The story started 3 years ago, I launched my first blog at Tek3D with ZERO dollar (a free domain is registered at co.cc and a free hosting service I got on a webmaster forum). After 4 months launching, I still stuck in monetizing that blog, dozens of different advertising networks were tried and I failed on all of them. The situation didn’t change until Adsense approved my account and they were really my savior.
My Adsense Earnings Were Great …
It took just 5 minutes to implement Adsense on my blog, copy & paste ad code and BOOM! The ads started displaying. It sounds easy but in fact, I earned less than 1 buck per day in the first few months, the first payment was only issued exactly 1 year later. The check of $102 marks my first money earning on the Internet and I was more convinced that I could earn more than that. The second check came 4 months after, then 2 months for the third check and I have received their money every month since then. On a good day, the ads could generate $46 while $900 was the highest earning in a month. The earnings helped me buy top-level domains on Godaddy and cover Hostgator hosting package, therefore, I always appreciate Adsense for that.
Till the end of 2011, Adsense was still the best revenue source of TechWalls and it played an important role to help my online income reach $1,300 for the first time (this amount is as twice as the salary of my 9-5 job). However, the situation has changed starting this year due to many reasons. I went to New York for study and couldn’t spend much time for blogging. The number of new posts produced by me is just 2-3 each month. Most articles on TechWalls now are written by our dedicated writers like Emmanuel Banks, Sanjib Saha or Jack Kieffer. Thanks a lot for helping me maintain TechWalls.
… But it is the 3rd revenue source now
Yeah, the Adsense earnings have dropped significantly in the last 6 months. I even think that I will not receive Adsense’s check every month soon. Apart from the reasons mentioned above, another important one is that I removed one more Adsense ad block on this blog. As you can see, there are just 1 ad on top and 1 ad in the middle.
Also we must tell here the traffic. For my niche, Adsense needs huge traffic to earn a good amount. This site had nearly 4,000 pageviews per day and as a result, the Adsense income continued reaching a new peak each month. TechWalls could easily earn $30 each day but those beautiful days have gone. My site was hit seriously by Google Panda later last year and also lost some important keywords at the same time. Fortunately I never put all eggs in one basket and tried diversifying revenue sources to about 6 different ones, so the online earnings are still kept consistent despite the decrease of Adsense earnings. I will write more about my solutions and how I still can earn more than $1,000/month in the next post. If you are worried about the decrease in your online income, you shouldn’t be as there are always solutions for all issues. It just takes some efforts to find out.
Are you placing Adsense ads on your site and is it increasing or decreasing? Should we rely on Adsense as the solely revenue source?
Disclosure: We might earn commission from qualifying purchases. The commission help keep the rest of my content free, so thank you!
Ming Jong Tey says
Hi Tuan,
I think we shouldn’t rely on Adsense. In fact, I stop my plan to scale up on Adsense sites. The recent Penguin update of course contribute to that, but the main reason is the account issue. I have seen quite a number of adsense account get closed down by Google without reason (yes, they won’t tell you).
Though my account is still in good standing, but I am reluctant to monetize via adsense. What happen if my account get closed? This is way too risky…
I suggest build a list and monetize via affiliate marketing to replace Adsense.
Cheers,
Ming
Tuan Do says
Yeah that’s so true, Ming.
When I earned over $800 from only Adsense, I was very worried and didn’t know what would happen if my account was banned. I’ve seen some big blogs have been warned recently and there is not good standing with Adsense in my view. I say that because there have been a lot of invalid clicks on my account. When we rely on solely on Adsense, others can easily ruin our business by generating invalid clicks. It is really too risky.
Affiliate marketing seems to be a more consistent way to monetize our blogs.
Thanks for your suggestion. :)
Nalaka says
Realy great post Tuan Do! plz.. write post about other blog moneytizing methods. thanx :)
Tuan Do says
Thanks,
I’m glad you love this post. I will complete that post very soon. Keep coming back and I expect your comments. :)
Sanjeev says
Tuan great posts. keep going on.
TechGopal says
Tuan keep it up & hope we will read more such nice content in future also & u r earning will grow even more
PrIyAnGsHu says
My Adsense earnings had also been decreased seriously in the last 3 months because my primary blog was being hit by Google Penguin. But I dont need to worry, I have many blogs with diversified revenue sources. This helps me to earn consistent income each month from all of my blogs :) !
Tuan Do says
I am glad you still can earn well with your blogs. I visited you primary site sometimes but seems like it is down for a while. Did you abandon that site?
PrIyAnGsHu says
Nope, it is still alive :) . . . I had just recently changed my nameservers. That might be the cause for that specific downtime.
Abhishek says
I was banned from adsense last year, it was a set back. But services like Infolinks and buysellads are also good to supersede Google Adsense.