As at the age of 20, I started earning 2-3 K Euro per month on Google Adsense, and how did it end
My story can be useful to anyone who is already starting to make money on his website or just wants to try.
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 years old. I am currently finishing university in Romania. In the future I plan to move to London and graduate from the magistracy in e-commerce. Family tragedy gave a huge impetus to learn how to make money in different 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 address the 3 most important topics that reflect my experience:
I. Website:
- Money to create a site;
- What platform and hosting chose for the website;
- What problems faced.
Ii. Promotion through Facebook and subscribers:
- In a year and a half, I made 250 thousand subscribers, who brought me a lot of traffic (for Romanian media);
- Strategies to use Facebook pages as a source of income for the website.
Iii. Monetization via Google Adsense:
- How to start;
- A couple of life hacking, how to raise the number of clicks on advertising;
- How not to overdo it.
')
I’ll warn you, I’ll explain them in chronological order, you’ll understand the connection, and I’ll mark important tips like this: ***
In 2011 (I then finished high school) 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 photographs on the topic (you You can see them at this link). Received a lot of comments. Well, that there are comments ... I was covered with a 10-floor mat for spelling and lexical errors, since then the Romanian language is not very good. Thus, users with their statements helped me to learn even better Romanian language. I remember that in a month I scored 10 thousand users on the fan page, and then the process itself started ... People “commented” and “liked” my posts, thereby increasing the reach and popularity of the page. Attention, the answer to the question, as I did the first 10 thousand likes:
*** My friends on Facebook have a large number of people as friends. Who has 500 friends, who has 3 thousand, who has 100-200; I did not let anyone out of sight. At each party, and there were many of them, before going to wine or beer, I politely (if necessary, adding a bit of ironic pity or rudeness) asked me to make friends page administrators, this allowed me to invite all their friends to put likes, marking my page as you like. This method is still effective now, to your happiness, Facebook has 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 admin to send an invitation.
Expand as much as possible your army of friends and acquaintances and help each other.
Then I faced the question of how to make a website and monetize it ... I needed money for hosting and a website.
* At that time, I started selling inexpensive fashion jewelry on the main street near an antique shop, handy craftsmen were standing next to me, selling crafts of their own, and we all paid rent for a place. But for some reason the craftsmen looked askance in my direction, as the girls-students were pressing on my jewelry (which I bought in kilograms and sold individually) * like bees for honey. Never loved envy.
So for the season I made enough money to pay for my 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 simple hosting from 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, because I didn’t understand anything then.
I had enough of it for 3 months, then the question arose of what to do so that the server did not fall from a large amount of traffic. If the site went 100 people, he fell.
So, I refused their services and, on the advice of the support service, 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, because 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 large amount of traffic.
PDF with traffic statistics, only from 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 by any means (preferably legal).
Unfortunately, I have never had mentors, I myself learned from my mistakes and watched how others do it. I read blogs, various articles and books that are not related to the topic ... but at the same time, after reading or at the time of reading, new ideas or solutions of old problems connected with my web site dawned on me. Dreamed and visualized his results. Maybe with a mentor I would succeed in less than 2 years of blogging, but I am satisfied with this result, especially since he is very good for Romanian media.
My recommendations for books:
• “Sarafan marketing” (Andy Sernovits)
• “The Psychology of Persuasion” (Robert Cialdini)
• “The Art of Thinking Large-Scale” (Davits Schwartz)
• “Improving Website Conversion” (Khalid Saleh)
• “Genius on order” (Mark Levy)
I can't handle translations and everything else. I had to take talented friends into 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 ... one thing you already like! Yes, and working with a team is a great gift.
The site has become popular since most of the media wrote nonsense. And I can say that I changed the Romanian media due to my bilingual multiculturalism, and most bloggers began to copy or use “our” style of content. Over time, I realized that people like the most, and what type of articles evoke their emotions, which they are willing to share, thus bringing more and more traffic.
I worked on traffic and quality.
My site was full of motivating articles, instructive stories, as well as 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 interchange. So, I collaborated with 4 pages on Facebook. We each time exchanged materials, photographs, thereby mutually ensuring the growth of pages + traffic to the site (for free).
* Pay for advertising and promotion in the event that the income from it at least covers your expenses.
*** Chat with your fans as with friends, don't call them fans. Build a good relationship with everyone who likes, share your experience with them. I know it's hard and it 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 profits, etc. I realized this very late, unfortunately.
*** Title and photos:
A very important role is played by the title of the article and the photograph; the Facebook traffic conversion depends on it.
These are two Aces in your pocket! It is very important that both cause an emotion, a passion.
*** On the site where the button is like (and other digging, such as share), think up a cool phrase so that people share posts, in no case be humiliated.
*** Answer evil with good. Do not swear to 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-little text, video + text, tests, flash games, etc. Test materials on various topics, make an analysis and find out what brings more traffic to the site. Then you will understand what brings you traffic, 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 a site (in my case, Romanian media) is Google Adsense, since Affiliate programs do not work well on the site. However, I also squeezed from partners for 30-200 euros per month.
My first profit in 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 more.
Every month I earned more and more:
To do this, I had 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 about how to raise CTR in this advertising network (if there are 100 people visiting the site, and one of them made a click on the advertisement, then CTR = 1%).
*** So, on the video posts CTR more; for posts where the main photo is hidden and only text is visible, the CTR is also high.
*** The most profitable place for advertising is under the title. How to find out? Leave only one block on the whole site and test it. The most clickable ad unit is 328x280.
MOST IMPORTANT: do not overdo it with CTR, as it happened with ME. (With rage and without a head on my shoulders, I brought him up to 25%)! If you have a site on a variety of topics, do not let the CTR exceed 3-5%. Anything more is free of risk for non-niche sites. If you have a niche website, for example, about furniture products, you can play around with up to 15-25% of CTR.
In June 2013, I reached 15 thousand euros a month, which I never received (and before that I received 2-3 thousand a month for half a year). Hah ... suffered a lot. All that helped me was my sporting life.
Conclusion: Google Adsense is a good tool, use it correctly and watch the CTR level.
With the money I’ve made with 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 issue an annual or monthly subscription). Soon I plan to launch, after I achieve the results, I will make my next post on “Megamind”.
From 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 per day, but it is already growing every day:
When organic traffic reaches 100 people a day, we plan to set up a chat and give free advice to novice bloggers.
My contract with Google Adsense ended in tears for me. The reason for this was a high level of CTR for a site with my theme. But I came out of this stress with my head held high, which in difficult times dawned on new projects, 2 of them will be ready for this summer. As I have 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 plans to launch a network of sites under the affiliate program.
But the most important thing is patience. What does not kill you makes you stronger. Recently, I caught the eye of a clever phrase. I agree with her 100%: “surprisingly, people say that three years to create their own business is a long time, and going to work for 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 to this publication. Bonus to the first five who use Google Adsense, leave in the comments the address of your site, after I analyze it, I will help with practical advice. Waiting for your questions, I will be glad to help share my experience.
Well, and I will summarize such a self-confident and tough individual (just kidding, I'm a normal modest guy with glasses, and a boxer as well, and everyone thinks that boxers are stupid ...).
So, you have two options to choose from:
The first: “you see that everything is real, work and good luck will smile at you! See you in the Bahamas. ”
The second: “you see how complicated everything is, the fool will never break through, so look for something simpler. Yes, I myself quit doing this garbage and go to work as a waiter. ”
Personally, I would dwell on the first option, but in general, let everyone decide for himself where he wants to spend the rest of the days - in Goa or in the city of Taishet. Everything is in your arms, legs, 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 years old. I am currently finishing university in Romania. In the future I plan to move to London and graduate from the magistracy in e-commerce. Family tragedy gave a huge impetus to learn how to make money in different 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 address the 3 most important topics that reflect my experience:
I. Website:
- Money to create a site;
- What platform and hosting chose for the website;
- What problems faced.
Ii. Promotion through Facebook and subscribers:
- In a year and a half, I made 250 thousand subscribers, who brought me a lot of traffic (for Romanian media);
- Strategies to use Facebook pages as a source of income for the website.
Iii. Monetization via Google Adsense:
- How to start;
- A couple of life hacking, how to raise the number of clicks on advertising;
- How not to overdo it.
')
I’ll warn you, I’ll explain them in chronological order, you’ll understand the connection, and I’ll mark important tips like this: ***
1. How it all began
In 2011 (I then finished high school) 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 photographs on the topic (you You can see them at this link). Received a lot of comments. Well, that there are comments ... I was covered with a 10-floor mat for spelling and lexical errors, since then the Romanian language is not very good. Thus, users with their statements helped me to learn even better Romanian language. I remember that in a month I scored 10 thousand users on the fan page, and then the process itself started ... People “commented” and “liked” my posts, thereby increasing the reach and popularity of the page. Attention, the answer to the question, as I did the first 10 thousand likes:
*** My friends on Facebook have a large number of people as friends. Who has 500 friends, who has 3 thousand, who has 100-200; I did not let anyone out of sight. At each party, and there were many of them, before going to wine or beer, I politely (if necessary, adding a bit of ironic pity or rudeness) asked me to make friends page administrators, this allowed me to invite all their friends to put likes, marking my page as you like. This method is still effective now, to your happiness, Facebook has 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 admin to send an invitation.
Expand as much as possible your army of friends and acquaintances and help each other.
2. How I created the website
Then I faced the question of how to make a website and monetize it ... I needed money for hosting and a website.
* At that time, I started selling inexpensive fashion jewelry on the main street near an antique shop, handy craftsmen were standing next to me, selling crafts of their own, and we all paid rent for a place. But for some reason the craftsmen looked askance in my direction, as the girls-students were pressing on my jewelry (which I bought in kilograms and sold individually) * like bees for honey. Never loved envy.
So for the season I made enough money to pay for my 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 simple hosting from 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, because I didn’t understand anything then.
I had enough of it for 3 months, then the question arose of what to do so that the server did not fall from a large amount of traffic. If the site went 100 people, he fell.
So, I refused their services and, on the advice of the support service, 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, because 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 large amount of traffic.
PDF with traffic statistics, only from 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 by any means (preferably legal).
Unfortunately, I have never had mentors, I myself learned from my mistakes and watched how others do it. I read blogs, various articles and books that are not related to the topic ... but at the same time, after reading or at the time of reading, new ideas or solutions of old problems connected with my web site dawned on me. Dreamed and visualized his results. Maybe with a mentor I would succeed in less than 2 years of blogging, but I am satisfied with this result, especially since he is very good for Romanian media.
My recommendations for books:
• “Sarafan marketing” (Andy Sernovits)
• “The Psychology of Persuasion” (Robert Cialdini)
• “The Art of Thinking Large-Scale” (Davits Schwartz)
• “Improving Website Conversion” (Khalid Saleh)
• “Genius on order” (Mark Levy)
3. One is not a warrior in the field, or how I created a mini-edition
I can't handle translations and everything else. I had to take talented friends into 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 ... one thing you already like! Yes, and working with a team is a great gift.
The site has become popular since most of the media wrote nonsense. And I can say that I changed the Romanian media due to my bilingual multiculturalism, and most bloggers began to copy or use “our” style of content. Over time, I realized that people like the most, and what type of articles evoke their emotions, which they are willing to share, thus bringing more and more traffic.
I worked on traffic and quality.
My site was full of motivating articles, instructive stories, as well as photo and video articles. Its content is similar to the content from adme.ru, lifihacker.ru and fit4brain.com.
4. How did I promote the site through Facebook, or Facebook - the golden traffic resource for the site
It is very important to find other pages on Facebook and make interchange. So, I collaborated with 4 pages on Facebook. We each time exchanged materials, photographs, thereby mutually ensuring the growth of pages + traffic to the site (for free).
* Pay for advertising and promotion in the event that the income from it at least covers your expenses.
*** Chat with your fans as with friends, don't call them fans. Build a good relationship with everyone who likes, share your experience with them. I know it's hard and it 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 profits, etc. I realized this very late, unfortunately.
*** Title and photos:
A very important role is played by the title of the article and the photograph; the Facebook traffic conversion depends on it.
These are two Aces in your pocket! It is very important that both cause an emotion, a passion.
*** On the site where the button is like (and other digging, such as share), think up a cool phrase so that people share posts, in no case be humiliated.
*** Answer evil with good. Do not swear to 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-little text, video + text, tests, flash games, etc. Test materials on various topics, make an analysis and find out what brings more traffic to the site. Then you will understand what brings you traffic, 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 a site (in my case, Romanian media) is Google Adsense, since Affiliate programs do not work well on the site. However, I also squeezed from partners for 30-200 euros per month.
My first profit in 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 more.
Every month I earned more and more:
To do this, I had 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 about how to raise CTR in this advertising network (if there are 100 people visiting the site, and one of them made a click on the advertisement, then CTR = 1%).
*** So, on the video posts CTR more; for posts where the main photo is hidden and only text is visible, the CTR is also high.
*** The most profitable place for advertising is under the title. How to find out? Leave only one block on the whole site and test it. The most clickable ad unit is 328x280.
MOST IMPORTANT: do not overdo it with CTR, as it happened with ME. (With rage and without a head on my shoulders, I brought him up to 25%)! If you have a site on a variety of topics, do not let the CTR exceed 3-5%. Anything more is free of risk for non-niche sites. If you have a niche website, for example, about furniture products, you can play around with up to 15-25% of CTR.
In June 2013, I reached 15 thousand euros a month, which I never received (and before that I received 2-3 thousand a month for half a year). Hah ... suffered a lot. All that helped me was my sporting life.
Conclusion: Google Adsense is a good tool, use it correctly and watch the CTR level.
6. Forward to new victories.
With the money I’ve made with 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 issue an annual or monthly subscription). Soon I plan to launch, after I achieve the results, I will make my next post on “Megamind”.
From 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 per day, but it is already growing every day:
When organic traffic reaches 100 people a day, we plan to set up a chat and give free advice to novice bloggers.
My contract with Google Adsense ended in tears for me. The reason for this was a high level of CTR for a site with my theme. But I came out of this stress with my head held high, which in difficult times dawned on new projects, 2 of them will be ready for this summer. As I have 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 plans to launch a network of sites under the affiliate program.
But the most important thing is patience. What does not kill you makes you stronger. Recently, I caught the eye of a clever phrase. I agree with her 100%: “surprisingly, people say that three years to create their own business is a long time, and going to work for 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 to this publication. Bonus to the first five who use Google Adsense, leave in the comments the address of your site, after I analyze it, I will help with practical advice. Waiting for your questions, I will be glad to help share my experience.
Well, and I will summarize such a self-confident and tough individual (just kidding, I'm a normal modest guy with glasses, and a boxer as well, and everyone thinks that boxers are stupid ...).
So, you have two options to choose from:
The first: “you see that everything is real, work and good luck will smile at you! See you in the Bahamas. ”
The second: “you see how complicated everything is, the fool will never break through, so look for something simpler. Yes, I myself quit doing this garbage and go to work as a waiter. ”
Personally, I would dwell on the first option, but in general, let everyone decide for himself where he wants to spend the rest of the days - in Goa or in the city of Taishet. Everything is in your arms, legs, head and heart.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/286342/
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