Google Adsense Program: 45 Clicks and Only $1.00, What Am I Doing Wrong?

You're averaging .05 to .13 cents per day and that's on good days?

Seven months in and you have yet to make $13.00?

45 clicks and you barely made $1.00?

You're lucky if you get three visitors to your website in a month?

The time, effort and money you put into building the website or blog and the payoff just isn't worth it?

Why do some online marketers make great income with the Google Adsense program while others are reduced to scratching and clawing just to make a few dollars a month?

Honestly speaking, virtually everyone who signs up for the Google Adsense Publisher's Program does so with grandeur visions of monetary success. Like most people, they read the ads of those claiming to make $5000-$10000 a month or more while playing golf and they want in! Once in however, they eventually join the long list of Adsense marketers yearning, sweating, grunting and earnestly struggling just to break the $1 a day threshold.

All this for ONE DOLLAR? I Didn't Sign Up For This!
I've been in Internet Marketing full time since July of 2005 and in that time, I've watched countless newbies fall by the wayside. I've watch others continue in a perpetual struggle mode while scratching their heads trying to figure out why they aren't making any money. They all buy the software, e-books and memberships that literally guaranteed Adsense success, BUT they still haven't seen the money they were promised they'd generate! At some point I noticed three major mistakes these individuals were making that keeps them struggling with their online Adsense marketing ventures.

#1 They Build Websites and Blogs in Fiercely Competitive and Over Saturated Niches
There are certain niches that everybody including their uncle's sisters cousins are into or getting into. Take these niches for example: debt, credit cards, payday loans, attorneys, diamonds, jewelry, mortgage, loans, insurance, foreclosure, dating, employment, make money online, work at home, get rich and Forex. Let's put this in perspective. If you launched a site today on "How to Get Out of Debt", here's a glimpse into the competition you'd be facing.

If you googled the keyword, "Debt" you would find approximately 139,000,000 competing web pages. If you googled the keyword phrase, "Get out of Debt" you would find approximately 28,700,000 competing web pages. In order for you to make money with an Adsense based site focused on debt, you're going to have to compete with and beat out millions of web pages. If by chance you make it past those millions of web pages and get near the top two pages on Google, then you will have to go toe-to-toe with the likes of: Daveramsey.com, Oprah.com, ftc.gov, The Motley Fool, Usnews.com, Amazon.com, About.com, en.wikipedia.org, Careonecredit.com, and a host of other highly SEO optimized web pages.

In reality, due to the competition with this niche, you could spend five to six months writing articles about debt, submitting them to article directories, social network sites and blogs, plus pay for advertising and still only make a few dollars in Adsense.

If you are just starting out and are wet behind the ears, how do you compete with an SEO expert from Amazon.com, DaveRamsey.com or About.com? They do this fulltime and you only have enough time to tinker with your website or blog after work? I'm not trying to discourage anyone; I'm sharing with you the reasons why people build blogs and websites, expecting to make money with Adsense only to walk away with a few pennies for all of their efforts.

The Solution To This Problem
Find niches that have great traffic but less competition from other online marketers. They exist, you just have to think outside the box and dig deep to find them!

#2 They Fall For The Google Adsense Niche Membership Trap
Every week in my one of my e-mail accounts, I receive e-mails from roughly 17 different online marketers who are trying to entice me to buy their Adsense Niche Membership. They all promise the same thing; become a member and they will deliver to your e-mail in box the hottest niches in the marketplace. The problem is; all most all of them are selling the exact same niches! Here's a reality check question... if you and 5700 other people purchased the EXACT same pre-made Adsense templates on "Debt Consolidation" over the next forty-five days, how will your site get a better ranking than theirs? It won't!

As a matter of fact, when it comes to duplicate content, sites used to get tagged with the infamous "Supplemental Results" tag; now they are simply put on the back pages of Google and other search engines where THEY WILL NEVER BE FOUND!

When I first got into the business, I paid $249.00 for an Adsense Niche Site Script that promised automatic Adsense income once installed. All I had to do was enter my keywords and upload the script to my server and presto; the money would start rolling in. The script automatically added the articles, videos and Adsense ads and SEO optimized each page. I was ecstatic with anticipation! In a matter of two months, I built forty-six Adsense sites with that script. After six months, I had generated a disappointing $1.39!

During that time, I communicated with the seller of the script via e-mail at least a dozen times. He kept assuring me, "Just give it time!" Everyone else was making out like bandits, "he claimed." Puzzled, I searched and finally found uncovered the real problem. Virtually everyone one of my sites was on the back pages of Google on every keyword phrase!

Any experienced online marketer will tell you that very few surfers venture past PAGE 3 on a search engine. My Adsense niche sites didn't start showing up on the Google results page until page 27. I found some on pages 32, 48 and worse. PLUS, using the "Powered by" backlink the seller insisted remain on every website designed by his script, I found hundreds of sites that were exact duplicates of mines. All I could do was count my losses, trash that script and go back to building websites with unique design and content. Just to confirm my findings, I kept a dozen of those Adsense script sites live for a year and a half and they never made anything above a few cents. I ended up loosing a total of $246.72 and two months of hard work.

The moral of the story is; you are not the only one buying those Adsense scripts, templates, memberships and PLR content and articles. The exact same package is being sold by hundreds of marketers, resellers and affiliates to thousands of people who want to cash in on the Adsense game. If you fall for this trap, you will most likely have your Internet success dreams stuck on page 29 of the Google search engine; I promise, no one will find your website on that page.

The Solution To This Problem
Do your own research to find niches and as you find them, build the sites and don't let the cat out the bag to anyone! I have many niches that are literal goldmines. They have high traffic and low competition from other web pages.

#3 They Choose The Wrong Topics, Niches and Keywords
There are certain niches, topics and keywords that will never generate any real income for an Adsense based website for a number of reasons:

(a) There is simply not enough traffic to go around. If a keyword phrase is only averaging 7000 searches per month and there is around 5.6 million competing web pages, the chances of you making any money with Google Adsense are pretty slim.

(b) The keyword or keyword phrase doesn't pay that much. You could toil for weeks building a site, submitting it to search engines, writing articles and even paying for traffic, end up with 45 clicks and still barely make $1.00.

(c) The topic, niche or keyword draws the freebie crowd, lookie Lou's and tire kickers. This is problematic because if they are clicking on your Adsense ads and landing on the advertisers page, but taking NO ACTION, your site will be classified as a "poor quality" traffic website by Google. Consequently, your site is going to be slapped with the infamous "Google Smart Pricing."

This is the penalty for not performing thorough online marketing research. What does it mean? Let's say a keyword phrase is paying .50 to $1.00 per click, but your site has been tagged by Google as a "poor quality" traffic website; with Smart Pricing, you may end up only getting .03 a click. This protects advertisers from wasting their advertising dollars on poor quality Adsense websites.

The Solution To This Problem
Research, research, research! You should confirm the viability of a niche or topic and the keywords associated with it prior to building and launching any website of blog. If not, you'll spend the next ten months fervently checking your Adsense account only to have your dreams dashed because you keep seeing $0.00 in your, "Today's Earnings" stats. You can make money with Adsense. However, the only way to do so is by avoiding making these three common mistakes.