine traffic. That means going to sites
like www.seomoz.org and reading about how to get ranked high in the popular
engines. Don’t ever pay anyone to submit your site to any of the search engines.
You can learn all you need to know about search engine optimization (SEO) for
free on the Web. Submitting is free too.
2) Get creative and learn how to market your site in social networking sites like
Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.
3) Or if you’ve created a blog, you can join a site like www.technorati.com to help
drive more visits to your blog. Also read up on Darren Rowse’s great site
ProBlogger.net.
4) Do a search for forums/message boards related to your topic. If you’re doing
a site for stay-at-home moms, it would be beneficial for you to join the
ivillage.com forums, create a profile and promote your site in your signature file.
Now every time you go and post a message on that forum, your link will be
attached to your message.
You can do this with any niche. Whatever your topic is, do a search for your
topic + forums in Google to find message boards related to your topic.
Every little bit helps, but you have to remember, this all takes time. For
example, it generally takes a few months for the search engines to start giving
you that free traffic and that’s assuming you’ve done your homework and learned
how to optimize your pages for the search engines.
Treat this as your business, and remember businesses take time and work
to develop.
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