Can you make a lot of money with AdSense on your blog? Well, like most things in life, that depends. I’m not going to give you any silly unrealistic happy-talk about it, but yeah, you can make decent money with AdSense on a blog–if you choose your niche wisely and write great, informative content.
Case Study: Nursingschoolprograms.com
A blog consulting client of mine (who wishes to remain anonymous) had done some research into creating a blog to make money from ads. She knows an awful lot about what it takes to get into nursing school (nursing is a very highly in-demand field, so competition is tough). The result is Nursing School Programs. And yes, it’s making money. Not big money, yet, but it’s still new, so give it time. But way more than most new ad-supported blogs make.
Choosing a Profitable Niche
My client knew that nursing was in demand. I did some keyword research which showed that should she get some decent traffic, she could make more than decent coin from her blog. We discussed some other topics as well, but nursing was the strongest by far. Almost any traffic at all would pay, because it would be so highly targeted. Practically nobody other than someone looking into a nursing degree would ever visit the site.
For the Millionth Time: Quality, Original Content Rules
When people want an ad-driven blog, often they make the mistake of picking topics about which they know nothing purely for their cost-per-click values. The problem is that it’s difficult get good traffic by any means other than knowing your subject and writing useful, authoritative, and unique content. My client knows nursing schools and all kinds of tips and tricks to get into the good ones, so it was a perfect fit. Everything on that site is original material written by her. And it’s highly informative, genuinely useful content for a person looking to get into nursing school.
When is a Blog not a Blog?
When you do what we did with it, that’s when! The site is very un-blog-like. Why? Three words: know your audience. In other words, design for your audience. We were targeting a less tech-savvy demographic, but most importantly, we understood why people would visit the site and what their needs were. The blog format would get in the way, really. We used WordPress as a light CMS in this case (Content Management System). Nearly anything which would identify the site as a blog was removed from the design. The design itself is my customization of a very highly AdSense-optimized theme. Some quality stock photography in the header makes it look professional and trustworthy.
Take-aways for You
- Pick a niche about which you’re knowledgeable and which can pay well.
- Know your audience and design your site and create your content for them.
- Create original, informative, and useful content.
9 Comments
Great post Michael!
This one was very informative for me because I just bought a GREAT new domain name yesterday, and am currently in the process of choosing a theme and approach.
I will be using Adsense on it, and this gave me good perspective on remembering who your target demographic is when designing the site.
Great post and really helps to demonstrate the expertise you offer in your blog consulting.
@Conrad: That’s awesome! Getting a great domain is important. Keeping your target audience in mind is REALLY important. I’m glad you found this post useful. When I help other people, a lot of really great stuff comes out of that everyone can learn from. Good luck with your new site!
I agree with this. It seems to me that making money on advertising is at odds with “conversing” with readers. Advertising that people go for takes away people from your site, whereas great content can have them wandering your pages for some time (I do this a lot
) and you need to take into account these contradictory goals when designing your blog / site.
That said, you can make money advertising your services via a blog. Michael does it by offering business services and at the other end of the scale, John Chow does it by pimping himself out, as he doesn’t really provide any value in and of itself.
@Robert: Yes, the ads vs. content thing is delicate. You have to provide real information, but, ironically, not so much that people have no reason to click on the ads. I think what you really want is to create content that whets people’s appetite, so that clicking on an ad will seem like the answer they’ve been looking for.
In the case of Nursing School Programs, the content can be as in-depth as possible, but could never replace a link to an actual nursing degree program. A lot of the ads are from schools. Clicking on those ads gets people closer to making a decision about school. It’s a win-win situation if there ever was one.
This is a point that I try to make to quite a lot of people.
I have two niche sites that are extraordinarily easy to write for - but that’s because they are subjects I’m genuinely interested in (and would read all the news about them anyway!), so generating unique content is easy! They often don’t make a lot but I think that’s probably down to the WP theme more than anything, generally updating them causes a few visitors and clicks, I’d love to get more but we don’t always get what we want do we (otherwise I’d be on a beach in the sunshine today!)
Michael I’d be interested to know what makes a highly AdSense-optimized theme.
The way I see it (please correct me if I’m wrong) what needs to happen is (i) one of the sidebars needs to be sized to fit the selected AdSense box, (ii) text colours & sizes are chosen so the AdSense box doesn’t look like one, and (iii) you make sure you type your AdSense ID correctly in the code (no laughing please).
Anything missing?
@Mark: those are good observations, but I think there’s more to it than that. The theme was designed with AdSense in mind. Notice how the link units are formatted. I like this design because it’s one of the few that incorporate a large horizontal banner effectively into the design.
This is a great post! Simply, relevancy, unique content, and giving your audience what they want will drive traffic to a site. I’ve read a lot of “how to make money with a blog” articles and posts, but this is by far the best. Thanks!
@Erica: Flattery will get you everywhere. Thanks!
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