Is Google Adsense Making Me Rich?

Jim at BlogKits asks if anyone would like to share their success or failures using Google Adsense to generate revenue for their blog? He writes – ‘I’m curious as to whether or not you have made it work, and to what level? Making just enough to make it worth it?’

This is a question I get asked every few days by entrepreneurial bloggers – it is a tricky question to answer because Adsense do not allow publishers to share details of how much they earn or how their ads perform. I am also hesitant to answer it because I was always taught not to talk about money or how much you earn. However I get asked it so many times that perhaps its worth writing a progress report of how Adsense is going for me – so let me share a little of my own experience without getting into specifics.

Rich?
Adsense has been a very worthwhile venture for me – it has not made me rich, however it could. I started using it because I wanted to find a way to cover my ISP and hosting fees for my blog. I now make a good living from it. Whilst it is not my only source of income from blogging at present (I use affiliate programs, sponsorships, text ads to name a few of my other income streams) Adsense is currently the largest source of money from my blogs. I’m unable to go into specific dollar terms except to say that it pays my rent and is well on the way to giving me a deposit for a home.

More than I’ve earned before
I’ve just taken a look at the last 12 months of Adsense earnings and the total is beyond what I’ve earned previously in a calendar year in any other job (not that I’ve ever been in law, medicine or any other highly paid profession). Of course the first few months of the last 12 were no where near as good as the last few of 2004 so I’m expecting the next 12 months will be significantly higher as the exponential growth continues.

I’m not writing this to big note myself (I’m just an ordinary guy who is working hard at making an income from his blogs) – rather I am keen to spread the news of the opportunity that Adsense presents. I’m also not blogging to become rich – I do it to earn enough to be able to volunteer time to other community activities that I have a passion for.

What’s the catch?
So yes – Adsense has been successful for me. However let me qualify what I’m saying here before I start sounding like a ‘get rich quick without any work’ type motivational speaker.

Making the income that I’ve earned with Adsense (I’ve been using it for 18 months now) is not a walk in the park – this is not ‘easy money’. As I’ve written numerous times before – I work long hours (its 12.36am as I write this) and I’ve taken a long term view of it (in the early days I was earning less than I did when I was 7 and getting pocket money). I post 20-30 posts per day and work hard on networking and ethical SEO. Blogging is my full time job. You get out what you put in.

I don’t just run a single general blog – my approach is multiple blogs (I currently run 17) on niche topics which I aim to post daily on. My traffic levels are not massive but they are reasonably substantial with around 16,000 unique visitors to my site each day.

Adsense is not for every blog or every blogger. Some topics are a lot better than others – and it is not always the blogs you think that will be successful that are. Its a fickle game and one that you had better be ready for some bumps in the road in. Some months can be lean whilst others can be breathtaking – it is feast or famine and at times it all feels rather surreal. I am taking things one step at a time and am not putting all my eggs in the Adsense basket as I know it could all disappear tomorrow.

Adsense Tips
I won’t expound all my tips here – I’ve written extensively on how to best use Adsense in my Adsense Category and have a series of my best Adsense tips that starts here.