As in 20 years, I began to earn 2-3K euros per month on Google Adsense, and how it ended
My story can be useful to anyone who is already starting to earn money on their website or just wants to try it.
My name is Alexander. I was born in Kazakhstan in 1992. At 12, I lost my father and moved to Transnistria, and then to Romania when I was 16. I am currently graduating from a university in Romania. In the future I plan to move to London and graduate with a master's degree in e-commerce. The family tragedy gave a huge impetus to learning how to make money in a variety of ways, from buying and selling scrap metal in an urban-type settlement to making money on a website on the Internet.
In this publication I will touch upon 3 of the most important topics that reflect my experience:
I. Website:
- Money for creating a website;
- What platform and hosting did you choose for the website;
- What problems did you encounter?
II. Promotion via Facebook and subscribers:
- How in a year and a half I made 250 thousand subscribers who brought me a lot of traffic (for Romanian media);
- Strategies for using Facebook pages as a source of revenue for a website.
III. Monetization through Google Adsense:
- How to start;
- A couple of life hacks, how to increase the number of clicks on advertising;
- How not to overdo it.
I warn you, I will state in chronological order, you will understand the connection, and I will mark important tips like this: ***
In 2011 (I was finishing high school then) I made a fan page on Facebook {Nu ai sa crezi}, where I posted various interesting information from books and Runet (translated into Romanian), as well as a large number of photos on the topic (you You can see them at this link). Received a lot of comments. Well, what are the comments ... I was covered with a 10-story mat for spelling and lexical errors, since then it was not very good in Romanian. Thus, users with their statements helped me learn even better the Romanian language. I remember that in a month I scored 10 thousand users on a fan page, and then the process started ... People “commented” and “liked” my posts, thereby increasing the reach and popularity of the page. Attention, the answer to the question of how I made the first 10 thousand likes:
*** My friends on Facebook have a large number of friends. Who has 500 friends, who has 3 thousand, who each has 100-200; I didn’t let anyone out of my sight. At each party, and there were a lot of them, before moving on to wine or beer, I politely (if necessary adding a bit of ironic pity or rudeness) asked to make friends page administrators, this allowed me to invite all their friends to like, marking my page as you like. This method is still effective now, fortunately Facebook made this option visible to all users of the page (those who “liked” it), and there is no need to appoint your friend as an administrator to send an invitation.
Expand your army of friends and acquaintances as much as possible and help each other.
Next, a question arose before me, how to make a website and monetize it ... I needed money for hosting and a website.
* At that time, I began to sell inexpensive fashion jewelry on the main street near an antique shop, hand-made craftsmen who sold their own products were standing next to me, and we all paid rent for the place together. But for some reason, the craftsmen looked askance in my direction, as the female students pressed on my jewelry (which I bought in kilograms and sold individually *) like bees on honey. I never loved envy.
So for the season I made enough money to pay the first year at the university, buy a laptop, and invest the rest in creating a website and promoting it.
* The first thing I did was register a domain name and buy a simple hosting from the Americans, which cost me more than three hundred dollars a year. Here I made a mistake by buying all sorts of stupid functions that are NOT NEEDED at all, since I didn’t understand anything then.
It was enough for me for 3 months, then the question arose of what to do so that the server does not fall from a lot of traffic. If 100 people visited the site, it crashed.
So, I refused their services and, on the advice of the support service, I bought a VPS server in Canada - already for $ 450 a year, but which kept 1,000-3,000 users on the site at the same time.
* For the site, I used Wordpress - the most popular platform among bloggers and even serious news sites. According to statistics, more than 21% of all sites in the world use WP.
Then I bought a Wordpress theme and installed it ... And again a mistake! The error was that I did not pay attention to the correctness of the code or optimization, since I did not understand this. So before buying, consult with programmers or those who are in the know.
When the site was ready, the Facebook page already had 30 thousand users who liked it. There were times when my posts on the site reached 100 thousand, which brought me a lot of traffic.
PDF with traffic statistics, only from the subdomain:
www.dropbox.com/s/1rabvel0yul6t4v/video%20subdomen.pdf?dl=0
Conclusion: do not complain that you do not have extra money to create a professional blog, earn in any way (preferably legal).
Unfortunately, I never had mentors, I myself learned from my mistakes and watched how others do it. I read blogs, various articles and books not related to the topic ... but at the same time after reading or at the time of reading, new ideas or solutions to old problems in connection with my website dawned on me. He dreamed and visualized his results. Maybe with a mentor I would succeed faster than in 2 years of blogging, but with this result I am satisfied, especially since he is very good for Romanian media.
My recommendations on books:
• “Word of mouth” (Andy Sernovitz)
• “Psychology of persuasion” (Robert Cialdini)
• “The art of thinking big” (Davitz Schwartz)
• “Increasing website conversion” (Khalid Saleh)
• “Genius on order "(Mark Levy)
I could not cope with translations and everything else. I had to take talented friends to the team, 2 translators and an editor, plus a programmer worked separately.
Then we translated all the coolest articles from Runet and adapted them to the Romanian public. A lot of traffic came to the site, at least for Romanian media. Lead the whole process ... you will already like this one! And working with a team is a great gift.
The site has become popular since most media have written complete nonsense. And I can say, I changed the Romanian media, thanks to my bilingual multiculture, and most bloggers began to copy or use “our” content style. Over time, I realized that people like the most, and what type of articles causes them emotions that they are ready to share, thus bringing more and more traffic.
I worked on traffic and quality.
My site was full of motivating articles, instructive stories, and also rich in photo and video articles. Its content is similar to the content from adme.ru, lifihacker.ru and fit4brain.com.
It is very important to find other pages on Facebook and make an interchange. So, I collaborated with 4 pages on Facebook. Each time we exchanged materials, photos, thereby mutually ensuring page growth + traffic to the site (for free).
* Pay for advertising and promotion if the income from it at least covers your expenses.
*** Communicate with your fans as friends, do not call them fans. Build good relationships with everyone who likes, share your experience with them. I know this is hard and kills a lot of time. But the results are worth it. You need to create an army that will follow you, and which will bring victories in different forms: more traffic, more profit, etc. I realized this very late, unfortunately.
*** Title and pictures:
The title of the article and the photo play a very large role, the conversion of Facebook traffic depends on this.
These are two Aces in your pocket! It is very important that both of them evoke emotion, passion.
*** On the site where the like button (and other diggers, such as share), come up with a cool phrase so that people share posts, in no case do not be humiliated.
*** Respond to good evil. Do not swear with anyone. Add all possible mats to the blacklist.
*** Do not forget about the variety of posts on the site: one photo, a lot of text, a lot of photo, a little text, video + text, tests, flash games, etc. Test materials on different topics, do an analysis and find out what brings more traffic to the site. Then you will understand what traffic brings you and what does not.
Conclusion: the proper use of Facebook tools (as well as other social networks) guarantees good results.
My only opportunity to monetize the site (in my case, Romanian media) is Google Adsense, because Affiliate (affiliate programs) did not work well on the site. However, I also squeezed 30-200 euros a month from partners.
My first profit on Google Adsense was 70 euros per month, the money came through Western Union. Perhaps nothing motivates to make more money, like the desire to earn even more.
Every month I earned more and more:
For this, I needed to raise the percentage of clicks on advertising and traffic to the site, mainly through FB. Initially, my CTR ranged from 0.40% to 0.80%.
Everyone who uses Google Adsense is trying to find articles on how to raise CTR in this ad network (if 100 people visited the site and one of them clicked on the advertisement, then CTR = 1%).
*** So, the video has more CTR posts; on posts where the main photo is hidden and only the text is visible, the CTR is also high.
*** The most profitable place to advertise is under the title. How to find out? Leave only one block on the entire site and test it. The most clickable ad unit is 328x280.
IMPORTANT: do not go too far with the CTR, as it turned out ME. (With fury and without a head on my shoulders, I brought it up to 25%)! If you have a website on a variety of topics, do not let the CTR exceed 3-5%. Anything more for niche sites is at risk. If you have a niche website, for example, about furniture, then you can flirt with up to 15-25% CTR.
In June 2013, I reached 15 thousand euros per month, which I never received (and before that I received 2-3 thousand per month for six months). Hah ... suffered a lot. All that helped me was my sporting life.
Bottom line: Google Adsense is a good tool, use it correctly and keep an eye on your CTR.
With the money that I made on Adsense, I bought a car and invested in the development of 2 new websites (the store and, of course, the most important thing for me is an online magazine where all loyal readers will subscribe for a year or month). Soon I plan to launch it, after I have achieved results, I will make my next post on Megamind.
With nothing to do, I created a project, the monetization of which is based on affiliate programs and consultations. The traffic is still small - 60-70 people a day, but it is growing every day:
When we reach organic traffic of 100 people a day, we plan to establish a chat and give free tips to beginning bloggers.
My contract with Google Adsense for me ended in failure. The reason for this was the high level of CTR for the site with my theme. But I came out of this stress with my head held high, which in difficult moments dawned on new projects, 2 of them would be ready for this summer. As I already mentioned, this is an online store, as well as a new blog from which I want to make a young paid magazine for smart ones.
Also in the plans to launch a network of sites for affiliate programs.
But the most important thing is patience. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Recently, a clever phrase caught my eye. I agree with her 100%: "surprisingly, people say that three years to create your own business is a long time, and going to work forty years is normal."
The article ends, but the topic itself does not end, I am ready to develop it and share my experience by answering your questions in the comments on this publication. Bonus to the first five who use Google Adsense, leave your site address in the comments, after I analyze it, I will help with practical advice. Waiting for your questions, I will be happy to help share my experience.
Well, I’ll summarize such a confident and cool individual (just kidding, I'm a normal modest guy with glasses, and even a boxer, and everyone thinks that boxers are stupid ...).
So, you have two options to choose from:
First: “you see that everything is real, work and good luck will smile at you! Meet me in the Bahamas. ”
Second: “you see how complicated everything is, a fool will never break through, so look for something easier. Yes, I myself quit doing this garbage and go to work as a waiter. ”
Personally, I would stop at the first option, but in general, let everyone decide for himself where he wants to spend the rest of his days - in Goa or in the city of Taishet. Everything is in your hands, feet, head and heart.
My name is Alexander. I was born in Kazakhstan in 1992. At 12, I lost my father and moved to Transnistria, and then to Romania when I was 16. I am currently graduating from a university in Romania. In the future I plan to move to London and graduate with a master's degree in e-commerce. The family tragedy gave a huge impetus to learning how to make money in a variety of ways, from buying and selling scrap metal in an urban-type settlement to making money on a website on the Internet.
In this publication I will touch upon 3 of the most important topics that reflect my experience:
I. Website:
- Money for creating a website;
- What platform and hosting did you choose for the website;
- What problems did you encounter?
II. Promotion via Facebook and subscribers:
- How in a year and a half I made 250 thousand subscribers who brought me a lot of traffic (for Romanian media);
- Strategies for using Facebook pages as a source of revenue for a website.
III. Monetization through Google Adsense:
- How to start;
- A couple of life hacks, how to increase the number of clicks on advertising;
- How not to overdo it.
I warn you, I will state in chronological order, you will understand the connection, and I will mark important tips like this: ***
1. How it all began
In 2011 (I was finishing high school then) I made a fan page on Facebook {Nu ai sa crezi}, where I posted various interesting information from books and Runet (translated into Romanian), as well as a large number of photos on the topic (you You can see them at this link). Received a lot of comments. Well, what are the comments ... I was covered with a 10-story mat for spelling and lexical errors, since then it was not very good in Romanian. Thus, users with their statements helped me learn even better the Romanian language. I remember that in a month I scored 10 thousand users on a fan page, and then the process started ... People “commented” and “liked” my posts, thereby increasing the reach and popularity of the page. Attention, the answer to the question of how I made the first 10 thousand likes:
*** My friends on Facebook have a large number of friends. Who has 500 friends, who has 3 thousand, who each has 100-200; I didn’t let anyone out of my sight. At each party, and there were a lot of them, before moving on to wine or beer, I politely (if necessary adding a bit of ironic pity or rudeness) asked to make friends page administrators, this allowed me to invite all their friends to like, marking my page as you like. This method is still effective now, fortunately Facebook made this option visible to all users of the page (those who “liked” it), and there is no need to appoint your friend as an administrator to send an invitation.
Expand your army of friends and acquaintances as much as possible and help each other.
2. How I created the website
Next, a question arose before me, how to make a website and monetize it ... I needed money for hosting and a website.
* At that time, I began to sell inexpensive fashion jewelry on the main street near an antique shop, hand-made craftsmen who sold their own products were standing next to me, and we all paid rent for the place together. But for some reason, the craftsmen looked askance in my direction, as the female students pressed on my jewelry (which I bought in kilograms and sold individually *) like bees on honey. I never loved envy.
So for the season I made enough money to pay the first year at the university, buy a laptop, and invest the rest in creating a website and promoting it.
* The first thing I did was register a domain name and buy a simple hosting from the Americans, which cost me more than three hundred dollars a year. Here I made a mistake by buying all sorts of stupid functions that are NOT NEEDED at all, since I didn’t understand anything then.
It was enough for me for 3 months, then the question arose of what to do so that the server does not fall from a lot of traffic. If 100 people visited the site, it crashed.
So, I refused their services and, on the advice of the support service, I bought a VPS server in Canada - already for $ 450 a year, but which kept 1,000-3,000 users on the site at the same time.
* For the site, I used Wordpress - the most popular platform among bloggers and even serious news sites. According to statistics, more than 21% of all sites in the world use WP.
Then I bought a Wordpress theme and installed it ... And again a mistake! The error was that I did not pay attention to the correctness of the code or optimization, since I did not understand this. So before buying, consult with programmers or those who are in the know.
When the site was ready, the Facebook page already had 30 thousand users who liked it. There were times when my posts on the site reached 100 thousand, which brought me a lot of traffic.
PDF with traffic statistics, only from the subdomain:
www.dropbox.com/s/1rabvel0yul6t4v/video%20subdomen.pdf?dl=0
Conclusion: do not complain that you do not have extra money to create a professional blog, earn in any way (preferably legal).
Unfortunately, I never had mentors, I myself learned from my mistakes and watched how others do it. I read blogs, various articles and books not related to the topic ... but at the same time after reading or at the time of reading, new ideas or solutions to old problems in connection with my website dawned on me. He dreamed and visualized his results. Maybe with a mentor I would succeed faster than in 2 years of blogging, but with this result I am satisfied, especially since he is very good for Romanian media.
My recommendations on books:
• “Word of mouth” (Andy Sernovitz)
• “Psychology of persuasion” (Robert Cialdini)
• “The art of thinking big” (Davitz Schwartz)
• “Increasing website conversion” (Khalid Saleh)
• “Genius on order "(Mark Levy)
3. Alone in the field is not a warrior, or how I created a mini-edition
I could not cope with translations and everything else. I had to take talented friends to the team, 2 translators and an editor, plus a programmer worked separately.
Then we translated all the coolest articles from Runet and adapted them to the Romanian public. A lot of traffic came to the site, at least for Romanian media. Lead the whole process ... you will already like this one! And working with a team is a great gift.
The site has become popular since most media have written complete nonsense. And I can say, I changed the Romanian media, thanks to my bilingual multiculture, and most bloggers began to copy or use “our” content style. Over time, I realized that people like the most, and what type of articles causes them emotions that they are ready to share, thus bringing more and more traffic.
I worked on traffic and quality.
My site was full of motivating articles, instructive stories, and also rich in photo and video articles. Its content is similar to the content from adme.ru, lifihacker.ru and fit4brain.com.
4. How I promoted the site through Facebook, or Facebook - the golden resource of traffic for the site
It is very important to find other pages on Facebook and make an interchange. So, I collaborated with 4 pages on Facebook. Each time we exchanged materials, photos, thereby mutually ensuring page growth + traffic to the site (for free).
* Pay for advertising and promotion if the income from it at least covers your expenses.
*** Communicate with your fans as friends, do not call them fans. Build good relationships with everyone who likes, share your experience with them. I know this is hard and kills a lot of time. But the results are worth it. You need to create an army that will follow you, and which will bring victories in different forms: more traffic, more profit, etc. I realized this very late, unfortunately.
*** Title and pictures:
The title of the article and the photo play a very large role, the conversion of Facebook traffic depends on this.
These are two Aces in your pocket! It is very important that both of them evoke emotion, passion.
*** On the site where the like button (and other diggers, such as share), come up with a cool phrase so that people share posts, in no case do not be humiliated.
*** Respond to good evil. Do not swear with anyone. Add all possible mats to the blacklist.
*** Do not forget about the variety of posts on the site: one photo, a lot of text, a lot of photo, a little text, video + text, tests, flash games, etc. Test materials on different topics, do an analysis and find out what brings more traffic to the site. Then you will understand what traffic brings you and what does not.
Conclusion: the proper use of Facebook tools (as well as other social networks) guarantees good results.
5. Now, the main point of the story: Google Adsense as one of the best ways to monetize a website
My only opportunity to monetize the site (in my case, Romanian media) is Google Adsense, because Affiliate (affiliate programs) did not work well on the site. However, I also squeezed 30-200 euros a month from partners.
My first profit on Google Adsense was 70 euros per month, the money came through Western Union. Perhaps nothing motivates to make more money, like the desire to earn even more.
Every month I earned more and more:
For this, I needed to raise the percentage of clicks on advertising and traffic to the site, mainly through FB. Initially, my CTR ranged from 0.40% to 0.80%.
Everyone who uses Google Adsense is trying to find articles on how to raise CTR in this ad network (if 100 people visited the site and one of them clicked on the advertisement, then CTR = 1%).
*** So, the video has more CTR posts; on posts where the main photo is hidden and only the text is visible, the CTR is also high.
*** The most profitable place to advertise is under the title. How to find out? Leave only one block on the entire site and test it. The most clickable ad unit is 328x280.
IMPORTANT: do not go too far with the CTR, as it turned out ME. (With fury and without a head on my shoulders, I brought it up to 25%)! If you have a website on a variety of topics, do not let the CTR exceed 3-5%. Anything more for niche sites is at risk. If you have a niche website, for example, about furniture, then you can flirt with up to 15-25% CTR.
In June 2013, I reached 15 thousand euros per month, which I never received (and before that I received 2-3 thousand per month for six months). Hah ... suffered a lot. All that helped me was my sporting life.
Bottom line: Google Adsense is a good tool, use it correctly and keep an eye on your CTR.
6. Forward to new victories
With the money that I made on Adsense, I bought a car and invested in the development of 2 new websites (the store and, of course, the most important thing for me is an online magazine where all loyal readers will subscribe for a year or month). Soon I plan to launch it, after I have achieved results, I will make my next post on Megamind.
With nothing to do, I created a project, the monetization of which is based on affiliate programs and consultations. The traffic is still small - 60-70 people a day, but it is growing every day:
When we reach organic traffic of 100 people a day, we plan to establish a chat and give free tips to beginning bloggers.
My contract with Google Adsense for me ended in failure. The reason for this was the high level of CTR for the site with my theme. But I came out of this stress with my head held high, which in difficult moments dawned on new projects, 2 of them would be ready for this summer. As I already mentioned, this is an online store, as well as a new blog from which I want to make a young paid magazine for smart ones.
Also in the plans to launch a network of sites for affiliate programs.
But the most important thing is patience. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Recently, a clever phrase caught my eye. I agree with her 100%: "surprisingly, people say that three years to create your own business is a long time, and going to work forty years is normal."
The article ends, but the topic itself does not end, I am ready to develop it and share my experience by answering your questions in the comments on this publication. Bonus to the first five who use Google Adsense, leave your site address in the comments, after I analyze it, I will help with practical advice. Waiting for your questions, I will be happy to help share my experience.
Well, I’ll summarize such a confident and cool individual (just kidding, I'm a normal modest guy with glasses, and even a boxer, and everyone thinks that boxers are stupid ...).
So, you have two options to choose from:
First: “you see that everything is real, work and good luck will smile at you! Meet me in the Bahamas. ”
Second: “you see how complicated everything is, a fool will never break through, so look for something easier. Yes, I myself quit doing this garbage and go to work as a waiter. ”
Personally, I would stop at the first option, but in general, let everyone decide for himself where he wants to spend the rest of his days - in Goa or in the city of Taishet. Everything is in your hands, feet, head and heart.