Why I Will Never Use Adsense on a Blog Again

Ten years ago I started a fitness blog, wrote some articles, slapped on an Adsense unit or two and then a year later sold it for $20,000. I was pretty happy with myself. And while it was the right move for me at the time I can’t help but wonder how much I could have sold it for if I had ignored Adsense and done something totally different.

In this article I am going to talk about why I will never use Adsense on a blog again. I hope at least some of you pay attention.

Why is Adsense is so attractive?

Let’s start the post by admitting that Adsense is very attractive to a lot of people. You just sign up for an account, write some blog posts and watch the money get paid into your account every month. It is quite alluring. I’ll never forget the feeling of my first $1 day, $10, $50 day and so on. Like a drug, I constantly checked my stats to see how many clicks I had got in the last ten minutes.

But while all this was happening I was losing money. Each Adsense click of between 10 cents and $5 represented a loss to my blog. I only wish that back then I had thought about the fact that there are much better ways to make money from a blog. Ways that perhaps aren’t as sexy in the short term, but work out to be a lot greater in the long run.

Why I will never use Adsense on a blog again

Now I want to get into the main bulk of this post and tell you why I will avoid Adsense on my blogs from now on. If anyone out there disagrees with me or has taken a similar course of action I would really love to hear about it.

1. Each click represents a lost reader
The purpose of blogging is to get readers. You craft headlines, opening paragraphs and content in order to catch people’s attention on social media and Google but then you send them off your blog by encouraging them to click Adsense ads. It is actually quite perplexing. I see hundreds of articles on how to increase Adsense CTR and get more clicks but no one ever seems to talk about the fact that maybe sending your hard earned visitors away is a very bad idea.

2. It dilutes your brand equity
When you place another advert on your website you are passing equity to that brand. For example, if Daniel put an advert for a spamming software on the side of Daily Blog Tips it means that he endorses that brand. So Daily Blog Tips’ brand is then associated with the spamming brand.

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Adsense makes it hard because you do not have complete control over who advertises. Yes you can blacklist certain URLs but it would take a massive amount of time to make sure every brand that appeared on your site was a good one. I know the owner of a very large Luxury Watch blog who lost a lot of high profile Swiss contacts because his Adsense ads served up replica watch promotions.

So what should I do instead?

Now the question becomes about what one should do instead of Adsense. It is a very important question to ask. If I had asked it of myself ten years ago I imagine I would probably be earning five or ten times what I am today.

The answer is email subscribers
I have said it before and I will say it again. The money is in the mailing list. The most successful bloggers and web marketers all place an emphasis on capturing as many email subscribers as possible. Look at Problogger, Copyblogger, John Chow, Shoemoney and the rest; they all make millions of dollars a year because they have large lists of interested email subscribers who they can email to:

• Promote new products
  Any time you launch a new product you can send out an email or a series of emails designed to get people interested in and ready to buy. Darren Rowse did this recently when he launched his new book. Before it is even published he knows that he has close to 150,000 people that will look at the advert.
• Launch new websites
  What if you want to expand your website to something new or create a sister site? Well instead of doing all the ground work to get those initial users you just send out emails to your list. If it is relevant and related you will find that most of your fans follow you over.
• Sell affiliate products
  The last thing I will talk about here is the fact that niche email lists give you a massive opportunity to sell affiliate products to a very actionable audience. You can earn between 40% and 80% on affiliate sales by just sending out an email. You don’t even have to create the product, just promote other people’s.

Capturing email subscribers is a long term strategy that pays massive and ongoing dividends. Remember that visitor who clicked an Adsense ad and made you 30 cents? He could have subscribed to your list and be earning you hundreds of dollars a year by purchasing your products or ongoing affiliate offers.

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What are your thoughts?

I’d really like to hear your thoughts on this matter as I know there are quite a few fans of Adsense here on Daniel’s site. Have you stopped using Adsense and tried something else with great success? Or do you think Adsense is the best earnings model and will never abandon it? Please drop a comment and let me know.

Source : http://www.dailyblogtips.com/why-i-will-never-use-adsense-on-a-blog-again/ 

10 Lessons Learnt from Gaining 120,000 More Visitors in One Year by Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is the hot thing now; from newbie bloggers to top brands, everyone has realized how powerful guest blogging is and are doing it as a result. There’s a right and wrong way to do it, however.

I started a guest blogging campaign a year ago and the results have been impressive. Just a year after the campaign, without actively doing anything to increase traffic, I’ve gained an additional 120,000+ visitors to my blog.

Here’s a screenshot of my traffic a year after the campaign

If you compare both screenshots, you’ll notice I’ve gained exactly 123,322 visitors a year after the campaign. That’s over 340% traffic increase and something very impressive; here are the lessons I learned along the way.

1. Guest Blogging for Links is the Most Profitable form of Guest Blogging

Of course, I’ve written guest posts on individual blogs that have sent me over a thousand visitors that eventually resulted in hundreds of subscribers.

I’ve written guest posts for several A-list blogs with great results. However, guest blogging for links seems more effective on the long run than guest blogging for traffic.

Did you take a proper look at the above two screenshots? They’re actually not screenshots for overall traffic to my blog but screenshots for search engine traffic to my blog.

Other than by writing great content and building links with guest posts, I do nothing else to improve my SEO.

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Based on my calculations, in a span of one year, by guest blogging for links instead of direct traffic I’m able to get more than 2,000 visitors each from every single guest post I wrote with the purpose of improving my search engine rankings.

2. It is not about How Much but how well

The 120,000+ visitors I gained as a result of my guest posts can be attributed mostly to some 30+ guest posts I wrote in a particular month.

I wrote those guest posts solely for the purpose of building backlinks to my blog so that I can increase my rankings.

If you examine my campaign, you’ll notice that my aim wasn’t to write hundreds of crappy guest posts on sub-standard blogs like most people do today. Instead, I had a goal to write quality guest posts for a select number of quality blogs; the result was impressive

3. You Won’t Get Results without an End in Mind

You’ll only get results from guest blogging if you have an end in mind.

In other words, even before you start you should know what you want to achieve and how you plan to achieve it.

I knew I wanted to guest blog for links and I had an idea how much traffic increase the campaign will result in at the end of one year.

I knew what I was doing.

Before this particular campaign, I’ve written hundreds of guest posts to promote the same blog with little to no results. This was only because I didn’t have a goal for my guest posts

4. Guest Blogging for Links doesn’t have to be done the Way Most People are doing it today

When you talk about guest blogging for links today, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is all the crappy guest posts you see online and all the crappy guest blogging emails bloggers receive in their inbox.

It doesn’t always have to be this way.

Most of the people publishing hundreds of crappy guest posts on other blogs are not doing it because it works; they’re doing it because others are doing it and that’s the worst way to run a business.

When guest blogging for links, the more focus you have on quality the more results you will get

5. The Guest Blogging Game will only be won by those who have a Strategy

Do you know a sure-fire way to fail at guest blogging?

This is it: Start writing a lot of guest posts because you heard guest blogging works, without any strategy or plan to help you get results from it.

There are several ways to benefit from guest blogging; you can get direct traffic, backlinks, and exposure, you can build relationships and more. Which particular approach you take will depend on what you want.

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For me, my strategy was based on guest blogging for links because I didn’t want a huge influx in traffic but gradual, consistent and stable traffic growth.

You can bet I got what I wanted, and that’s because I had a strategy

6. The Guest Blogging Game will only be won by those who can wait

In my case, the 30+ guest posts I wrote directly resulted in less than 50 visitors combined in the first month I wrote them, but that wasn’t what I wanted.

What I wanted was increase in search engine rankings; that takes time, and I started seeing results a few weeks after my guest posts was published.

I’ve heard stories from people who started guest blogging because of the buzz around it, who eventually gave up after a few tries because a certain top blog didn’t send them the traffic they expected.

Guest blogging is not an avenue for your instant ego boost. It’s a valid marketing strategy being effectively leveraged by those who can wait.

Even if you want direct traffic, it takes time to find the blogs that will work for you and that can give you the results you want; you won’t get to enjoy this after giving up on guest blogging a month after you start

7. Guest Blogging is a Huge Part of Content Marketing

Guest blogging on its own = marketing failure!

You probably won’t hear that again anywhere, but that’s the most important point in this article.

You won’t get great results from guest blogging by using it to promote a static website. No. Instead, the best way you can get results from guest blogging is by having a blog or a content marketing hub, with quality content relevant to your guest posts.

Instead of linking to your homepage, you link to your content; this leads to increase in direct traffic, search and social traffic to your content and more readership and engagement for your content.

When people read and enjoy your content, they check out your business. That’s how it works!

8. You Don’t Always Have to Do it yourself

While I mainly use guest blogging to market my websites, I also actively guest blog for clients.

Guest blogging isn’t used only by individual bloggers; it can also be used by big brands and startups. In a situation like this, you don’t always have to do everything yourself.

The amount of trial and error it will take to get things right can cost you business; an alternative approach is to hire a guest blogging professional to help you write your guest posts or a guest blogging consultant to help you develop your plan.

It’s all about finding out what the best use of your time is and how much you will save if you outsource the task

9. You Don’t Always Have to Write for the Top Blogs

By taking a look at my traffic screenshot above, you’ll think I wrote guest posts for big blogs like Problogger, DailyBlogTips and the likes.

That’s far from the truth.

In fact, most of the blogs I wrote for were small PR2 and PR3 blogs that resulted in little or no traffic; in other words, I didn’t have to wait for weeks for my articles to publish nor do I have to spend 4 hours on a single article.

Yet, the result I got beat any direct traffic I’ve ever gotten from a guest post on any big blog.

I’m saying this as someone who has once written a single guest post that resulted in over 2,000 visitors and around 500 subscribers before.

Like I said earlier in this article, it’s all about having a strategy and knowing what you want to achieve

10. Everything I told you above is either Effective or Ineffective

There are no golden rules.

Most of what I did to get the results I got was the exact opposite of what I was advised to do two years ago when I started guest blogging; I learned them mostly by accident and I kept experimenting to see what works.

The above is from my own experience and it is not set in stone. It might work well for you if you try it and who knows, it might not be your style.

Don’t restrict yourself to a set of principles or certain golden rules. Experiment and test as much as you can, because that’s the only way to get results.

Share Your Guest Blogging Success Story!

 

Source : http://www.dailyblogtips.com/10-lessons-learnt-from-gaining-120000-more-visitors-in-one-year-by-guest-blogging/