Treat AdSense Like a Business

People don’t like to hear me say that AdSense is a business because it sounds too much like work is involved. And we all know people hate to work. They want to become

rich with as little effort as possible.

After all, it sounds much better to hear me say you can easily make money by putting Google ads on your site or blog than it does to say, “You have to build a ton of content,

learn how to optimize every page for the search engines, and market your site or blog like crazy.”

Who wants to hear that ?

But the truth is, the reason most people never make much with AdSense is they don’t realize this is all about learning how to draw enough targeted traffic to your site or blog

to make any worthwhile money. And that’s purely marketing. If you can’t generate at least 100 unique visitors per day to your site, you’re probably not going to earn enough

AdSense revenue to make this process worth your time.

People aren’t just going to stumble upon your site or blog just because you created it. It’s not like offline, where you can throw up a Lemonade Stand in the middle of a busy

street and thirsty people will just find you and buy your lemonade.

The Web is much different. People find websites and blogs by searching for information in a search engine like Google. And Google only “recommends” sites that provide

useful information and are recommended by other related sites.

And when I say “Google recommends sites” understand that I mean ranks . So when you see a site ranked #1 for a particular keyword phrase in Google, it’s because Google

can tell how many other related and authority sites are linked to them using the keyword phrase that was searched.

What do I mean by authority sites ? These are sites that have been deemed popular by Google because of their high traffic and quality inbound links (other sites linking to

them.)

So if you are building a site on how to negotiate a new car deal then it would be beneficial for you to get recommended by (or linked from) the popular site

CarBuyingTips.com.

At the time I’m writing this, they rank #1 for the phrase car buying tips in Google so that lets you know they must be a pretty popular site for keywords related to car buying.

And they earned that number 1 rank by years of building useful, unique tips on car buying that no other site offers.

Over time other sites and blogs related to buying cars thought this was a useful site so they link back to them, many of them voluntarily. Part of Google’s formula for ranking

sites is to calculate how many other sites link to a certain Web site and what keywords are used to describe that site.

For example, do a search on Google now for gardening tips .

What shows up? Generally sites that have a great deal of information on gardening. The sites closest to the top are probably sites that are linked from many other respected

sites related to gardening.

Those people on the left side of Google’s results (the natural results) are not paying Google for that rank. They earned it through their useful content and by other sites

linking to them.

So your goal with AdSense is to become THAT site people recommend in whatever niche/subject you choose to focus on. You want people to say “Hey, this is a cool site. I’m

going to tell my visitors about them.” Voila! They’ve provided you with a free link without you having to ask.

Not only is this free traffic, but Google looks at it this way…

Site A is linking to Site B . So that must mean Site A thinks Site B is a pretty useful/interesting site on “topic X”. The more links you get to your site like this, the greater

chance Google will rank you higher for whatever keywords your site focuses on. Any time a related site links to you, it’s sort of like a vote for your site in the search engine’s

eyes .

My site, www.flat-stomach-exercises.com gets found every month for over 25,000 different keywords related to fitness and flattening the stomach. A big reason for that

traffic is because people voluntarily link to me from their sites, blogs, etc. Often times I don’t even know they’ve done it until I check my traffic stats.

That’s the importance of building unique sites that offer a great deal of useful information on a specific topic. People will want to link to you.

So while I would love to tell you that making money with AdSense is about quickly slapping some ads and publishing your Web site or Blog. It’s so much more than that

because without the traffic, you’ll never make any money.

And you definitely have to earn that traffic.

1) After you’ve created your site, you have to take the time to learn how to generate that wonderful, free search engine traffic. That means going to sites

like www.seomoz.org and reading about how to get ranked high in the popular engines. Don’t ever pay anyone to submit your site to any of the search engines. You can

learn all you need to know about search engine optimization (SEO) for free on the Web. Submitting is free too.

2) Get creative and learn how to market your site in social networking sites like Twitter , Digg , StumbleUpon , etc.

3) Or if you’ve created a blog, you can join a site like www.technorati.com to help drive more visits to your blog. Also read up on Darren Rowse’s great site ProBlogger.net .

4) Do a search for forums/message boards related to your topic. If you’re doing a site for stay-at-home moms, it would be beneficial for you to join the ivillage.com forums,

create a profile and promote your site in your signature file. Now every time you go and post a message on that forum, your link will be attached to your message.

You can do this with any niche. Whatever your topic is, do a search for your topic + forums in Google to find message boards related to your topic.

Every little bit helps, but you have to remember, this all takes time. For example, it generally takes a few months for the search engines to start giving you that free traffic

and that’s assuming you’ve done your homework and learned how to optimize your pages for the search engines.

Treat this as your business, and remember businesses take time and work to develop.