[Daddy]

I know this has been discussed before, but since it's been a while, I would like to revive the discussion.

My question is: have any of you been able to use Adsense on their blog while writing your controversial content? I plan to start a blog and monetize it, but since employees at Google are just a sample of this feminist society, they will think all my writing is fascism.

[Blackmagic]

They're supposed to check the content of your site before you even start running ads, so you will know right away if your content is OK for their guidelines. Once you have some decent traffic, around 10k+ views daily, find another ad network to help you monetize and decrease the risk of having your income dry up on the whim of Google. Adsense is the biggest game in town but certainly not the only one.

[the-dream]

They will probably come down on you sooner or later. Besides, adsense money is ridiculously small and not really worth it unless you're getting huge traffic. And if you are getting huge traffic, better networks will be wanting to work with you anyway.

I used to run it on my site that got about 4000 unique visitors a day and I wouldn't make more than a dollar a day from it.

Where the money from adsense is is on YouTube. You get about $1/1000 views but if you have a lot of videos getting a decent amount of views then that adds up

[the-dream]

Continuing from Blackmagic, they check your site that you create the account with but you're allowed to then put ads on your other sites that they haven't checked to. So make a totally non controversial site and submit that one to get your adsense account activated then put the ads on your controversial one.

[Daddy]

The-dream, with 4000 visitors a day, can you make some decent money? With 12 000 page views and a RPM of 7, that's 2500 a month. What advertisers do you deal with? Have you been able to find another ad network than adsense?

[berserk]

If you have a lot of uniques but not necessarily commercial traffic, such as in your case political content, then you can just sell adspace directly. For example, your traffic won't be good for the average Adsense advertiser, but it could be very good for certain niche advertisers since your visitors might fit some key demographics. You can get traffic and demographic data from Google Analytics and put it onto an 'Advertise with Us' page on your blog. You could put up some empty banners saying 'Your ad here' and link it to that info page.

This kind of content in general probably won't make you rich, since a lot of advertisers won't go near it, but there are other ways to leverage it. Email lists and brand identity will help with what you decide later on. Publishing your own books such as Roosh is just one.

[Daddy]

(10-26-2014 10:13 AM)berserk Wrote:  

If you have a lot of uniques but not necessarily commercial traffic, such as in your case political content, then you can just sell adspace directly. For example, your traffic won't be good for the average Adsense advertiser, but it could be very good for certain niche advertisers since your visitors might fit some key demographics. You can get traffic and demographic data from Google Analytics and put it onto an 'Advertise with Us' page on your blog. You could put up some empty banners saying 'Your ad here' and link it to that info page.

This kind of content in general probably won't make you rich, since a lot of advertisers won't go near it, but there are other ways to leverage it. Email lists and brand identity will help with what you decide later on. Publishing your own books such as Roosh is just one.

That's a good analysis. Some stats would be nice. For instance, do you think I could make 1500 a month with 160k page views a month? That's around a 5$ rpm I believe.

Another question is, how come ROK doesn't make that much money with its traffic. At over 4 millions pageviews, I can't believe nobody wants to advertise there. I saw David Deangelo advertise on Thought Catalog recently, selling his stuff on how to pick up women on a woman dominated website... these guys could be contacted and make better money with ROK.

[berserk]

(10-26-2014 04:13 PM)Daddy Wrote:  

(10-26-2014 10:13 AM)berserk Wrote:  

If you have a lot of uniques but not necessarily commercial traffic, such as in your case political content, then you can just sell adspace directly. For example, your traffic won't be good for the average Adsense advertiser, but it could be very good for certain niche advertisers since your visitors might fit some key demographics. You can get traffic and demographic data from Google Analytics and put it onto an 'Advertise with Us' page on your blog. You could put up some empty banners saying 'Your ad here' and link it to that info page.

This kind of content in general probably won't make you rich, since a lot of advertisers won't go near it, but there are other ways to leverage it. Email lists and brand identity will help with what you decide later on. Publishing your own books such as Roosh is just one.

That's a good analysis. Some stats would be nice. For instance, do you think I could make 1500 a month with 160k page views a month? That's around a 5$ rpm I believe.

Another question is, how come ROK doesn't make that much money with its traffic. At over 4 millions pageviews, I can't believe nobody wants to advertise there. I saw David Deangelo advertise on Thought Catalog recently, selling his stuff on how to pick up women on a woman dominated website... these guys could be contacted and make better money with ROK.

I don't know what the goal is with ROK. It could easily make more money, all it would take is to rotate links to Bang and other writers products or pop in some dating site ads. Trying to rank for some keywords through the massive amount of links and then put some affiliate offers on it. Naturally this would lead to accusations of selling out of course.

If I was to do something with ROK to make more money I'd stuff some Amazon affiliate links in there when you do book reviews and articles on different kind of stuff. Like you might have an article on shaving with a straight razor or knife or wines and you could put a few keywords in the Title tag and then link with affiliate links where it fits. You could put a disclaimer on it too, but generally I don't think this is too commercial or intrusive, as long as you genuinely stand by the product. I don't like the popups and viral clickbait ads under the articles, but I do understand that these are more easily seen as outside ads where as the other model can be considered more misleading and commercial.

If you have 160K pageviews, that should bring you some decent money. The key is to not go with a broad cpm network with all kinds of untargeted traffic. You need to reach out to advertisers who would be interested. I personally don't have a problem with the odd affiliate link promoting a product. As I have written earlier, Bold & Determined does this and it hasn't stopped me or anyone else from reading. It is all about your genuine intent. Amazon partner program is good for this although low commission (3-8%) and cookie lifetime (24 hours), but the upside is that it is a very trusted brand and people link to Amazon all the time anyway. They also have a huge selection, so let's say you have a 'prepping' article, then you can link hunting knives, cannisters, tents. Or wine game in the tropics, then you can link to a small wine cooler (considered buying one myself).

You can of course put Adsense on some of the pages which does not have very offensive content and just playing with numbers 160.000*0,02ctr*0,4dollars is $1300 a month, but considering that huge amount of traffic it is a very bad return for messing up the layout with ads. Of course you can get higher value clicks and higher click rate. You could also block family friendly advertisers from your site.

I'd consider ad space and make sure to track how many visitors you send to them, that will give you a better idea of what it is worth, considering that you can guesstimate the value of a click. The Bold and Determined method is probably my favorite, infrequent affiliate pushes, some Amazon links and a couple of your own products.

[Daddy]

Yes, I saw B&D website, it's very well designed, generally good content.

That's a great idea for the amazon referrals. I can imagine that these links on a relevant articles have a higher CTR then random banners. Let's say I get these links on 80 000 page views, with a CTR of 5% and a 5% comission on something that's worht 10$ : 80k x 0.05 x 0.05 x 10$ = 2000$ a month, plus some other affiliate revenues. That would be all I need.

[jamaicabound]

I know alot of people hate Adsense and say you can't make any significant money. I agree, however at the same time unless someone is really going to delve into trying out different pay per action progams, experimenting with different banner types and sizes, actually running experiments on what works and what doesn't most people who just want to plug and play are probably going to do better with adsense.

I'll be honest my blogging efforts have been kind of halfass. I never really learned wordpress but have had a number of Blogspot blogs. At one time I was making about $300 a month off Adsense with two blogs, most money was comming from a single blog. My problem however was I hit a wall. I would try to post frequently, I would use social media to promote my blogs and posts, I even started making additional blogs thinking if I can keep this blog making $300 and roll out a few new ones maybe make $50 off each a month I can really get a decent income comming here. Problem was no matter how many more blogs I rolled out I never really made it past that $300 a month mark. I wasn't even getting that much traffic either, I think maybe 15k to 20k visitors a month, however it was a niche I had that alot of members of a certain forum were visiting my site and spending a lot of time on there as I offered valuable info for free.

I tried doing a number of different affiliate programs with CJ and other affiliate networks and don't think I ever got a single sale. Again, I didn't put a ton of effort into experimenting, however early on I did try and just didn't have any luck. The only ohter program besides adsense I've ever had real luck with was Amazon, however I'm hesitant to put much effort in as Amazon does not allow affiliates in my state ever since the whole sales tax thing so I opened up a second account and am using an out of state family members address so I hesitate to put in a lot of effort and put links all over my blogs as anyday htey could shut down teh account and all that effort is gone and the links are then worthles to me.

Anyhow, it seems lots of bloggers are either not numbers people or are lazy so my only thing is unless someone really plans to do some experimenting with different affiliate programs adsense definately is the easist and probably most effective for someone who is more interested in writing and less interested in the technical aspects of whats a good place for ad placement on a page, whats the most effective adsize, which campaign banners should I run for any given program, etc.

To the OP, in response to your question about questionable content, as others have said they will review your first blog when you signup but after that you can slap adsense up on any blog you want without review. I'd suggest start a non controversial blog, get up at least 20 posts and then apply for adsense, don't do it on a blank blog or you cant resign up for some certain amount of time I believe. Get that first blog approved and then setup adsense on your controversial blog.

As far as getting popped off down the road it definately is possible. If you get any complaints that is one thing that will shut you down but it does seem like once a year or twice a year you hear alot of people complaining so I think occasionally they do run through where there ads are running and shutdown people who have controversial topics or topics that go against their TOS. My beef is that their TOS is so vague you don't know whats controversial and whats not, its all open to interpretation. Also, keep in mind Google has such sophisticated bots and stuff ie try fooling adsense with fake clicks or click networks or proxies and see how long you last so I imagine they have to also have some kind of automated software that surfs where there ads are running and flags controversial words for review.

[jamaicabound]

(10-26-2014 10:13 AM)berserk Wrote:  

If you have a lot of uniques but not necessarily commercial traffic, such as in your case political content, then you can just sell adspace directly. For example, your traffic won't be good for the average Adsense advertiser, but it could be very good for certain niche advertisers since your visitors might fit some key demographics. You can get traffic and demographic data from Google Analytics and put it onto an 'Advertise with Us' page on your blog. You could put up some empty banners saying 'Your ad here' and link it to that info page.

This kind of content in general probably won't make you rich, since a lot of advertisers won't go near it, but there are other ways to leverage it. Email lists and brand identity will help with what you decide later on. Publishing your own books such as Roosh is just one.

THis is a great point. I frequently run google searches and investigate blogs of people in my niceh and often reach out and offer to advertise with them so htey are not even having to put in any effort I'm actually contacting them. I'll occasionally do the same with youtube and offer to sponsor peoples videos or channel.

Depending on the quality and traffic the site gets depends on what I offer. Typically its not a lot but probably better than adsense will pay you. SOme blogs I pay as little as $5 a month to advertise on, I think the blog or forum I pay the most for is about $400 to have a few ads rotating as 300x250 banners near top of page.

[WestIndianArchie]

Internet Marketing 101 is to build up an email list. Way before AdSense and Amazon affiliates, it was about building a list.

1. ask for their emails
2. collect emails
3. write a news letter (lots of software make this part easy)
4. solicit feedback
5. go deeper, and start figuring out what your audience buys
6. make it for them, tell them about it, get feedback
7. sell it to them

If you have 4,000 emails from people that regularly visit your site, no one can take that away from you. Hosting may go down, algorithm changes, but you still have these 4,000 relationships.

More work but bigger potential pay off.

WIA

(10-27-2014 04:25 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

I know alot of people hate Adsense and say you can't make any significant money. I agree, however at the same time unless someone is really going to delve into trying out different pay per action progams, experimenting with different banner types and sizes, actually running experiments on what works and what doesn't most people who just want to plug and play are probably going to do better with adsense.

I'll be honest my blogging efforts have been kind of halfass. I never really learned wordpress but have had a number of Blogspot blogs. At one time I was making about $300 a month off Adsense with two blogs, most money was comming from a single blog. My problem however was I hit a wall. I would try to post frequently, I would use social media to promote my blogs and posts, I even started making additional blogs thinking if I can keep this blog making $300 and roll out a few new ones maybe make $50 off each a month I can really get a decent income comming here. Problem was no matter how many more blogs I rolled out I never really made it past that $300 a month mark. I wasn't even getting that much traffic either, I think maybe 15k to 20k visitors a month, however it was a niche I had that alot of members of a certain forum were visiting my site and spending a lot of time on there as I offered valuable info for free.

I tried doing a number of different affiliate programs with CJ and other affiliate networks and don't think I ever got a single sale. Again, I didn't put a ton of effort into experimenting, however early on I did try and just didn't have any luck. The only ohter program besides adsense I've ever had real luck with was Amazon, however I'm hesitant to put much effort in as Amazon does not allow affiliates in my state ever since the whole sales tax thing so I opened up a second account and am using an out of state family members address so I hesitate to put in a lot of effort and put links all over my blogs as anyday htey could shut down teh account and all that effort is gone and the links are then worthles to me.

Anyhow, it seems lots of bloggers are either not numbers people or are lazy so my only thing is unless someone really plans to do some experimenting with different affiliate programs adsense definately is the easist and probably most effective for someone who is more interested in writing and less interested in the technical aspects of whats a good place for ad placement on a page, whats the most effective adsize, which campaign banners should I run for any given program, etc.

To the OP, in response to your question about questionable content, as others have said they will review your first blog when you signup but after that you can slap adsense up on any blog you want without review. I'd suggest start a non controversial blog, get up at least 20 posts and then apply for adsense, don't do it on a blank blog or you cant resign up for some certain amount of time I believe. Get that first blog approved and then setup adsense on your controversial blog.

As far as getting popped off down the road it definately is possible. If you get any complaints that is one thing that will shut you down but it does seem like once a year or twice a year you hear alot of people complaining so I think occasionally they do run through where there ads are running and shutdown people who have controversial topics or topics that go against their TOS. My beef is that their TOS is so vague you don't know whats controversial and whats not, its all open to interpretation. Also, keep in mind Google has such sophisticated bots and stuff ie try fooling adsense with fake clicks or click networks or proxies and see how long you last so I imagine they have to also have some kind of automated software that surfs where there ads are running and flags controversial words for review.

[jamaicabound]

(10-27-2014 06:22 PM)WestIndianArchie Wrote:  

Internet Marketing 101 is to build up an email list. Way before AdSense and Amazon affiliates, it was about building a list.

1. ask for their emails
2. collect emails
3. write a news letter (lots of software make this part easy)
4. solicit feedback
5. go deeper, and start figuring out what your audience buys
6. make it for them, tell them about it, get feedback
7. sell it to them

If you have 4,000 emails from people that regularly visit your site, no one can take that away from you. Hosting may go down, algorithm changes, but you still have these 4,000 relationships.

More work but bigger potential pay off.

WIA

(10-27-2014 04:25 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

I know alot of people hate Adsense and say you can't make any significant money. I agree, however at the same time unless someone is really going to delve into trying out different pay per action progams, experimenting with different banner types and sizes, actually running experiments on what works and what doesn't most people who just want to plug and play are probably going to do better with adsense.

I'll be honest my blogging efforts have been kind of halfass. I never really learned wordpress but have had a number of Blogspot blogs. At one time I was making about $300 a month off Adsense with two blogs, most money was comming from a single blog. My problem however was I hit a wall. I would try to post frequently, I would use social media to promote my blogs and posts, I even started making additional blogs thinking if I can keep this blog making $300 and roll out a few new ones maybe make $50 off each a month I can really get a decent income comming here. Problem was no matter how many more blogs I rolled out I never really made it past that $300 a month mark. I wasn't even getting that much traffic either, I think maybe 15k to 20k visitors a month, however it was a niche I had that alot of members of a certain forum were visiting my site and spending a lot of time on there as I offered valuable info for free.

I tried doing a number of different affiliate programs with CJ and other affiliate networks and don't think I ever got a single sale. Again, I didn't put a ton of effort into experimenting, however early on I did try and just didn't have any luck. The only ohter program besides adsense I've ever had real luck with was Amazon, however I'm hesitant to put much effort in as Amazon does not allow affiliates in my state ever since the whole sales tax thing so I opened up a second account and am using an out of state family members address so I hesitate to put in a lot of effort and put links all over my blogs as anyday htey could shut down teh account and all that effort is gone and the links are then worthles to me.

Anyhow, it seems lots of bloggers are either not numbers people or are lazy so my only thing is unless someone really plans to do some experimenting with different affiliate programs adsense definately is the easist and probably most effective for someone who is more interested in writing and less interested in the technical aspects of whats a good place for ad placement on a page, whats the most effective adsize, which campaign banners should I run for any given program, etc.

To the OP, in response to your question about questionable content, as others have said they will review your first blog when you signup but after that you can slap adsense up on any blog you want without review. I'd suggest start a non controversial blog, get up at least 20 posts and then apply for adsense, don't do it on a blank blog or you cant resign up for some certain amount of time I believe. Get that first blog approved and then setup adsense on your controversial blog.

As far as getting popped off down the road it definately is possible. If you get any complaints that is one thing that will shut you down but it does seem like once a year or twice a year you hear alot of people complaining so I think occasionally they do run through where there ads are running and shutdown people who have controversial topics or topics that go against their TOS. My beef is that their TOS is so vague you don't know whats controversial and whats not, its all open to interpretation. Also, keep in mind Google has such sophisticated bots and stuff ie try fooling adsense with fake clicks or click networks or proxies and see how long you last so I imagine they have to also have some kind of automated software that surfs where there ads are running and flags controversial words for review.

I know this information is out there on the net but you seem like your pretty smart with this so maybe you can concisely explain. How difficult is it to setup landing pages and squeeze pages and all this other stuff I hear people talking about?

If you had to put a 1,2,3 to list building and how to setup a site what would you say? Also can you suggest any plugins or software for this? Can this be done on Google BLogger or do you need wordpress to do this?

[Daddy]

I think Mail Chimp is widely used for the email marketing and it's free for low volume. I think for under 30 000 emails it's free or very cheap.

I'd be interested in seeing your websites, Berserk, Jamaicabound and westindianarchie. I'm curious to see successful website and their design.

[WestIndianArchie]

(10-27-2014 07:06 PM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

I know this information is out there on the net but you seem like your pretty smart with this so maybe you can concisely explain. How difficult is it to setup landing pages and squeeze pages and all this other stuff I hear people talking about?

If you had to put a 1,2,3 to list building and how to setup a site what would you say? Also can you suggest any plugins or software for this? Can this be done on Google BLogger or do you need wordpress to do this?

I don't think I can concisely explain it.

The broad strokes are
- picking a service (Aweber or Mailchimp)
- picking a WP plug in (many to choose from - the right one depends on how it integrates with your theme, widgets, and other plug ins)

- technical set up (going through the various screens to make sure your plug in works the way you want it to work)

- design of the opt ins (making the "pop up" window/side bar enticing through visual design and words so that people click on it and add their names)

- writing content - (writing content that people want to read in an email, and then asking the right questions to get feedback)

The technical set up and the design aspects can be daunting, because you don't always know if you're doing it right. Throwing money at the problem, by bringing in an expert to do it for you - doesn't always give you that sense of security.

WIA

[Daddy]

What about webhosting. Do they manage traffic intelligently? Every time ROK has a viral article, I hear about server problems. I can imagine a small blog like Matt Forney getting shut down because he wrote a viral article. Is there a webhosting service that provides adaptable bandwidth?