AdSense is a slu77y girlfriend with a very low barrier to entry, she is faithful to no one but herself, age of relationship means nothing to her, she will give it all to the next newcomer as fast as a click.

LOL nice one hobbs.

Indeed, LOL! But I thinks HOBBS has used the slu77y analogy a bit more than is actually the truth. Site age does appear to me have some importance to Google. After all, if slu77y has a choice between a known and unknown companion for the evening, the known may well be chosen over the unknown. Depending of course on the performance of known last time!

I make money from old sites and from new sites.

Every day there are people starting new restaurants, construction companies, retail stores, carpet cleaning businesses, manufacturing plants, etc. Some fail and some succeed.

The people who think they are going to do a little work, throw something together, engage in a little theft or unethical practices then get rich while sitting by the pool are usually the ones who later are complaining and whining.

AdSense is no different than those other types of businesses.

FarmBoy

farmboy, so in answer to my question, you have started new site(s) in the last year or so that are now more than holding their own without a boost or intervention from any of your resources that only exist due to an earlier start to the game?

>>>without a boost or intervention from any of your resources

Just a friendly heads up. :) That's a search marketing question related to traffic. This forum is dedicated to discussion about the AdSense program itself, not how we drive traffic to a site, which is why the answers you're receiving may not be what you're looking for.

farmboy, so in answer to my question, you have started new site(s) in the last year or so that are now more than holding their own without a boost or intervention from any of your resources that only exist due to an earlier start to the game?

Yes.

FarmBoy

@martinibuster - right, understood - oops! :)

@farmboy - cheers, that answers my question :)

So here's an interesting answer.

Actually on new adsense accounts/domains it might be easier: no targeting by advertisers to weed out, no mystery smartpricing to worry about.

On established sites/accounts it's all a bit harder to keep ahead of the curve when it concerns our slu77y friend ;-)

>>>On established sites/accounts it's all a bit harder

Now that's an interesting answer. What causes an established site to have a harder time?

It isn't age that matters. It is size that matters, ask any woman. We will take a young one that is large and strong any day of the week. They make more money than and an old one that is small and weak.

I have one site that has been up for about two years. It has made about $1200 since I launched it. It is a rather large site, several hundred pages. It is the same size as two other sites that I own, but makes much less. This is because it is one of those sites that does better with cpm. The cpc ads people do not click on. But, they like those cute cpm ads and click with a nice ctr.

I have another site that I launched about the same time as this one, in fact several others. They have made between $100 and $500 because they are much smaller. Young, small and weak is not especially thrilling, no matter how cute. Visitors like the ads, but traffic is low due to the small size of the site.

Now, I have a couple old ones that are huge, and they are best of all as far as revenue, but one of my younger ones brings more traffic on average. Old and huge can be great. I have one that has earned me $45,000 to date and another that earned me about $18,000 to date, though launched about a year after my $45k site. Which I know is nothing to write home about, in the scheme of the eWorld. But, I will call it good. I am easy to please. But, young and huge can be even better. The young ones are more exciting anyway, when they really produce desired results, quickly.

The bottom line is really nitch. Some nitches don't yield much,young or old. Others rock your world from day one. For me, it is the accumulation of all sites, launching new sites each year, and widening my reach, within my entire network. You can focus all your energy on one site, but why? If it is not making at least $10ecpm with high traffic, maybe the advertising dollars are just not there for the nitch. Some nitches yield higher bids AND attract higher traffic. Unless you diversify, how will you know your real potential?

What causes an established site to have a harder time?

In terms of SEO & traffic, older sites still have the advantage traffic and *trust*, but high traffic is an EPC killer and you find owners of these sites talking about the bottom line earnings as what matters in the end, established sites bleed from targeted scraping and are slow in adopting new technologies.

In terms of EPC, new sites are more agile (more open to new technologies and turning on a dime for better targeting), if done well can see high EPC & eCPM which could make up for lower traffic.

All this is assuming you're in the right niche of course.
[added: as MsHuggys just said]

[edited by: Hobbs at 9:40 am (utc) on May 4, 2008]

I was forced to switch account on adsense (it was a personal one, needed a business one and GOOG forced me to get a new one)

The new account performed on the same site, with the same traffic levels no other changes at the same time significantly better than the old account for about 2 weeks, after that it went back to normal.

Hence my comment that new accounts are most likely not smartpriced.
(Smartpricing not being properly explained we can only guess where we are and what influences it exactly)

Established sites also get targeted by much more unwanted ads than newer (or than less popular, hard for me to tell as they coincide so far) keeping the unwanted ads out with the limited tools we have only works so far ... hence after a while you can't keep the crap advertisers out anymore ...

Trust etc. the established sites get (read: more organic traffic etc) sure helps the bottom line, but it works against you in many other facets (such as spammers using every form they can find etc.), scrapes, stolen content (on a given subject I think *all* maps I've seen on the subject are derived works of one I did many years ago, including those used on very high profile sites. I try to get the most blatant ones removed, but it's just one image (I've many more) ... and a fight I cannot win unless I hire a team to do the takedowns, not worth it to keep goign after it at some point)

We started our site in Feb 2007 and our first monthly earning was 1c... we now earn between about $4,000-$6,000 per month, so I think for a new site it has done pretty well.

Hey cool, some interesting answers. I only asked because I've read some articles recently stating the trying to make a living with AdSense alone these days is almost harder than it's worth when weighed against offering content as a paid-for e-product, using affiliate programs, etc. I do really like the idea of simply offering a lot of free content, but on my main site the amount it's making is almost directly proportional to what Amazon S3 is charging me for traffic. Note of course that the site only gets 200-300 UV per day on average. I need to spend some time raising the traffic levels to truly judge I suppose.

Crystal Pegasus - an impressive increase to say the least! Willing to share any of the things your site has done to get to this point?

One thing I've found to be a big help is the Google keyword suggestions page. I don't use it to just throw a bunch of related phrases on my site, but I find it does give me some insights into what people are looking for in terms of both those who search and those who advertise.

BTW - I also made about a penny the first month. It's grown since then (thankfully), but it's only been 6 months.

Vero- I guess the main things we have done are-

* Writing LOTS of unique content on a regular ongoing basis.

* Having a niche which allows for wide diversification, which gives more scope for ads, diverse visitors and hopefully more clicks.

* Used keyword tool and trends tool to make our content search engine friendly to attract the kind of visitors who will be best served by our content.

* Where appropriate, making use of information we garner, such as search terms which bring people to our site, what kind of topics are attracting people and doing well... an writing more related content.

* A lot of the articles focus on things that our visitors are looking to buy, services to use, or topics to find out more info about, so it's conducive to relevant ads that they are more likely to click on. (motivated buyers)

* We also have a large amount of content that is within our visitor's fields of interest, but not aimed at trying to make money from ads, but more aimed at getting more interested visitors coming to see what we're about, and returning every now and then to see what else we've written about. Content that is basically aimed at benefiting the visitor, not for a money making purpose.

So, we have a combination of both.

* Keeping up with new developments, ideas, changes within our scope that might be of interest to our visitors.

* We are beginning to expand even more by *leveraging* in the use of paid unique content writers, especially people who have interest, knowledge and enthusiasm in certain areas.

* Initially we posted on a lot of relevant blogs, to give links and encourage visitors.

* Creating mailing lists and newsletters people can sign up to for updates, news etc, within various relevant areas.

* Focus, commitment, enthusiasm and enjoyment of our *work* and the freedoms it can give us the opportunity to experience.

[edited by: Crystal_Pegasus at 3:48 pm (utc) on May 7, 2008]

Well said. Now if we could all just muster as much enthusiasm after 10 hours at work to get our sites to that point. Hats off to your great progress and best wishes for continued success. Now if I could just follow.

Thanks for all the great suggestions - it sounds like a wonderful site. ALways nice when you can do good - and do well financially!