Living on Adsense Blog

My Google page rank was dropped down to zero since I stared doing paid posts a while back. Even though in the past I said that I was not really concerned with my blog’s PR. Well now I am. I just feel so naked without the page rank.

So I have decided to go on a mission to get my Page Rank back. I lost my page rank because I joined PayPerPost, and even though I was able to make some good money from it. I just don’t have the time to do any paid posting. I’m sure the readers of this blog will enjoy a lack of paid posts(even though I did an awesome job of disguising them).

Today I set out, and march up to Google and demand that I have my page rank returned to me. And by demand I mean grovel, and cry if needed.

There is always talk that a high page rank is unnecessary, and whether it is true or not I want mine back. It’s like driving an Escalade: it’s a status symbol. A 1972 Volvo 145 wagon will get you to the same place as an Escalade. It’s just the Escalade looks more fancy (even though the Volvo is still cooler).

For me, step 1 will be removing all of my paid posts and anything that is related to PayPerPost. I will then wait a few days and then write an email to Google asking for my page rank back. It seems way to easy, which is why I am concerned. I am also a little worried about all of the Google Adsense bashing that has been going on my blog. Hopefully they will see it as light hearted fun.

So if anyone has any advice, or has successful crawled through the supplicant door before, please share your adventure with me below!

Categories: Google Adsense
Tags: adsense, blog, google, page, PR, rank

Normally with a headline like that I would write a post about making money with Google Adsense (or a lack of making money). Over the last few days I have noticed an interesting trend that I intend on exploiting as much as I can.

I was browsing through my Akismet spam folder on my blog to check and see if any real comments had been caught and mistakenly marked as spam. I did not see any comments that needed to be approved, but I did notice that I had a ton of track back to other blogs from a few of my posts.

It seems that the vast majority of trackbacks were posts that I had written with the term ‘Google Adsense’ in the title. It seemed that all of the trackbacks were from spam blogs that basically stole the first few paragraphs from my post, and then had a link to my blog that said ‘Read the rest of this great post here.’ Most people that I have spoken to are not fond of these ‘Splogs’ stealing their content and posting it on the Splog.

Personally I like it.

Each one of these Splogs is providing a backlink to my blog, and as bloggers getting backlinks is key. Of I shouldn’t get too excited because my old PR 3 is now at zero because I made a few paid posts. But still any backlink is good.

I would suggest that all of you bloggers take a look through your spam comments and see what posts you are writing (if any) are getting trackbacks from these Splogs. Try and figure out which keywords are triggering these Splogs to ‘borrow’ a bit of your content, and then begin creating more posts that contain those keywords.

It kind of makes me wish I had my PR back instead of the Google appointed zero.

Categories: Bring on the Traffic
Tags: adsense, backlinks, google, splog, trackbacks

So how am I tricking Google Adsense? Well for one thing, I think that it knows that I hate it. So I guess that I am not fooling anyone into thinking the I am tricking Google Adsense into thinking that I like it.

But I don’t think it cares.

Ok at this point I am not really making any sense, so before I ramble on any more I would like to share some ‘Google can lick my pouch’ kind of information:

When I started this blog I had the intention of actually making money from Google Adsense, and throughout my journey my journey I have gone from hating, to loving to hating again. I think right now I may be in a forgiveness mode.

Well let me check my stats and we shall see…

Nope, nothing. We are in hate mode.

The main goal of this post was to share how things have been since day one of Adsense blogging. I am excited to share that I have in fact received my first cheque

As you can see it is for $122.72. I started blogging on Decemeber 10th 2007 so I think that works out to about $0.92 cents per day, which I guess for Google Adsense it is good, but really can someone live off of that amount…no, That is why I went out and got a cruddy job.

I think the other reason why I personally believe that Google Adsense is crap is that in the month of April I made $255.42 from ClickBank on my blog topwarcraftguides.com. I think this is the main reason why I took the blogging hiatus over the last month. SO I think I will focus more on Clickbank than Adsense. At least until something better comes along.

Categories: Don't Laugh at My Income
Tags: adsense, blog, check, cheque, google, tricking

A few things have happened in the last week that have made me change my opinions, and also change some decisions I have made.

Yesterday I watched the latest installment of the Indiana Jones series, and it got me thinking about George Lucas and how he seems to milk every project he does for all it’s worth. For good and for bad. Which led to me thinking about LoA and how I haven’t nearly milked it for all it is worth.

So I am getting back on the Living on Adsense wagon.

Of course I still hate Adsense. But I will continue to blog about what it is like to try and make money online and share my odd experiences. There will be a few changes though. I do not plan on heavily promoting this blog, I am merely keeping this blog up and running for the you: the people that have been with me for the last 4 months. Right now it’s like a pretty wicked party, and if more people show up…that’s cool, and if they don’t that’s cool too.

I know that I said that I would continue my adventures in the new blog: Dork and Beans, but I think this blog is a better avenue for my MMO adventures.

So this just a short update, and I should be back on the classic LoA adventures pretty quick

Categories: The Tao of Living on Adsense
Tags: adsense, George, google, Living, Lucas, on

First off I would like to say that I am soooooooooo sorry to everyone for leaving the last post on a scary health issue, and then disappearing for a long time.

I have no excuse.  I just have been unable to manage my time with my new job.

Anyways, as yo can tell, over the past few posts I have been toyong with the notion of no longer writing about my Adsense journey.  They say: write about what you are passionate about.  I am no longer passionate about Google Adsense.

But not to worry, you can still read about my crazy adventures, just in a new format.  I have started a new blog.  This new blog will still have my awesome stories, musings about MMO’ing and IM’ing, and also other things that happen in life, or things that piss me off.

But this time I have added a twist.

I have 6 other friends that will be writing on this blog as well.  So if you get tired of me you can always read the other guys’ posts.  I figure this way, the blog should always be chock full of great stories and posts.  It’s not too full now, but as soon as I teach the other guys about blogging it should be non stop legendary blogging.

So head to my new blog Dork and Beans, read my first post, which is about Google Adsense…and Britney Spears.  Don’t forget to join the new RSS feed!  Oh and leave a few comments to let me know you are still there!  Don’t mind the mess I am still working on the theme and adding all the plugins and widgets!

Thanks for keeping with me guys!

Categories: The Tao of Living on Adsense
Tags:

I have been having some serious brain issues these last few days which is why I haven’t been posting or responding to comments. I have been super dizzy every waking moment of my day, but I still keep on trying to blog through the brain haze. I really do not know what the cause is, but I have some ideas:

1. I haven’t been eating enough vegetables

2. or the crack heads below me are cooking up meth

Either way this delusional nature I have been in has prompted a revelation: I hate Adsense and should have never created an Adsense blog. I thought it would be fun to try and make a living on Adsense. I realize that trying to blog and make money from an Adsense blog, is a the slow boat to China.

I have been working on building a few other blogs, well one blog at a time, but I have a bunch lined up. Anyways the goal was to work on each blog until it brings in an average income of $5 a day. My first project was my WoW Gold Farming site, and so far it has almost brought in almost more money than Living on Adsense has brought in since it’s creation. None of the income from this other blog was from Adsense, so this leads me to believe that my other blogs will start to overcome this blog eventually as well.

I built Living on Adsense to blog my journey from being a brand new blogger to..well where ever I end up. I think that I have ended up with a sour taste in my mouth from Adsense. I’ve backed myself into a niche that I am no longer fond of. As was mentioned a few weeks ago in one of the post comments:

“Isn’t your blog due for a re-branding? It doesn’t seem like you are living on your Adsense income anymore.”

Yes I do think it is time for a re-brand. A new journal that doesn’t scream “Adsense Blog.” The lack of veggies/meth induced vertigo has given me a few ideas as to the direction I am going to go. I would also like to get your feedback and suggestions as to what you think I should do here. I am thinking new name, new domain, new look, but keep all of the old posts, and re-direct LoA.com to the new blog. I just have no idea how to move an entire blog to a new domain, and delete the old.

Damn the Meth

Categories: Hit the Panic button/Freak Outs
Tags: adsense, blog, google

One of the dangers of having an Adsense blog, or using any other type of contextual advertising, is that sometimes the ads don’t correctly match the context of your site. Sometimes the contextual advertising service gets the ads right on, and sometimes they miss. And once in a while they create something really funny. When I first found these pictures I laughed until I cried. Maybe it’s just funny because this is what I do for a living. Anyways may I present to you:

Contextual Advertising Gone Bad:

Although these next few are not the result of contextual advertising gone bad, but more so of human judgment gone bad:

So for those of you that run blogs with contextual advertising, keep an eye on what is happening with the ads because you never know when things may go bad!

Categories: Google Adsense
Tags: adsense, advertising, blog, contextual, funny

A few quick little updates.

In my March Adsense Blog Stats post I mentioned that I will be randomly tossing $5 bills at people that make comments on my blog.  The latest person to win the random commenting prize is Skolor from The Other MMO.  Congrats!

Another tidbit of info I wanted to share with everyone is a free eBook that I suggest picking up.  Recently I have been talking about the eBook at www.5bucksaday.com, and how my newest goals will set my sites to a low attainable goal of $5 per day.  It’s a great little eBook, and I enjoyed the read and found it quite inspirational.  In one of the previous comments on my blog Jason from The University Kid mentioned a similar eBook, but it was free.  So go ahead and check out 5dollarformula.com

Categories: The Tao of Living on Adsense
Tags: adsense, blog

It’s near the ending of the first week of “build a blog a week.” I’ve actually decided to not build a new blog each week but to instead create a blog and then work on developing it until it is making a consistent $5 per day. I know that to some of you big bloggers this really doesn’t seem like much, but to us rookie blogger an extra $150 per month is freakin awesome!

So the first blog in this project was a revamp of a blog that I had already but was not really doing that hot: Top Warcraft Guides. I actually started revamping this blog on Wednesday so it hasn’t been a full week working on it.

I did all of the standard things you would do with a new blog (ie find a template and tweak it, install plugins etc) . I found a great checklist over at Blogging Badly to help you set up a new blog. With this blog I am focusing on 3 major issues in getting started:

1. Ranking for keyword phrases
2. Monetizing with great Adsense positioning
3. Monetizing with ClickBank

1. To start off I am working for the whole blog to be ranked for the keyword phrase “wow gold farming” which according to word tracker has 69,400 competing sites and the number 1 spot in Google gets around 160 hits per day. As of writing this I cannot find my blog in the top 100 of Google. I am also writing post that are individually targeted at other keywords besides “wow gold farming” For example the phrase “wow enchanting guide” which I currently rank 14th in Google which puts me on page 2. A pretty good start I think. I really don’t know all that much about SEO, but I found a great post that has help me a ton in getting ranked in Google

2. Monetizing with Adsense was my biggest focus as I do run an Adsense Blog, and I’m you would like to hear about how I use Adsense on my other blogs. I tried to keep it simple by using a 728 Leader Board bended to the background right below the banner, as I watched in one of the videos for Adsense Decoded that this is one of the best position and sizes for an Adsense unit. I still have no navigation for this blog, and it seems like I may not as this make the Adsense seem like the navigation. I also have integrated a 250×250 square floating to the right of the post text. It took some playing around but I finally got it to “float” to the right of the text. I used some simple CSS to create this effect.

<div style=”margin-left:40px; padding:5px”>
<adsense code>
<div>

And then I stuck the code on the Index template for my theme. As far as I can tell every template seems to be different. All I do is find a place in the template code where I think the Adsense code should be and then I check out the blog and see if the Adsense is in the right spot. If not I try again. Good ole trial and error.

3. I also am using ClickBank to make some money. There are a ton of Warcraft related items available on ClickBank. I am still trying to figure out the best way to promote these items. Right now I have the a tower banner in the sidebar closest to the post. I am still playing around with positioning and what spots will work best. I’m going to add a few other affiliate programs besides ClickBank, such as Tshirt Hell which has a two-tier program that pays out $4 per Tshirt sold.

So this is blog number 1 of the $5 per day project. I would love to hear some feedback, so if you have a few moments head to my blog about WoW Gold Farming and let me know if like what you see or if you have some suggestion for improving it.

Categories: The Projects
Tags: adsense, blog, project, world of warcraft

Yesterday I mentioned that I was making 2 major changes to my blogging style.

1. I failed to meet my March goal for my Adsense blog, and as such I will be hunting for a full-time job to earn some real money.

2. I will be producing more blogs.

So I basically just screwed myself because now I will have even less free time, as most of my time will be spent developing blogs. Most of the comments left on yesterdays post (don’t forget to leave a comment on yesterdays post to have a chance to win $5) were concerns from readers that I would have no time to keep up with so many blogs. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it, it’s just that I was never really concerned about time management. Now I guess I have to be.

I decided that yesterday I would track my activities to see exactly where I could save some time. I thought for sure that I would have to cut down on my sleeping. Trade in alcohol for taurine and caffeine. But I was wrong. There was one activity that really took up too much of my time:

Surfing for porn.

Yeah it’s true. I’m a guy, and I like porn. It’s really tough because at any second I can open up my web browser and blam: “You’ve got porn!” It’s even worse because I have two monitors set up on my computer, so one screen can be playing porn, while the other screen focuses on blogging. A computer is good for but 2 things, making money and surfing for porn. I have at times though about combining the making money and porn, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“So Chris, what kind of blogs do you make?”

The goal is now to really focus on creating blogs. I need to create one new blog each week and have it making me $5 per day. I know that I can do it, I just need to focus and manage my time. I challenge you to take a look at your day and see where you can cut back and add a little extra time to do some blogging. I think that if a person could add an extra hour of time for blogging per day they could be extremely successful.

Categories: Don't Follow My Blogging Advice
Tags: adsense, blog, blogging, porn