When I first start building websites, the thing that I want to learn most was what a site should actually look like when it was done. In this post, I’m going to share with you a few sites that I own and one that I don’t, so that I’m able to give you the thing that I was craving most way back then.
My hope is that you’ll realize that building a profitable niche site isn’t rocket science. Instead, its little more than following a set of guiding principles for success. I guess you could actually call it a formula for success.
Having a Formula for Success is Key
The reason having a formula is so important is because you should employ a method that is easy to teach, easy to outsource, and easy to repeat. As I have said many times on this blog, of all the things that I do, building niche websites takes the least amount of my time – currently less than an hour per site on average; including the keyword research.
As a side note, if you haven’t already done so, you can easily get a copy of Niche Site Launch Kit to learn how to do this
Adsense Site Example #1 – HowToCleanAnything.com
This next site is a site that I recently purchased. It has been around for close to ten years and has over 600 post on cleaning tips. The original owner, who is a business associate of mine, and I are now working in partnership to increase the site’s earnings.
Now the stealthy among you might be thinking that building a site with 600 posts would take a while, and you’d be right! However, buying an existing site is a perfectly viable strategy and if that is something that is of interest to you, head over to Flippa and browse to your heart’s content. In fact, what I did, and would suggest you do, is to set up a saved search and then subscribe to the RSS for that search. That way, all the sites that meet your buying criteria will come right to your RSS reader without you lifting a finger.
At this point in time, HTCA is receiving just over 1000 uniques a day and is earning about $25-30 a day. Considering that I don’t have to do much to maintain that income level, that is pretty sweet! That said, I still have quite a number of activities planned to increase the income. Got some ideas for me? Please share them in the comments below.
As you can see here, the ads on the home page are pretty much the same as the first example, except here I’m testing sidebar ads (not sure why the fonts don’t match the other ads) to see if they are viable. As with the prior example, I also display ads down at the bottom of each post.
Adsense Site Example #2
This third site is not owned by me, however, I chose to highlight it because I know the owner and he’s making about $1000 a month with it. Given that the local exact search volume for his primary keyword: security guard training is only about 4,400 searches a month, this site is a shining example of what happens when you start with a site like example #1 and then keep adding content to it until it moves close to the size of example #2 (see, I knew there was a reason I picked these 3 examples!). One of the key things you need to remember when building niche sites is that as you ad more content, you will end up getting far more traffic than you originally forecast.
Just like the other examples above, you can see the three areas where ad placement seems to work best. With that said, you should still test, test, and test!
Now Its Your Turn
Now that you’ve seen two very successful sites, what is stopping you from doing the same thing? There is almost no technical knowledge required, and once you learn the process, its actually not that hard to do. They key is to learn the process!
If you haven’t done so already, make sure you fill in the form below with your email and you will gain access to some of what I’m talking about right away – plus you will receive notification of future posts on this very topic.
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37 Responses to Two Examples of Successful Adsense Sites
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Having sold his last business for over a million bucks in 2008 by the age of 38, Trent has since immersed himself in the study of internet marketing by going out and doing. Continue reading...
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This is the type of post iv certainly been waiting for for quite some time as well! Its one thing to talk about the how to’s and another to get your eyeballs on some success.
Very inspiring work! Thank you Trent for stepping into what lately seems like no-mans land.
Glad you enjoyed it. I have many more posts in the queue!
Trent, in your first example you assumed a 7.5% CTR. Where did you come up with this number?
From Spencer.
Nice examples Trent. Cary Bergeron from adsense recipe shared one his old websites (& one he sold on flippa for 80k) which apparently has the Google “recommended” layout for adsense has one of the highest CTR’s.
Thought I might share it here:
http://www.school-grants.org/
Thanks for sharing the site. I’m sure my readers will love having a look at it.
Thank you Anshul. This was also an interesting example.
My take on the Google recommended placements is that they do not want clutter on the sites. They have been making this clear with penalizing sites cluttered with ads especially above the fold. Although they do say themselves that “ads located above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold.” they also immediately follow up with “we strongly recommend putting your users first”.
So 3 large ad blocks above the fold may perform well, as noted by many themes setup for Adsense, it is not wise and may result in some Google Rank slippage.
Trent’s examples here all seem to coincide with this. https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=17954
While there is no one type of ad (large block, long rectangle, etc.) that is the best preforming for every site, a little split testing can reveal the best to use for the specific site
Hi Trent. First of all I’d like to thank you for the site, it’s been very helpful in my attempt to gain an IM education.
As I’m interested in creating an adsense site of my own in the near future, I performed a bit of [read: limited] research on your keyword ‘driving instructor. What I found was that while it receives a decent number of exact match searches a month, nearly 90% of these are coming from the U.K.
My questions for you are: Did you notice this in your keyword research? And if so, which market are you targeting? Does this matter?
Forgive me if I’ve made a mistake
, I’m merely a curious noob.
Hey Michael,
So glad you are enjoying my blog; thanks for such kind words.
With Adsense sites, where the search is coming from really isn’t too important as Google will make the ads relevant to the local geography of the searcher – at least that has been my experience so far!
My best advice to you is just to get started. Pick 5 niches and build 5 sites. Worst case scenario, you get an education that NO AMOUNT OF READING will give you. Best case, you start making some money and get completely addicted to the best business model on the planet
Here’s Carey’s webinar if you guys are interested as he talks about some gems and how he propelled himself to 25k/month with just over 20 Adsense sites
http://mattsmarketingblog.com/adsguild/adsguild.html
Would love to hear what you guys think about pros & cons of building 200 small sites doing like a dollar a day Vs just 15-20 big sites doing 2-3k/month.
Obviously, there’s a bigger risk of you losing your income quickly with fewer sites if for whatever reason your traffic drops but from a management point of view I’d rather focus on 20 sites than 200 sites!
If you listen to my podcast with Spencer, he’ll tell you that when he targeted larger sites, he never made any money. The truth is that there is no wrong way to do it; instead, its just the way that works for you. Personally, I want to build sites that are easy to rank and that means I need to build niche sites. Over time, some of them will grow into big sites, however, they will be earning you money along the way, as opposed to not earning you money UNTIL they are big sites.
I think Anshul was talking about large sites like we think of medium sites. They are larger than the micro-sites, but certainly arent “head” keywords nor are they longtails either, but body keywords. If thats the case, Spencer did mention that he does a minimum of 1000 exacts but prefers more, and infact generaly only goes after 3000 exacts monthly searched keywords now according to his recent blog posts.
But as Trent Mentioned, its all by what fits you best.
I think the following article is a great summary of this.
http://www.viperchill.com/keyword-research/
Thanks for sharing.
What theme have guys used for sites 1 & 3?
Simplefolio. To discover a site’s theme, just view source, and then do a CTRL F (find) for the word “theme”. If it is a WordPress blog, the name of the theme will be shown.
Great examples Trent! I like the simplefolio theme. I may try it on the next site I build.
I noticed that the logos for each site look simple, yet custom. Did you outsource their design? Also, how would you load a custom logo into the Title section of WordPress?
Hey Ben,
My VA does everything for me. I only supply her with the keywords, articles (which I have written for me) and instructions for on-site SEO. She picks the theme, makes the graphics, inserts the logo, images, etc…. all for $30 a site
Care to share her info?
BTW love that you used Pat’s site. Been following him for a while and lurking here. Time to provide comments back to you
She’s actually no longer working for me. She was super talented, but not reliable at all. Twice she just went missing. I’ve not gone back to oDesk and hired another. Plus, I have a few new tricks up my sleeve for knocking out new sites super fast. Check out Managewp.com and keep an eye out for a future post on the topic.
Hey Trent,
How do you customize the SimpleFolio theme so pages are not included in the header?
I have been using the SimpleFolio theme and whenever I create a new page, it automatically ads it to the top. I am trying to remove the ‘Privacy Policy’ but have not been successful yet. Any recommendations?
Yes, I do customize it by using a plugin called Page Link Manager.
Hi Trent,
I noticed that all adsense placements on site #1 and #3 is really cool..
What plugins do you use to easily place the adsense ads in the spots you want?
Thanks
Travis
Hey Travis,
The plugin is called QuickAdsense and it was the best of all the ones that I tested.
Thanks,
Trent
Thanks Trent!
I’ve tried the plugin out and it works fine to insert ads in my posts and sidebar..
However, i could not get the plugin to display the “Adsense Link Unit” on top of my homepage image like the one displayed in site #1 and #3 above..
Any ideas how i can get that done or do i need to edit the css section of my blog to achieve that??
Sorry in advance if this seems like a dumb question to ask mate..
Cheers
Travis
Ah yes…that is done in the “header” css file. Just look for the tag and try inserting the code.
Where can I get more ideas like that? I’m looking to get some adsense on my site and looking around.
thx
Watch me webinar and I’ll show you how I get my ideas. Its located here.
Trent – which adsense ad do I need to create to get that super thin horizontal ad above the header in the first and third sites? And also, how do I tell Quick Adsense to put it there? Or do I need to put that in manually? Thanks!
That ad must be placed manually in the header code. Its a 728×15 ad.
Those are some great examples Trent. Thanks for sharing.
I always like to see what a successful niche adsense site looks like. Thanks for showing exactly where you placed your ads and what topics you or your friend were writing about.
On your driving instructor site the header graphic is no longer showing? Thanks for some great advice and information.
Damon
And that would be why I don’t share my sites very often. I’ve been hacked. Nice.
Trent, I guess the topic and the contents do not tally
nice post. you have showed good example.
I noticed you have a small amazon affiliate products widget under the post. I have been told (by you and 1 other) not to mix adsense with affiliate links.
Is it a test or what would you say about using both on the same site?
I’m always testing things. If you are referring to the Security Guard site; I don’t own that one.
Hey Trent, I’m a big fan of your site (and regular newletter reader) and just thought I’d point out a small bug in this post so you can fix it (I like to hear about this type of issue on my own posts at least).
Your headings refer to Site 1 and Site 3, but there is no Site 2. Hope that helps!
Trent, First time reader and I also notice what Geoff mention, I actually had to re-read this post multiple of times because I thought I missed Site 2. Lol. Either way, thanks for providing the example. I always created NICE Adsense niche site which most of the time kills my productivity.