* alternative title … CLOSE .. BUT NO CIGAR

I’ve been busy these last 2 weeks and have not been paying attention to my Google Adsense Ad earnings. Although, I should note that I did notice on a few occassions, when I felt guilty about not posting for a few days .. that I logged into my google adsense account and noticed that I was earning MORE per day than when I was posting a lot. Go Figure!

I was browsing my Bloglines in the wee hours last Monday morning when I read the term “Made For Adsense” .. as referred by some jerk named Robert Conway‘s post over at Ryan’s College-Startup blog. Now, if you don’t have that blog in your Bloglines, I suggest you add it right now – because, that blog is NOT one of those “Made For Adsense” sites!

Most of the “Made For Adsense” sites seem to be scraper sites, and Wikipedia describes them..

Made for AdSense

Some scraper sites are created for monetizing the site using advertising programs such as Google AdSense. In such case, they are called Made for AdSense sites or MFA. This is also a derogatory term used to refer to websites that have no redeeming value except to get web visitors to the website for the sole purpose of clicking on advertisements.

The problem with Made for AdSense sites is they are considered sites that are spamming search engines and diluting the search results by providing surfers with less than satisfactory search results. The scraped content is considered redundant to that which would be shown by the search engine under normal circumstances had no MFA website been found in the listings.

These types of websites are being eliminated in various search engines and sometimes show up as supplemental results instead of being displayed in the initial search results.

Legality

Because scraper sites take content from other sites without the permission of the original creators, they frequently violate copyright law. It is illegal to republish copyrighted material without the copyright holder’s permission. This applies regardless of whether the material was originally published on a blog, a mailing list, or any other less-formal medium, just as much as if it were commercially published…

I’ve always enjoyed watching the infrequent postings of the Fighting Splog blog as someone (who ever he is) tries to help Google catch all of the Sploggers out there! Just on the last post .. there was a google adsense account with 13692 splogs alone! Now, that’s splogging!

Now – let me be clear – ALL of my sites are being monetized, in some ways .. with google adsense, some other advertising, links to amazon etc. Currently, it’s not a business and just a hobby and I do hope to cover my costs in blogging and maintaining all of my sites and online access. And, I also hope that by Christmas I can afford to take my wife on a decent vacation from it. And, I also won’t lie .. I do secretly hope that somehow – I luck out and can do this full time or, at least earn revenues as IF I am working full time, but really working part time.

But – I am not a “Made For Adsense” scraper. Most of my sites that are actually earning me any sort of earnings right now it the PetLvr series of blogs. I’ve got almost 2500 posts in the archives! I hope that my site has everything that a reader will want to find in my sites .. but let’s face it, I can’t have everything. That’s one of the reasons I do include Google Ads on my site. If people are searching for a topic .. I like that contextually related ads can appear on my site and if they find what they are looking for .. great! And, if they can’t .. well I can get a FINDERS FEE for referring them to a site that perhaps can help them get the information that they are looking at.

So? Am I Making Money With Google Adsense?

It’s no secret that I felt that I got shafted by Technorati a year ago .. and I have been slowly recovering – traffic wise and google earnings wise. I think I was making headway back then.

Currently, if make over $100 per month .. Google will wire me money directly into my bank account. That is something that I hope will happen. It was a slow start, taking about 3 years to earn $10.00 but when I started blogging I have made progress. In the recent months, it’s been taking about 2 months of earnings before I can cross over that threshold $100 limit and expect a payment around the 23rd of the following month. Of course, that’s not on one site – that’s on 30 sites in the HART-Empire Network. It’s not that great of an accomplishment.

But – I came sooooooo close to being the first time ever breaking the $100 mark in one month – for January 2007. I earned $99.50 USD .. Awww.. I guess no more payment until March 23rd again. oh well!

I do keep stats of all my earnings from all my affiliates and sites, because (1) I am an accountant and (2) I need to report all of the earnings on my Income Tax Return and of course (3) I’m anal like that. So, I recapped it on excel and made it into a little graph to show you how I’ve been doing. BELIEVE ME .. this is not a bragging thing, or ego thing . because I know it’s laughable .. but, then again – I remember seeing others post information about their earnings that showed where they were at, and similar to where I’m at now .. and it was nice to know that I have learned two things:

* Yes – it takes a long time, but don’t worry because eventually your efforts will pay off over time
* Don’t go crazy trying to monetize but, if you don’t – you will miss opportunities by not monetizing

If I had my DRUTHERS .. I wish that google would pay me directly into my Paypal account, instead of wiring it into my bank account. At least, the money would be available to me. When the money goes into my bank account, it gets eaten alive by my mortgage payments, utility payments, common element payments, and other reckless abandonment of my finances. I guess I should probably check out that Google Checkout option they are promoting .. maybe because Paypal is a competitor is the reason they don’t do that now.

Here are the graphics

Final Thoughts

Just talking out loud .. you know .. creating MORE archives and keeping the wheel spinning 😀

Actually .. to earn $100 per month, I need to earn $3.33 or so per day. I can tell you (although, if you are still reading this and have your own fascination with potential google adsense earnings) that for some strange reason I get great joys in watching the days that I earn close to $5.00 per day. I think that the highest daily earning that I ever made was back in Feb/2006 and it was something like $9.80 .. I remember actually clicking REFRESH up until 2am that morning wondering if I were to hit that elusive $10 per day. You see .. this was the magic number that I was hoping to be able to earn in 2006 and use that $3,650 to take my wife on a great vacation! Naturally, I had to revise that wish to be that I would like to have SAVED EARNINGS in 2007 about $3,650 after my online expenses .. so ..

HART’s WORK IS NEVER DONE! First Ze Internet .. Zen Ze vorld!