Google Adsense: Is January Going To Be My Best Month?

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A lot of people have different opinions about Adsense; some say that they like using it alongside their affiliate offers and others eliminate Adsense completely, saying that it takes away attention from their offers.

They want to focus on getting more affiliate sales as there is more potential there.

I definitely agree with both sides, but I'm one of those who has experimented with Adsense to see whether it could be used alongside my affiliate offers. Who would want to throw the possibilities of a little side-earner in addition to affiliate sales, right?

Oct 2018 - Applied For Adsense

My website has been around since December 2017 so as you can see, I didn't even consider adding Adsense until MUCH, MUCH later.

Part of the reason was because I did really want to focus on affiliate sales at first because of the potential. When I did later decide to experiment with Adsense, I thought that it was for the best to not have implemented Adsense earlier on because of the following reasons:

1) Applying too early would just get me rejected.

2) I was able to focus more on developing my website FIRST; so I was experimenting on different themes, colors, layouts, writing style.

3) I was able to increase traffic to my website. I had started publishing one post a day from Aug 2018 to Oct 2018. I also wanted to grow my referrals to WA and increase conversions.

Which I actually did, because though the number of my referrals were up and down month by month, it was really improving over time.

So not having a distraction with Adsense for MYSELF and focusing on writing better and improving my posts is what set me off at pretty good earnings in Nov 2018.

Nov 2018 - Experimentation Starts

I implemented Adsense on Nov 4th, 2018 and for that whole month, I made $50.70 CAD (about $38.52 USD) which wasn't so bad! It was definitely more than what I was used to making, especilly since I hadn't had any WA sales at that point.

But what I noticed was that it didn't interfere at all with my referral count since the number of referrals was even higher that month than all the other previous months.

So I decided to keep Adsense a little longer.

Dec 2018 to Sept 2019 - The BIG Dip!

The following is what I made in each month from Dec 2018 to Sept 2019;

Dec 2018 - $57.96 CAD

Jan 2019 - $44.28 CAD

Feb 2019 - $39.65 CAD

Mar 2019 - $23.05 CAD

Apr 2019 - $16.82 CAD

May 2019 - $8.88 CAD

Jun 2019 - $2.87 CAD

Jul 2019 - $6.15 CAD

Aug 2019 - $5.24 CAD

Sep 2019 - $8.81 CAD

What a big difference, right? I started off making good money from Adsense and slowly, it died upto 95%! What happened?!

Well, I did contnue publishing almost 1 post a day, so that wasn't the issue. What I found out later in May 2019 was that the problem was my theme! It was slowing down my website.

I tried optimizing my images, but that didn't do anything. That's actually what I had been working on from Mar 2019 (when my earnings had been cut in half) to Jun 2019.

I wasn't publishing much during those times because I was so busy trying to figure out what was happening.

But optimizing the images didn't work. When I tested the speed of my pages, I decided that it was either the plug-ins or the theme.

I deactivated the plug-ins one by one and it didn't make a big difference, so I knew that it HAD to be my theme and thus, in Jun 2019, I changed my theme. And it was at about the same time as the Google Update.

As you can tell, both the Google Update and the change of my theme hit my website hard; I made $2.87 CAD in Jun 2019 from Adsense, which is the lowest it had ever been.

My traffic had been slashed by about 70% at that point too (from around 100 visitors a day to 30).

From June onwards to Sept, I started doing the 1 post a day again, because I knew I had to lift my website out of the dumps and that was the only way to do it. And the results showed because the number of my referrals to WA were increasing and so were my Adsense Earnings.

Oct 2019 to Dec 2019 - A Strong Come-Back!

In Oct, I tried publishing as much as I could, but I remember being slowed down due to work. I still must have published around 15 articles to my website though. And the referrals kept coming in and the adsense earnings kept going up.

Referrals - 73

Adsense Earnings - $36.12 CAD

And in Nov 2019, I had the highest number of referrals to WA as well as the highest Adsense earnings that I've ever had:

Referrals - 154

Adsense Earnings - $65.98 CAD

And my traffic had grown to 11,000 visitors a month! Needless to say that I was ecstatic. My website had made a big come-back and was earning me more than ever.

Then, in Dec 2019, referrals were still high at 109. It was lower than Nov but that was expected because of the holiday season. However, my Adsense earnings kept climbing and reached $74.12 CAD.

I was thinking that's also because of the holiday season, since there would be plenty of ads around about things people wanted to buy, so people were clicking more on those ads.

No matter! I was still happy with how Dec turned out.

Jan 2020 - How Will Adsense Do?

At the end of the day, that's the big question, right?

Well, so far this month, Adsense has been pretty solid for me. I've already earned $63.20 CAD, which is almost at par to what I earned in Nov. Will I beat the Dec 2019 Adsense Earnings?

I see a strong possiblity of that happening since we're only Jan 23 today and we still have about a week to go 'til the end of Jan. I'm really hoping that it continues to climb!

My Final Thoughts - Will I Keep Adsense?

So far, my experiments have shown that Adsense is not really interfering with the number of referrals that I'm getting at WA, so I will definitely be keeping it.

If you were on the fence on whether to try Google Adsense or not on your website, then I hope that my blog post has enlightened you a little bit. My suggestion is still not to lean too heavily on it and to continue developing your website for affiliate sales.

I still do believe that THAT is where most of the money is.

However, it does not mean that you cannot make both work at the same time on your website. You just have to find the balance between Ads and affiliate offers that works for you.

Have I Changed Your Mind On Adsense?

Let me know in the comments below. Have you been using Adsense so far? If not, why? Are you going to try and implement Adsense any time soon?

If you have been using it, how has it been going for you? Have you earned much?

Thanks for reading guys!

Lots of Love,

Reyhana

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Recent Comments

47

Hi Reyhana,
Wow that's a rollercoaster ride!
I originally had Adsense on my site but I decided to remove it. I don't really know why, I just did.
And then I saw a post here just a few weeks ago about media net and I thought, why not, I'll sign up. So I think I've been with tnem for maybe 2 weeks. I've made a massive $5.03 so far :)
Lol.
I had a massive drop in my traffic last year too (and my traffic was never great to begin with). My site was quite slow so I requested to move to the new server, and I also optimised all my images. That did help a bit. I'm considering changing my theme (I have a thrive theme) to a premium generate press theme so we'll see if that helps with speed too. I'm hoping that also improves the look - I've never been totally happy with the way my theme looks (although in truth it's probably fixable if I knew what I was doing).
Anyway great to see your update, and it's awesome to see that you're getting so many referrals. Great work!!
Cheers
Melissa

Haha, yes it was a real roller coaster ride.

Hmm, I have not heard of media net so I'll look in to them.. :) Congrats on still making some money. That's great.

So sorry to hear that your traffic also go reduced. It's hard to see that because it feels like going backwards, right?

It will pick up with time. We just need to work hard and be consistent.

I'm glad the new server is working better for you. But yes, I have heard that thrive themes might look good but also might be a little heavy. That's why when I changed my theme, I considered them for a while and decided not to go with them.

I also remember somebody having the same problem of a slow website with thrive as well, but don't remember who.

It's just a matter of experimenting, I guess, until you find what works for you. Don't be afraid to experiment because that's the only thing that can move us forward and to find ways to do things better.

I'm glad you appreciate the update. There will be many more to come.. lol

How big is your site monthly visitors?

Hey Jimmy. I am currently at 11K visitors per month. :)

So that proves traffic is the key to money.

Yes and the key to traffic is writing more posts... ;)

Right.

Adsense isn't the best thing out there but I have made aroun 120 Usd with it so also not too bad.

It seems like it's done really well for you so that's pretty cool

Agreed, Amhil. It definitely isn't the best thing. There are better companies out there for ads but if it works, then I think that it is worth it to try. So far, it has worked out great for me!

I'm working to reach the 25,000 sessions as required by Mediavine, then I will use them instead. I heard that there is much more flexibility, more options as well as greater earning potential with them.

Compared to other companies though, Adsense is one of the easiest ones to qualify for, so I think that it is great for people just starting out (if they have enough posts and traffic to qualify).

Wishing you the best! Keep us updated!

Yeah, you're not wrong, it does have the lowest barrier to entry in the end of the day and we'll, both you and have a made a little from it.

I'm also trying to reach that 25k barrier for mediavine but, I reckon it'll still be a fair few months before I reach it.

And of course I'll keep everyone updated, it's the least I can do to give back to the community!

Yes, we're making something from Adsense, so for me, it's a no-brainer right now to keep it. Its definitely better than nothing.

Good luck to the both of us on reaching that mediavine requirement! I'm also quite some ways away. LOL

Absolutely! We'd love to hear all about it.

Love this case study from you about Google Adsense! Super insightful as I've been on the fence about adding ads to my site (or not). (Thinking it would harm my website's user experience. So I love your numbers and analysis that it hasn't impacted your WA referrals :)

Eddy (with a y) mentions how he uses several income streams and display ads are one of them. He's made a lot of money with Google Adsense and nows uses mediavine. (You may be qualified for them to now since you have increase in traffic:).

For your traffic issue, did you install optimization plugins? I noticed Kyle recommends lazy loader for images but not much else is said about getting website faster. I recently had to play with site speed as my traffic dropped too, due to terrible slow site speed. I ended up adding some optimization plugins. Much better now. Definitely something to watch out for. I learned this lesson the hard way too.

Thanks for reading my post, Kim.. :) Glad that it's making you think more about Adsense. In my experience, it has been great and my referrals have been growing, so it definitely is not impacting my growth with the affiliate offers.

Yes, I was looking into Mediavine, but they want at least 25,000 sessions per month as a requirement. I'm still at 15,000. Let's see how my website does this year. Maybe I will then move to Mediavine since it definitely pays more.

I actually did try the optimization plugins, now that you mention it. But they did nothing for me. My loading times were still in the 60s for desktop and 30s for mobile. I'm glad it's working for you though... :)

My issue really was the theme. I think that the code for that theme was not efficient and as I got more content onto my website, it became terribly slow.

My new theme is doing great right now. I'm still using the lite version of the theme but I will eventually upgrade. It looks very efficient and I will have even more options when I do upgrade in terms of the look of my website.

Wishing you the best! Do let us know whether you plan to use Adsense and what your results are. :)

Thanks and will do! Glad we are connected :)

Thanks a lot for the helpful insights and wishing you great success in 2020.

You're very welcome, Paul.. :) Wishing you the best, as always!

How are things going with you? I remember last time we were discussing about the number of daily visitors you were getting. Is that improving? :)

Wow, thanks a lot for remembering and for your kind words.

Thanks for asking... By GODS grace some slight improvements...

40, 51, 53, 44, 50, 62, 41 are the last 7 days organic searches. (previously it was between 30-50)

I believe it's not worth trying Google Adsense with the traffic I am getting.

Hey Paul, how many posts are you at right now?

431 posts.

Damn man, that's a lot!

I'm currently on 414 on my bootcamp site but have a little 444 posts published across my two sites.

It's nice to see that you're still pushing through paul, I'm sure you'll have a breakthrough sometime soon

Amen! Thanks a lot and wishing you great success.

May I ask...

What is the daily number of organic traffic you are receiving on your bootcamp site?

The last few days I've been getting around 170 - 190 organic per day but, throughout the whole month it's more around 150 a day

That's great and all the very best!

If you don't mind one last question...

May I ask...

How many WA premium sales you got last year (if you don't want to share that's okay)...

I made 6 WA sales last year.

I didn't make very many, it was 3 although I did get a few Recuring commissions and 2 yearly sales but, that's mostly down to my poor funnel system and that really bad June Google update for me which decreased my traffic from nearly 200 oragnic to less than 10 within a few months.

I only recently recovered in October and got quite a few starter referrals in the process but, my conversion rate is pretty poor still.

Thanks for sharing and wishing you great success.

Wow, great going Paul! It is getting better, so you just have to keep doing what you're doing. We have to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day and so won't our website.

Can you imagine how many bricks were laid down to build Rome?

I consider the "bricks" of my website to be the posts; so there needs to be many, many more posts in order to build a big and stable income from the website.

I can see you're working really hard and that break-through point is closer than you think! You have even more posts that I have and at some point, it is going to snowball!

You can try and apply to Adsense whenever you feel ready. Like I said before, it might be good to try and apply, but maybe not have high hopes because they could deny for a multitude of reasons.

But again, there is no cap to the amount of times that you can apply too, so if you feel like you want to apply, you can definitely do it.

It's a matter of when you want to try. :)

Bricks = Posts... That's great insight! I will go with 500 bricks to build my online empire for this year.

Although I have 430+ posts... Nearly 250 posts are the combination of information post, guest posts and sponsored posts.

I realized the importance of writing reviews bit later. Approximately I have around 170+ review posts on my site now.

Thanks a lot for the care and helpful advice. This means a lot to me.

GOD bless!

You're welcome!

Great goal! I believe we both built our websites at around the same time, and for me, I started off doing reviews right away. So 99% of my posts are reviews.

I have almost 380 posts on my website and being mostly reviews, I see that is making a big difference. You're going in the right direction so keep going!

If you want, you can PM me your website URL so I can take a look at your website to see what else can be improved to increase ranking and so on.

It's up to you... :)

Thanks a lot and it's just like icing o the cake. Thanks again!

Sure I will PM you right now...

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