So how far along are you, inetguru?

Keep your goals achievable and manageable. Start with $1/day, then go to $5/day, to $10/day, to $20/day, $50/day, $100/day etc. If you achieve goals regularly, you will stay motivated!

An additonal motivator for me to keep writing, was to start expressing my income as daily income per page. So for example, a 100-page site makes $10 a day, that means an additional $.10 per day for each article you write. That means an additional dollar a day for every ten articles you write! You can even scale this down to per 100 words if you really need some motivation badly.

This concept will allow you to guesstimate what your writing in this specific niche is really worth. Concentrate on expanding sites with a high $/page ratio and you will fare well.

If you achieve goals regularly, you will stay motivated!

But what if those goals do not happen?

The problem for many, me included, is that we have fantastic, relevant, unique, niche sites and we have seen our incomes halve in the past two years even though we have continued to add further content etc.

I am not referring to a halving of EPC but, in my case, a 60% reduction in CTR. Nothing has changed on the sites other than the world economy!

I'm not saying you are giving false hopes however the reality of even being a member of the UPS club these days is much more difficult than it was in 2005/2006.

The other thing that has not been mentioned is actually getting the proposed site to the top of the Google SERPs and for a new site in many sectors this could be very, very difficult.

Of course, this is assuming we're talking about a website and not a blogger spreading their linked articles all over the place and expecting huge numbers of visitors?

I am not referring to a halving of EPC but, in my case, a 60% reduction in CTR. Nothing has changed on the sites other than the world economy!

Many of use have had our cheese moved this year, like the mice in the book "Who Moved My Cheese".

[edited by: Jane_Doe at 5:36 pm (utc) on Mar. 2, 2009]

The problem for many, me included, is that we have fantastic, relevant, unique, niche sites and we have seen our incomes halve in the past two years even though we have continued to add further content etc.

The bulk of this 'halving' is due to the rather abysmal state of the world economy. Even CTR is affected by economic woe. Think of it, would you be interested in buying that brilliantly advertised Blu-Ray player if you just lost your job? The result -and thus the pain- is threefold:

- First, you lose CTR due to diminishing commercial interest.
- Second, advertisers reduce spending due to lowering conversion (looky-lo clicks, ahhh... I wish I could buy that).
-Third, google, also feeling the pain, has to pull some strings in order to keep its shareholders happy. This likely leaves you, the publisher, with a smaller fraction of total earnings.

Adsense pain in a nutshell. Diversification has never been a better idea.

johnnie

I did make the statement:

Nothing has changed on the sites other than the world economy!

johnnie
I did make the statement:
...

I know that. It's never been this easy to identify the culprit. But earning half just means you will have to work twice as hard to achieve your goals. As long as you set your goals realistically, it will only mean putting some extra effort in it before you reach them. Produce more content, you lazy SOAB! ;)

Produce more content, you lazy SOAB! ;)

If only...!

Strangely, although I work in probably the largest industry worldwide, construction, my sector is specialised and trying to get new information to post and especially to get suppliers, both retail and wholesale trade to submit articles, press releases etc, is an absolute nightmare.

My directory site is the ONLY widget site in my sector that is updated on an almost daily basis, many so-called portal sites have not been updated in years.

There is, realistically, only one successful widget forum board and as for trading platforms...there are half a dozen and not one of them is successful since no one/company wants to trade that way.

So much of the trade is about historical contacts, trade knowledge and old school trust that I have pulled my hair out trying to find new ways to get user interaction and most have failed spectacularly.

I'm not trying to take the OP off track, what I want him/her to understand is that even if everything goes right a huge AdSense success is not guaranteed simply because of numbers and user non-interest.

Maybe my subject matter is too boring except for those doing research as opposed to those skimming through dating sites, Markus comes to mind here, the fact is for seriously high AdSense earnings one needs seriously high traffic numbers on a regular basis.

It is most unlikely that sites with 20/50/100,000 AdSense page impressions a day can earn anywhere near 10-25% of the revenue questioned.

Simple maths of 100,000 PI with a CTR of 10% at USD 0.30 EPC would still only derive USD 3,000.00 per day or 90,000.00 per month and how many sites with that many PIs get a 10% CTR and USD 0.30 EPC?

YMMV but my money says not even a handful:-)

So how far along are you, inetguru?

Thanks johnnie. I am trying to grow even amidst recession. Though I'm still far far far away... from the figure in question. But with tips I've gotten here and in particular your daily & per effort goal tips as given above, I will keep my head up and keep working towards the goal.

I love what am seeing in this forum, it's been interesting with a lot of interesting and experienced people revealing interesting ideas and web publishing strategies.

Lets do some more and expect our income to grow some more even in this recession!