Talking to a friend a few weeks ago about online marketing, the subject of adsense came up. He immediately dismissed it “You can’t make money off Adsense!” he boldly claimed. I said I begged to differ. While I had only made about $10 in April, that was the most I’d achieved in a single month since turning Adsense on towards the end of last year.

What changed? I started activating more sites that I had purchased domains for but never used. I put some content on them. Some I was lazy with and just published a few articles on. And then I underscored them with 3 Way Links, which is a set once and leave system.

I think the main thing is having a site with good on-site optimization, including having a domain that consists of a keyword with low competition. Then obviously having relevant content. For most of these sites, I at least published a single article on EzineArticles so that the sites had at least one high quality backlink coming from a page containing relevant content. Having 3 Way Links must surely help to keep them ranking thought, building up some level of external support and authority. Great to build up links while you work on multiple mini site projects.

The cocktail seems to be working well, I made $55 in May and can also more clearly see which sites are getting ad clicks and which ones aren’t. One of those sites is seasonal however, relating to fathers day. It gets high traffic, but alas the domain name was based on an informational keyword not a buying keyword so that site gets a disgustingly high bounce rate, but nevertheless generates enough clickthrough to be on a par with the other sites.

For June, that site may possibly perform very well as last minute people send the traffic even higher and in turn attract a higher number of people seeking to buy.

Regardless of that June is off to a great start with £12 three days in – more than I made for the whole of April, and 1/5 of what I made in May. Maintaining that rate for the month alone should double May’s figures. However, I did have quite a few days ending in $0, and of course some days there were highs, while on others there were troughs.

I expect to see the same again, except perhaps this time avoiding a $0 day would be nice.

So I believe yes, you can make money with adsense, just that you have to work harder for it than you would through affiliate marketing or creating your own products. However, over the long term it could prove to be the more steady and lucrative income earner out of the two for some. A major benefit is that the sites are yours rather than someone else’s and assuming you look after them, they should continue to generate revenue for you. Just ask some of the folk that have spent time building blogs and websites where adsense is now generating them at least a five figure income monthly! How’s that for a day job?

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