An Adsense Virgin No More

This might not be gigantic news to all you dot-com early birds who jumped on the train in the early to mid 90’s –  especially those of you who are making $4000/month off 372 crappy looking websites with really bad formatting and brutally scaled background images that haven’t been updated in 7 years.  I’m not hating, I’m just saying…

I got my first Adsense payment today!

It was totally by surprise as I was under the impression that I would be getting  a cheque (Canadian spelling)  in the mail.  Not that I was disappointed to see a direct depost, but I was kind of hoping for the cheque so I could take a picture ($130) and make it famous like Shoemoney.

Wanna see?

adsense-victory

Anyways… I just wanted to share this moment with you guys, and also permanently place it on the Internet so I can always go back and revisit the sense of accomplishment I’m feeling at this exact moment.

The funniest thing about my Adsense earnings is that they only took off once I started flipping websites.  What does website flipping have to do with making money from Google Adsense?  Well, a nice chunk (almost all) of the people who buy websites online seem to overlook changing the affiliate links over to their own – despite instructional emails, documentation and follow-up reminders.  And because most of my niche sites involve heavy keyword research, and targeted domains – the traffic usually comes knocking within a week after the first article is published.

Pretty interesting, right?

All in all – my first Adsense payment is really motivating me to grow my Adsense portfolio and spend more time studying different techniques for optimal CTR.  I’m actually quite excited!

Cheers,

Elijah

24 thoughts on “An Adsense Virgin No More”

  7. Congrats on the check Elijah!

    Adsense CAN be a great way to pay for groceries every week!!

    Word of advice on the adsense code left on sites… do your best to follow up with the new owners and get it changed out man…

    I had done the same in some of the templates I gave away in the past, left an ad block in place with instructions to replace the pub-id… it only took one new site owner self-clicking the ads repeatedly to flag my account.

    I was able to clear it up via emails with adsense, but none the less, it help up my account for a few days until I got the new site owner to remove the code.

    Mark

    Marks last blog post..phpBay Search2Post and Other Goodies like phpOStock!

  9. @Stephen – Totally true!

    @Nate – Absolutely man, I think I have a handful of posts and possibly videos. I’ll email you with some links and other goodies. Keyword research is the easiest skill to learn, with the most rewarding, long term results..

    @Alison – Up, up and away!

    @Mark – I totally know what you mean, and I didn’t even think of it from that angle. But there are 100 ways someone can get screwed from this scenario. I actually don’t have too many sites that haven’t been changed over by the new owner – but it’s usually between the time that I tell them how to do it, and when they actually do, that I take advantage of some nice spikes in earnings. Multiply this across several sites per month.. it definitely adds up!

    I still don’t understand why some people just don’t change over their shit? Like we’re talking several email reminders… it takes months after the purchase sometimes!

    @Anand – Awesome, hopefully you’ve had others since last year??

    Elijahs last blog post..An Adsense Virgin No More

  11. Congrats man! I almost did the ShoeMoney thing back when i got my first cheque (yeah boyeee, I’m a Canuck too!), but then I was like “nah, I’m sure someone must have done it already”. lol. You probably would’ve been naked and holding a bottle of whiskey though, so it would’ve been funnier to the masses.

    Now that you are getting faster at whipping up flips, etc., you should just schedule in a keeper to build for adsense every x-days or whatever. 🙂

    Cheers man!
    Jay

    Suite Js last blog post..4 More Free WordPress Themes Hot Off The Press

  13. ‘Lijah- I need you to get on my butt about actually writing articles for my keeper sites. I’m making around $1 a day combined from 3 of my sites that I didn’t bother checking keywords for. Now I’ve registered a few sites that have serious potential, but I haven’t put any content up! Dangit.

    Congrats on your first check! I’m about $33 away from mine. (ever so much closer since I got a single click for $3.14- though AdSense won’t tell me which site it was from).

    WordVixens last blog post..My Friend Is Getting Published

  14. Hey, E:

    Whatcha gonna do with all that cashola? Get yourself a nice bottle of Spumanti, maybe a Lambrusco. LoL.

    Just messing with you. Good job and the Adsense check is sweet – whether in direct deposit form or a paper check. I personally opt for a paper check cause i just like getting money in the mail. Literally.

    And as someone else already mentioned, don’t get too cushy with leaving Adsense in someone else’s hand. Cause you could lose your cash on acct of some bird brain doing stuff he/she shouldn’t be doing. I tend to leave aff links on flips instead, as opposed to Adsense.

    I’m with you. Not sure why buyers don’t change out the links. I recently scored a pretty sweet $30 plus commission on a flip i sold back in December. Dude never switched out the banners i have in the single post pages. Wow!!!

    And yes i have pleaded with him to do so. But oh well. More money for me and you. Right.

    Sorry for not coming by sooner. Will try to more. (i promise)

    Cheers,
    Missy.

  15. @Anand – $1 a day is a really nice target to getting that $100+ cheque every few months. If you’re at that point, you should really focus your energy on duplicating your current model and get that up to around $20 per day – then it’ll be time to party!

    @BigHead – You know what dude, we’ve talked about it many times.. and you’re right – If I set a day per week to work strictly on existing and new adsense projects, before long the income will really start to increase – and profitable niches/keywords will really begin to surface. You just inspired me to really commit to it.. and get to the point where you’re at (which I know and no one else does) MUHAHAHAHA… Jay be balling on the Adsense game!

    @Dennis – You’re the third person who’s contacted me either via the blog or email asking about some good keyword research tutorials – so I am making it a point to crank out a couple videos over the next 2 weeks – PROMISE. I had no idea the amount of people who really wanted some guidance in that department as that was the very first skill I ever learned in regards to MMO – thanks to Mark Hansen 🙂

    @WV – Mmmmm… $3.14 clicks… arrrrghghghh… Here’s an idea for you… and the rest of you guys… create an adsense blog that has a mixture of auto fed content (using a plug in like RSS2Blog or CaffeinatedContent) and unique articles (researched and bookmark submitted).. that way you get the targeted content, and also you put 2 or 3 unique articles per month that you can submit using SocialMarker. This takes the strain of fresh daily content away, and creates a nice hands off approach while still being able to utilize to social traffic etc… I have a method all written out that I was thinking of selling to the heathens over at DP… but I just leaked the gist of it!

    @Missy – Hey girl! No worries on the lack of commenting thing, you not being here hopefully means your elsewhere making looooooot and that makes me feel warm and tingly inside. Those stray commissions are always nice, though I’ve yet to have a flipped commission on an aff product… Why don’t people answer their emails!!! I’ve attempted to contact past flips several times, almost once a month… and I get nothing back! They could totally be gathering that adsense money… I sold an obama video site privately months back and just had a $7 day two days ago… they dude won’t answer his emails!!!

    Elijahs last blog post..An Adsense Virgin No More

  16. Hey Elijah,

    I’m a bit late to the party here but just wanted to say congrats on the Adsense money. I’ve wondered about putting some on my site but can’t figure out where or if they would fit with the style of it and I’m *definetly* not doing another redesign.

    It’s all good though. Doodling makes me enough cash but still passive earning? Fook what could be better, knowing you’re sound asleep and making money, nice.

    Congrats again dude.

  17. ‘Lijah, yeah, I know what you mean about those buyers that don’t change stuff over. Just sold my first site ever and am dealing with the same thing. 😉

    The only problem that I have with automated content is that I’m seriously anal about copyright. Remember, I’m an aspiring author and was once an aspiring freelance writer. We’re freakin’ anal about copyright. I find my content on someone else’s site? I go friggin postal, baby. But no kidding- I WANT to know where that $3.14 click came from!

    Btw, I know how much big head makes. 😀 $37,370.37 every 37 days. Yup. totally. And it’s from his M&M’s site, I’m sure.

  18. @Mark – Hey dude! Haven’t talked to you in a minute. Yeah I dread the redesign of this site, which is something I’ve been contemplating and wanting to do for a few months. It really doesn’t get much better than making money while you sleep – that is the definition of bomb ass.

    @WV – I’m not surprised that you feel the way you do, and though I’m not an aspiring writer, I do take pride in what I write, especially on this blog. I don’t think I would take it lightly if I saw these posts on some scraper site.. mind you though, I don’t know if others would feel comfortable having my crazy potty mouth words plastered all over their “looks legit” site…

    Elijahs last blog post..An Adsense Virgin No More

  20. @Anand – You know what, I actually do believe that it’s possible. Certain people might say you just build 20 more sites like your blog – but I say that’s too much work… do some research, find out which niches have high paying clicks (affiliate marketing is a niche that gets well paying clicks… because it’s so competitive in the PPC world)

    I totally think getting up to 10 or 20 bucks a day is possible (this would be an average of course..)

    Elijahs last blog post..I Made $800 Profit For Under 20 Hours Of Work

  23. The first time I got my adsense check I really felt so proud and accomplished, so I’m sure you were pretty happy! It took me six months of failure and frustration, but now that I’ve figured it out I’ve seen steady earnings and increases each month 🙂 Hopefully you will see the same!

    Chelles last blog post..10 Family Fun Earth Day Activities

  24. @Chelle – I haven’t really spent too much time on my Adsense stuff to really see a strategic improvement. But I plan to take the first week or so in June specifically for working on my own “passive” sources. I might hit you up for some tips!

    Elijahs last blog post..20 Site Flips In 30 Days

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