I couldn’t help but felt totally in awe while reading a post over at ShoeMoney.com where he answers several frequently asked questions about the AdSense Check in his Gallery that showed him holding one worth over $100K. Keep in mind that the check was for August 2005.
Sure, it’s a link bait post but a good one at that, so it’s worth linking to. If you are looking for a real life example of publishers making insane amount of money from AdSense, check this one out. Posting the picture again will continue to “resurrect” readers’ interest and certainly create an opportunity for him to promote his sites.
I quote the FAQ in full below:
What site was it for? What does the site do?
The site is nextpimp. The name was kind of a joke at first… next-pimp like pimp out your nextel phone. It started as a wallpaper site for nextel phones which grew into ringtones and other stuff. All content is 100% user generated.
How much of the check was profit?
At the time my expenses were 1 server @ 299$ per month for hosting. I would say atleast 130k was profit.
How much of the traffic was pay per click?
None of it was pay per click. Back then I did not know anything at all about pay per click.
Where did all your traffic come from?
About 70% of the traffic was direct 15% from search engines and 15% from referrals.
How much traffic did the site get to get that much money?
About 75k uniq per day.
Why did you get a paper check and not wire?
Back then Google did not do wire transfers for amounts of $10,000.00
Do you think its possible to still earn that kind of revenue?
(most often asked question) Yes.
How long did it take to make revenue?
I never tried to make any money the first 1.5 years it was running. I just concentrated on providing a good service. About 2 years after I started the site It started to do good revenue from AdSense
Can you show the full month report from AdSense for that month? Sure.
He even includes a screenshot of his AdSense report for that particular month. With permission from Google, he discloses his CTR and CPM. Can you imagine making such insane amount of money while only spending $299 monthly on web hosting? Check out his daily income below. Now convert those to Malaysian ringgit, are you thinking what I’m thinking?
And that’s not even his main income, according to him, AdSense has accounted for less than 5% of the incoming revenue for his companies. In addition to that, his blog at ShoeMoney.com is pulling just under $30,000 in October from direct ad sales, 30% from affiliate programs and other sources. Obviously more than the amount John Chow made from his blog. It made my head spin just thinking about those seriously mad figures.
But it doesn’t stop there, in March 2007 he made USD709,626.81 in commission from Commission Junction. I hope that’s a typo because I started to feel a little depress right now LOL. Just joking, it’s great inspiration for everyone. I don’t know if he earned that amount as a vendor or affiliate, regardless, it’s just insane to make that much monthly.
So did you notice a running theme here? He doesn’t make money by serving AdSense or selling paid links on his blog. While creating a blog can make you rich if it’s done correctly, I believe you’ll have to explore other monetization options in order to go to the next level.
You’ll need to create sites that serve certain purposes like PlentyOfFish.com or NextPimp.com, then learn PPC and do affiliate marketing. Remember Ashley, the 17 year old teenage girl who pull in over $70K monthly from AdSense by offering free MySpace templates on her site?
That goes to show that offering a service or products that lots of people are interested in will help you make money online faster.
Now I‘m not suggesting you drop everything you are doing now and start brainstorming similar ideas and hopefully get rich next year. I am aware that there are tons of other ways to make money online and not everyone can be as successful as those above even when they create the next free dating site, or free ringtone download site or give away free Myspace templates.
Often people become successful because they are able to offer the right products/services at the right time. Some may call that luck, but I call it knowing when to act when opportunity presents itself. If we can do that, we’ll be the next ShoeMoney.
