At first we tried selling advertising directly, by putting up "Your Ad Here" sidebar ads. No bites. We tried numerous affiliate schemes, but found that the conversion rates (that is, the number of people who actually clicked the ads and then went on to buy something) were very poor, and eventually gave up on that too. We tried advertising adult products and dating services - we got lots of complaints and no revenue. We really don't know how all those pr0n-funded warez sites are making any money, to be honest, because it sure didn't work for us.

Then, in 2005, we signed up for Google Adsense, but didn't actually implement any ads for a while. Becoming disillusioned, we tried a few more affiliate networks with no success. We tried AdBrite - they are the only network other than Adsense to actually pay us more than once, and we still use them in a few places with very modest success. Finally, out of options, we remembered signing up for AdSense in the fall of 2005 and started placing its ads on the site. It wasn't much, just a couple of text ads manually placed on a few major pages. We're not allowed to tell you how much money we make with AdSense but we can tell you that within three days, we made more money than we had in five months with AdBrite! After the second month, we made about twice our monthly internet costs, and within a year, about eight times the cost of running the site each month! And as we add areas and our site's search engine ranking rises, our revenues from Google Adsense continue to climb!

Why does Adsense work so well when other advertising has failed? Two words: TARGETED ADVERTISING. This is a concept that other advertising networks (including Adbrite) have tried to implement by categorizing affiliate websites but which only an ad service with the power of a full search engine can really do right. And Google, as you know, has the biggest and best search engine behind it! Before we ever applied for AdSense, Google already had our entire site fully indexed and keyworded in their search engine, and with those keywords was immediately able to choose ads that our users would actually be interested in clicking! When we add new text, or change existing text, the Google crawlers pick up the change, and adjust the ads to keep them optimal. This keeps ads that have little to do with what our visitors want off our site, it helps the advertisers because they get more interested visitors, and it makes our site overall look and feel more consistent and whole. And yours will too! Because the system is designed to work best with quality information (i.e. full of keywords, but also popular and well linked), we have also found ourselves motivated to increase the size, scope, and overall quality of our site - so even our visitors who never click an ad benefit too!

If you have a web site, and you wish it made some money (and if you have some real estate on the website you're willing to give up) then you'd be a fool not to try AdSense out right now. We're still kicking ourselves for waiting for months, wasting time on ineffectual advertising affiliate schemes, between when we signed up with AdSense in February 2005 and when we actually implemented (and started getting paid!!) in November of that year. We could have made thousands more if we'd started sooner. We'll never get that time (or that money) back. So the time to click on that banner above and get signed up with AdSense is RIGHT NOW! You have nothing to lose but monthly checks from Google! Sign up now!