For example, lets assume that you have a site that is several years old that’s bringing in a decent amount of revenue via ADSense. You are at a massive advantage if you are one of the very few site(s) in that niche or market because you have effectively built up a competitive moat – as Warren Buffet says. But the issue here is that, like it or not, you are at the Mercy of Google. Meaning, every step in your little “adsense dance” has not only been choreographed by the mighty G – they actually control the music! In other words, if Google decides that your site is no longer as important as you might have thought – regardless of unique content or time spent on building it, they can and will de-index you in a heartbeat. The idea of someone being able to make you (and your profit!) disappear in a blink of an eye doesn’t sound fun to me. Google has been known to do this arbitrarily – even if your websites and marketing tactics are purely white-hat. Recently, I heard about a guy who had 600+ of his sites getting de-indexed from Google. Damn – That’s gotta fucking suck. The point here is that, don’t bet too much on Google or ADSense and diversify your online income as much as possible.

My latest Google ADSense project involves a very specific feature within the new Google+ platform. I have no idea if this is a bad move on my part because the “product” I am promoting is actually a Google product. I originally registered a domain with the name “GoogleXXXXX.com” and decided to dump that domain and grab a different one without “Google” in it – mostly out of any potential trademark violations. So far, I have populated the blog with 10-15 high quality posts along with another half a dozen scheduled to be automatically posted within WordPress. The site is less than 1 month old and contains 3 ADSense blocks within Post pages – although most of the products being promoted within these AdBlocks are either Google related or completely unrelated (ie: dating etc.). Not exactly sure if that is a bad thing or not – we’ll just wait and see.

As for my Amazon Affiliate site – I decided to go all out on it to see how it can turn out. The site is pretty much done and fully setup with enough posts for about two months (55+ product posts) set in the WordPress Scheduler so it will gradually push out these posts so it shouldn’t look suspicious or anything in the eyes of search engines. The thing is, this site actually does not look like a affiliate site at all – it looks more like a legitimate eCommerce site. The users are actually able to use a “add to cart” feature to really add products to the cart. At the very end however, when “checkout” is pressed they will get sent to Amazon via affiliate link with their entire cart preserved. The site also has things like: privacy policy, terms and conditions, return/refund policy, office hours, contact etc. to preserve the overall legitimacy and trust of the site. I am not going to touch this site for a few months and after I have a database of several hundred (or even a thousand+) products in the site, I am probably going to start thinking about sending traffic to the site. Keep in mind that this site focuses on only a certain type of product – it’s not necessarily a super narrow niche, but it’s a niche nevertheless. It seems like the people who are having success with Amazon Associates only focus on a certain type of product.

Oh, Also: I started another simple image based entertainment site because the idea seemed cool and I couldn’t find any serious competitors. Only time can tell how these sites can turn out – my deadline for all of my sites is 1 year. After 1 year, before domain-renewal time, I perform a assessment of the potential of any given site and either kill it off or sell it. So that’s what I am working on so far – I hope you are trying some things out on your spare time as well. Exciting times. Have a great day!

Most of these folks are what I call : armchair gurus – I can say that because I used to be one. They read so much tips, techniques and strategies about how to make money, yet they still lack any solid results. Generally the process goes a bit like this:

1.) Read, Watch, Learn New Techniques, Strategies from X blog

2.) Try learned tactic/strategy/etc.

3.) Get angry at making on $0.45 on AdSense and either a.) quit Internet Marketing or b.) go back to step #1 and repeat the process.

This is the problem with newbies starting to learn this stuff for the first time – they treat it as some sort of a novelty thing they are trying out during “off time” from their regular life. I would actually argue that this is much more difficult than a standard job because there are no clear paths to success – there are only successful models that others have used to generate the desired effects. You are pretty much left alone to navigate your own way through the vast ocean of information, techniques and redundant, never ending sales with big yellow “Buy Now” buttons for products that promise you otherwise. Most of this is a illusion. You DON’T need to spend any  money at all when your learning Internet Marketing – in fact, I recommend that you don’t. Why? Because Internet Marketing comes down to being able to generate the highest quality of content imaginable in any given topic. That’s it. Now, there are a boatload of tactics, techniques, strategies etc. that can be used to generate traffic, optimize, convert etc. – but has absolute low priority since all of that can be literally learned in a few weeks. The hard part is creating high quality content.

The other tricky part is choosing which industry or as it’s popularly known “niche” to produce content for. I started creating a bunch of sites purely out of motivation for financial gain and most of them failed or I gave up on eventually. I think this is a interesting sign – and rightly so. The thing is, you are not going to stick with something if you are not enjoying it and the simple answer is to work on projects that YOU find interesting, fascinating, fun etc. It’s all about angles – when you initially look around to see the competition in your area of interest/expertise, you need to find a angle that has not been thought of yet and exhaust the shit out of that angle in every possible way. Don’t worry about people not reading your stuff in the beginning because in reality, you are actually writing for YOU and the content will be worth a tenfold more when it gains momentum.

Also know that there are NO RULES to this thing, this wonderful ecosystem which blossoms opportunities day in and day out. You don’t need to be a blogger or do affiliate marketing or any of that bullshit. If anything, the least obvious answer has more chances of succeeding online than the most accepted. So work on creating your own way to make dough on the web. Think of an idea. Implement faster. Evaluate the status and kill it – if its not producing the results within a year.

Take 6figureblogger for example. I won’t be following any “industry standards” or doing any promotion for this blog on purpose. I see no reason to blog x times per day/week if I don’t have anything to say or don’t feel like having anything to say. I use this blog primarily as an outlet to organize (and share) my thoughts about this industry. Ultimately, this is the entire reason why I got into Internet Marketing – freedom, and following some preset rule does not constitute freedom in my book. Furthermore, when I actually make it to 6 figures of profit per year – I no longer have to worry about any of the “rules” anyway because I have actually produced the result that I set out to do unlike thousands of others who attempt, then crash and burn. At which point, I have created my own set of guidelines and rules. That my friends is the entire goal of this.

I have been experimenting with quite a bit of potential online revenue sources lately and I just realized that I had completely forgotten about even having a AdSense account. I was helping out a buddy of mine setup his own blog recently and he asked me a question about AdSense – which sparked my interest in it recently. While my AdSense account has been sitting dormant for a few years – I am giving some thought toward the idea of re-vamping my efforts with AdSense with a few niche sites. We’ll See. Onwards.

Hi! I would like to buy some Ramen.

I have AdSense setup on roughly 5-7 different sites – all with 100% unique, original content. Each of these sites were not necessarily well researched and put through a competition analysis phase before being built, instead: I built them out of pure interest and curiosity. I also strategically placed AdSense in all of these sites to see how it would turn out – the screenshot above speaks for itself. Just enough to buy some Ramen or live in a 3rd world country for a week. That’s pretty shitty if you ask me – but I know there’s a correct way to work AdSense and a incorrect way. The above results are obviously due to doing it the wrong way.

Only the honest will survive

Just like anything, there’s a heavy imbalance when it comes to high earners on AdSense, meaning about 70-85% of the AdSense publishers are making pennies – at least that is my conclusion. It’s not bad, but I am curious about the thought process behind the remaining (successful) 15-30%.. Especially after recent Google algorithm updates (ie: Panda etc.), It is no longer sufficient to build a fly by night website (even if it has unique, interesting content) to be able to be monetized by AdSense. If you are considering using AdSense as a primary form of monetization – you need to create super sites within niches and maintain a high level of quality long term. At least, these are the types of sites that I see surviving and pulling in decent revenue consistently in the future. I am talking 50+ pages/posts minimum – delving into every aspect of a particular topic/niche in great detail. These content would also have to be unique, well researched and highly targeted of course.

The point here is that – it’s going to take significantly more time and effort to build the same types of niche type sites in comparison to a few years ago. Why? The obvious answer is competition – but I think there’s a bigger trend: transparency. The thing is, black-hat/grey-hat SEO tactics have its time and place, but these methods are not scalable in the long run. Search engines are getting smarter and more accurate every day and it is almost guaranteed that the scientists behind Google will almost always have a leg up when it comes to weeding out the crappy/low quality content.

It took me a while to actually accept this fact because I LOVE instant gratification when it comes to SEO. But I realize that my paranoia is not really worth the effort when I could spend a little bit more time building a legitimate, valuable site.

Final Thoughts

It’s important to diversify your online income among a multitude of channels without putting all your eggs in one basket. I know – it’s quite cliched financial advice, but you’d be surprised how many people get attached to one “cash cow” when it’s performing well – and end up with nothing when it dies out. A better approach would be to literally put your hand in dozens of new channels/baskets every month and very slowly eliminate the under-performers – the magic is: overtime, you will slowly tweak your entire system, so that only the important channels are alive. Oh – boys and girls: if you are doing naughty things with black-hat SEO tactics, think about how scalable it might be in the long run as opposed to focusing most of your energy on white-hat/building valuable sites. Some food for thought. Meanwhile, I am going to go enjoy my Ramen.

Quick note: Apologies for not posting frequently – Don’t worry, it’s on purpose. I realized that I don’t want to stick to some pre-defined posting schedule if I don’t have anything to say, especially when it comes to Internet marketing subject material. I don’t want to be one of those people who earns cash online by “talking about earning cash online” – that would be the day I blast my brains out with a shotgun. Anyway, I have learned quite a bit about this arena and look forward to sharing my insights – and most importantly: results when time permits. Thanks for reading!