Nick from Nicked Up has just emailed me to let me know that he’s been implementing the tips on this site with regards to Adsense and in doing so has doubled his income and become a five figure blogger.
‘With Darren’s tips I’ve taken my Google Adsense revenue to levels I never imagined making from blogs. I’ve earned more from advertising in the past 3 months than I had in the previous 6. Here is a chart of Google Adsense earnings for the past 12 months. ‘
Congratulations Nick! I’ll be around later in the day to collect my 10% commission.
I’ll finish this post with Nick’s advice for people wanting to do what he does:
‘If you come up with an idea, don’t be afraid to go with it. Get a site up and running. With domains registrations at $6/year (sometimes less) and some hosting packages in the $10-$20/year range you don’t have much to risk except your time and effort.’
Nick is so right – he’s articulating my philosophy exactly – give it a go!
I see he’s putting more Google Ads than the TOS allow on his newest site, Primary Rough.
Well, congrats to Nick!
Anonymous – true there are more units than TOS mentions – but I think you’ll find that he’s doing so with permission but won’t be able to talk about it directly.
Darren might be right…but I can’t talk about it.
Nick,
where on earth does one find a decent webhost for $20/month
can you please send me some links with this info?
oops.. that was supposed to say $20/year
that sounds so cheap….
send me some URLs please
You can get hosting this cheap but be careful, most of it is crap.
I suggest deasoft.com for a bargain host. I use them for a couple of sites and have been very happy.
Glad to hear it! The tips offered here definitley make it feasible when instituted correctly.
DreamHost had a deal a few months ago for less than $10/year. Recently they offered 30 or 33% off, which might still be going on.
I wouldn’t worry about $20/m or $20/y when making 5 figures. I currently pay $15/m and I’m looking to increase that to $150/m to get better hosting.
Congrats Nick!
Just saw an ad on the Movable Type pages for Living Dot hosting;
$8.95/year domain name!
Free Movable Type (Blog) installation!
Free Photoblog – Medium / Mega Plan!
Off topic, but Darren am I crazy or did you gain almost 100 subscribers this week?
I can’t vouch for your sanity – but yes it did go up again this week. The number tends to go up and down a bit – its currently at its highest level – but I wouldn’t be surprised if it falls now its the weekend.
Thats a fairly interesting development regarding AdSense revenues. I’ll be more religious in following your recommendations.
On the note of hosts, I would happily recommend A Small Orange they offer a full suite of packages and options with things like unlimited databases, decent size, and relative to my last host (AvaHost.net) I have not had any sudden outages or weird problems with the site temporarily being unavailable. I’m currently hosting 4 domains with them and stand by their sterling service. Seriously, their packages can’t be beat. In addition, the have the Fantastico install wizard and you can install every Linux, PHP, MySQL package under the sun with ease without having to do any real legwork yourself.
If you find yourself using them, mentioning SecretWeaponLabs.com as a referral would be nice, as well.
Cheers Darren!
Dr. Del: Check out the current hosting company I use. http://www.LUNARPAGES.com
I’m currently getting 1G of space and alloted 100G of bandwidth/per month for $7.95/month. Of course you pay in 3 month blocks, but it’s still a deal.
D. Campbell
Darren,
I too experienced an immediate upsurge in earning once I placed my ads a little better. I’m going to try rotating some color schemes next to see what works best. I’ve elevated TrollhattanSaab to what should be a four-figure blog now. I’m not sure if I can get it to five though as it’s a bit too much of a niche. Hence there’ll be a new network of blogs out there soon – I’ll be increasing from one blog to seven in the next month or so!!
There’s probably something in the archives about it already, but it’d be good to review factors other than ‘hot-zones’ for Adsense placement.
BTW, I recently added Chitika but it slowed the loading time by a considerable margin, so I’m having to re-think the strategy on that one. Have you noticed anything similar?
I just did the math I am a 4 figure blogger!
I’m amused at the above comment. All it would take to be a 4 figure blogger would be to receive a check from Google each month. 12 months, $100 check each month, that’s $1200 and 4 figures.
5 figures is much more impressive, if you ask me.
Sure 5 figures is impressive Jacob – but as far as I’m concerned any amount is an impressive amount to be writing on topics that you love. I remember the day when I got to the 4 figure mark – it was an important milestone because it showed me that this blogging for money thing was a distinct possibility. $100 per month does’nt sound a lot – but it’s an important figure for many.
So well done Scott!
When you start you just want to cover costs. That’s the first milestone and it (usually) marks the achievement of three-figure blogging. The realisation that you’re a four-figure blogger is the next one and it’s a significant milestone too – if you’re a threebie like me (on track for four).
I have to agree with Darren – $100/month is the first of many milestones, and hey, you can’t get to $100/day without first hitting $100/month, right?
I only recently hit $100/month, and it feels really good, even if it’s just small change ; )
I’m still a 4 figure blogger but hopefully I can break the 5 mark by early next year…. Thanks to Darren and my CEO – Duncan Riley
I recently became a 5 figure blogger, and am now looking to raise that to a high 5 figure blogger as I continue my quest to make writing and learning my job.
Blogging is the dream job I never knew I could have.
And for those at the 4 figure mark, that is more than I was doing a few months ago. I was only a 3 figure blogger before my blogging job kicked in.
Id love to reach that 3 figure mark someday. Right now I only have a personal blog but very soon I want to start a network of blogs. This site is very helpfull and I think it will get me off to a great start.