I have to admit, writing was never my strong point.
Let me introduce myself, my name is Richard Powell and I would categorise myself as a Webmaster, Web Designer, Web Developer, and Web Marketer (SEO-specifically.) Most of my projects are my own creations, but occasionally I do work for others who contact me.
I live in the United Kingdom, which is a fairly expensive place to live in. Housing is quite expensive and living costs are reasonably high, so my income must afford this.
I do not enjoy working for others as an employee – the standard routine of waking up at a set time whether you like it or not daunts me. Maybe I just haven’t had a job that I truly enjoyed, but it isn’t the thing for me from what I have experienced so far. I like to think that I work hard. And I work hard with motivation that in the end I will be able to enjoy life more.
I took interest in making websites when I was about 10 years old, deploying my first website online when I was 11, and actually began placing affiliate banners on there soon after. The site was very small and of course didn’t generate anything, although I was delighted when I found £1 in my affiliate balance one time.
Serious website creation didn’t begin until I was 15 years old, when I made a MMORPG website that grew extremely fast and after a month I probed ways of commercialising the project. I first tried a manual ‘donations-only’ section, but this increased workload significantly, so I used a PHP-Nuke subscription module that I came across. This was excellent – everything was automated and I could sit back and watch money roll in.
In a way, this slowly killed the website over a period of years due to the fact that it was a pay-site and a fair-bit of neglect, but it bestowed a taste for money upon me that hasn’t left me to this day.
Earning money at 15 years old is a good and a bad thing; you have achieved something quite remarkable for someone so young, but at the same time it numbs you to that part of independence that you have yet to experience.
In 2007 I left home, but not willingly. After a brief period of confusion due to my inexperience with life, moved to the town where I spent a large chunk of my life and got myself a job working for a computer services company that did computer repairs and various other things for home and business users – I joined as what they called their ‘Web Design Engineer’ and I was to be their in-house Web Designer (etc) as they had been outsourcing that part of the business previous to my arrival. The wage was peanuts for what it was worth; I was paid minimum wage of £1,000 a month. With tax it was £800-ish.
I had about $10,000 remaining from my subscription website that had accumulated over the years and with the job I felt that I was financially secure enough to rent an apartment with my Dad who worked in the area during weekdays. Things were normalising and falling into a routine. I had stability, but I didn’t like it.
I will say it now, I began to bloody hate it. Waking up every day, same time, and often I was so tired just because I had difficulty sleeping from the worry that I’d have that very ‘tired’ feeling the next day. It was a vicious circle. I began to feel reliant upon sleeping pills to sleep, I was unhappy, and eventually ended up doing something really stupid and got my £2,500 Alienware computer, Xbox 360, Camera, Laptop, and God knows what else stolen. This was the low point.
Concept-wise, the subscription website was a great income, especially when it was so demanded, but the income died with the site and I realised that it was not a stable income when it slipped past the initial spike in demand.
In 2008 I wanted to expand Adsense, having previously used it on some small websites and seeing very small, but satisfactory results, so I got ahold of some ready-made content databases and created a website for Funny Facts and one for Fame Quotes. These websites started small, but began to pick up after a while.
Fame Quotes actually did reasonably well, reaching a peak of 100-200 unique visitors a day, but it never surpassed that and completely died after a while. I think this was due to the fact that there are a TON of famous quotation websites out there and the content was obviously duplicate of what was already out there.
FunFactz.com, on the other hand, steadily grew and now receives significant traffic, especially on the week days.
I also developed Best Ad Board, which is an advertising board for webmasters. Basically, you post your links. There’s the ability to make money from it by referring people to buy the ‘sponsored’ links, however this was met with not much success – probably down to my lack of promotion and STICKING TO IT.
The best current running website is one that I won’t reveal, however it is the main generator of Adsense revenue. The area that it targets is not a high earner. The earnings compared to the traffic is meagre, but it has another form of income.
Now, at 21 years old, I have more experience behind me. I know one thing; I must succeed. Failure is not an option.
I have succeeded in online business and continue to succeed, but these incomes are not stable and reliable. At this point in time they allow me to live in a nice city penthouse, but true financial freedom is not yet knocking at my door. This blog, Blogging Adsense, will enable you to follow my journey to financial freedom. The end game is that I am not easily satisfied. My frame of mind is that I will not be able to be truly happy until I have reached that goal.
Currently, my Adsense pays out between £100-200 every month. This is almost 1/4 of minimum wage in the UK. It’s not bad for a revenue that I potentially don’t have to do much for after the initial work.
Google Adsense Earnings for 2010
I will be updating Blogging Adsense on my earnings and report any successes and/or blunders. I welcome you to follow me and I hope that I prove to be an interesting read. As I said, writing is not my strong point, so, hopefully, I will write reasonably easy reading material whilst making it interesting, inspirational, and educational.
I’ll be updating you very soon.