[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.