All of us know there are many sites making good money from contextual advertising programs such as Google AdSense or Yahoo Publisher Network. But their owners do not hurry up to disclose their revenues. On the different Internet forums you can see the posts like this one - $520 today!!. So we can see - it is possible to make money with Adsense and YPN, just not all information goes to public.
I have composed a list of successful AdSense publishers and their revenue values, gathered from different sources. List is sorted by AdSense earnings.
Freeweblayouts.net
| Site | www.freeweblayouts.net |
| Adsense revenue | $100,000/month |
| Alexa rank | 4,212 |
| Page rank | 5   |
David Miles Jr. and Kato Leonard, two 20-year-olds in Louisville, say they collect $100,000 a month from their year-old site, Freeweblayouts.net, which gives away designs that people can use on MySpace social-networking pages. One couple blogged about their home reconstruction and made money to help pay the mortgage on their new house. Jock Friedly's business, Storming Media LLC, allows users to download public documents; he used the money his Web site made on ads for new online ventures. [1]
Ask the builder
| Site | www.askthebuilder.com |
| Adsense revenue | $1400/day |
| Alexa rank | 21,818 |
| Page rank | 6 |
People seeking authoritative advice on everything from sealing asphalt to installing crown molding often turn to AsktheBuilder.com for the information they need. There, nationally syndicated newspaper columnist Tim Carter delivers practical tips, in-depth how-to's, and product information for handymen and handywomen across the country. [3]
Weblogs, Inc
| Sites | www.weblogsinc.com www.engadget.com www.luxist.com www.autoblog.com |
| Adsense revenue | $3000/day |
| Stats | 60 million pageviews/month overall |
| Alexa rank | 6,027 |
| Page rank | 7 |
Weblogs, Inc. is a publishing consortium of 100 independent bloggers who produce more than 1,000 blog posts a week across over 75 industry-leading blogs, including the popular consumer technology blog Engadget, luxury goods blog Luxist, and car-focused Autoblog. Written by experts and enthusiasts, each one has a distinctive following in its subject area. Readers are able to sort and search stories by topic, can engage in discussion via comments, and rank stories of interest to them. Collectively, Weblogs Inc. blogs get over 60 million pageviews a month. Bloggers are paid a stipend and also receive a portion of advertising earnings related to their blog(s). [2]
SeatGuru
| Site | www.seatguru.com |
| Adsense revenue | $10,000 to $20,000/month |
| Stats | 175,000 unique visitors/month 650,000 page views/month |
| Alexa rank | 15,896 |
| Page rank | 7 |
The biggest moneymakers tend to be people who started sites to document their passions. Matther Daimler, 28, developed an obsession with finding the most comfortable seats on the long airline flights he took for business. He would look at a better-situated traveler and think: "He has more legroom. I want that seat next time."
In 2001, he took to cataloguing on his SeatGuru site all the seats on his usual United Airlines flight, rating them for best legroom, the most recline, access to video and audio entertainment, and proximity to different types of laptop power sources. Soon, at the request of people who read his site, he started taking information on other flights. He now keeps track of seats on 34 airlines. [1]
Today Daimler sees about 175,000 unique users and 650,000 page views a month. AdSense ads are his only source of revenue. Not only has SeatGuru attained the original revenue Daimler hoped for, it has exceeded it. As Daimler says, "AdSense really marked the turning point that changed my hobby into a business."
The AdSense support team also recommended Daimler try the 160 x 600–wide skyscraper ad unit. He converted a portion of the site to run ads in this format and tracked that portion using AdSense channels. Once more, he says, "there was an improvement in both CTR and earnings, so the entire site now uses that format, and has seen the same increases." Now Daimler looks forward to experimenting with channels for colors, position, and ad formats. [4]
Woot, Inc
| Site | www.woot.com |
| Adsense revenue | $450/day (?) |
| Stats | More than 300,000 registered customers |
| Alexa rank | 946 |
| Page rank | 7 |
The company's "one day, one deal" closeout site woot.com has garnered plenty of attention (and more than 300,000 registered customers) since launching in July 2004. Time magazine named the company one of the "50 Coolest Websites" in 2005. When woot.com posts its latest deal each day at midnight, Central Standard Time, customers flock to the site to buy the latest "Woot." [5]
Podcast Directory
| Site | PodcastDirectory.com |
| Adsense revenue | $30,000 to $40,000/year |
| Alexa rank | 28,535 |
| Page rank | 6 |
Take Andrew Leyden, former House Commerce Committee counsel and founder of a dot-com venture that failed, who started PodcastDirectory.com, a search engine for podcasts. As the site's popularity rose from a hundred hits a month in 2004 to nearly a million now, Leyden started making the equivalent of an entry-level government worker's salary - $30,000 to $40,000 a year - simply because people clicked on ads. That allowed him to work at home in Chesapeake Beach, Md., trying to make more money by attracting still more traffic to his site.
"I went from literally 26 cents a week or something like that to several dollars an hour," he said, by using Google's AdSense software, which solicits bids from marketers who, in turn, pay to run ads on his site. "I get paid while mowing the lawn. I get paid while cleaning the garage. I get paid driving my wife to her office, buying groceries, seeing a movie, playing video games, or just surfing the Internet. That's really the nice thing about AdSense: No matter what I'm doing, people keep clicking and I keep getting paid." [1]
Broadband Wireless Exchange
| Site | www.bbwexchange.com |
| Adsense revenue | $3,000/month |
| Stats | 30,000 - 50,000 page views/day |
| Alexa rank | 107,656 |
| Page rank | 6 |
As with any web publisher in a specialized market, this approach suits Hoskins' business model very well. In running a Google AdSense skyscraper (a vertical format that features up to four ads), Hoskins reports he's seeing an additional $3,000 a month in revenue. "These ads run in places that would have gone unsold – and we get revenue we would not have otherwise," he says. "Google has dramatically improved our ability to provide readers with extremely targeted ads. We have tens of thousand of pages that can now serve up advertisements directly related to the content our readers are researching." [6]
References:
- A New Model For Getting Rich Online.
- Weblogs, Inc. grew blog ad revenue from $200 to $3000 a day with Google AdSense.
- Askthebuilder.com used testing to grow revenue from $10,000 to more than $30,000 a month with Google AdSense
- Hobby site SeatGuru.com found a real business with Google AdSense.
- Woot.com increased ad revenue more than 3x by optimizing with Google AdSense.
- How Broadband Wireless Exchange makes more money and gives readers what they want.
More findings to come! If you know good-performing sites running Adsense, YPN or Chitika, share your information in the comments.
