Learn to code

Reading code is no problem. I get the basics and can edit stuff I need. Nowadays with all the free stuff online it is not that hard to create a good looking website. But I came to a point I want to create things myself as well. And editing code is not always a walk in the park either. That is why I decided to pick up an online course on how to learn to code.

Back to basics

I just finished the first 10 lessons (small lessons) and it is really basic. I saw everything so far before but its good to fresh it up.

Always keep learning

Keep learning. Always. I regret years in my past where I did nothing and stood still. Watching tv for the whole night and not doing anything… If you are feeling the same, try to pick up a book, a free online course or whatever has your interest. It is better then waste your time in front of the tv.

Travel niche is getting my attention

The Travel niche is getting my attention. I am thinking of totally focus on travel websites. Some good points is that there is money to spend in this niche and it is ‘easy’ to promote travel websites. It is not really easy, it takes work. But you can promote it easier than most other niches. Also people are willing to share nice things about places they like going to or went to…

New project

With a good friend of mine we came up with a (in our eyes) great idea. I am not revealing what it is yet but it is some kind of service in the travel niche. Focussed on a particular area in travel. It is a service to help the visitor choose what they want. It is in a very early development stadium and we are not sure yet what path to take. We got a great domain for it so that won’t be the problem. This will be a dutch service to start with.

New domain

Another domain in the travel niche. I paid €250,- for this domain. It is an exact match domain and it has the two keywords I am going after with my other site. The other site made €180 on AdSense last month and is #3 in google.nl so there is room for growth. I just put up a single page site with Analytics to see what it does. Seems like 5 people a day are direct visitors. The singlepage site made €1.80 so far on AdSense in last 5 days with no work or links. I am going to build this site in the next couple of weeks and try to get on first page in google.nl as well.

AdSense so far this month

Just reached €100,- on AdSense in August. That means the average is around €10,- a day so far. Looks great and I hope to break €300,- this month. I will keep you guys updated!

Google AdSense income July

Last month I had my first month over €100,-. June brought in almost €150 which is great. The AdSense income in July is even better. The main site I am focussing on is getting more traffic. Traffic is around 350 uniques a day generating over 1,000 pageviews.

Google AdSense income July

€231,06

Yep, over €200,- which is getting me real excited. I didn’t expect to hit €200,- this month because the start of the month was a bit slow. Out of this revenue, €180 is from my main site. The site is in the travel niche which is HOT right now (holiday season). I think the revenue will go down in the winter months for this site but I am not sure. We will find out.

August looks good so far. I think I will reach the €200,- again with holiday season going strong. I need to set up more sites to make more money. I am currently at the #2 spot in google.nl so I guess I am peaking right now with this site.

New AdSense Goal

Goals will help you to stay on track. When I reached €100,- in June it really felt great. My new goal will be €500 a month. The €231,06 is already a very nice extra to receive next to my full-time job, but €500,- a month will be really nice. I hope to reach the goal by the end of 2016. In December I should be earning €500,- a month on Google AdSense.

Blog

The traffic here is very slowly going up a bit. I am planning to change the theme and get more stuff online for you. If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments.

Google AdSense income June

June flew by. The month went fast and I got busy with a lot of things online. A few months ago I mentioned I was working on an instagram project. I closed the entire project due to a legal notice from Instagram. I got this mail with a potential fine of $100,000 if I continued with the site. I checked the mail and it looks genuine… I had this exact match domain (with the name Instagram) with a nice search volume. Most of the times these big companies don’t bother, but this time they did. I just closed the site and lesson learned 😉

AdSense income

Last month I broke a record with my €51,95 but it was not yet enough to get a monthly payout. I had set this goal to reach €100,- a month by April and failed miserably. June got me there! Yes I made a good amount in June, more than expected. June AdSense income;

€148,76

The month looks extremely good with almost 3x as much as May. But something happened. I got a really top ranking for just one week in June. I made it to position 2 in google for a keyword with a decent volume. I got really excited but after one week the site went back to number eight. AdSense shot as high as €9,- for a few days and after the week of the high ranking it went back to €2,- / €3,- daily.

Potential

The top 3 ranking made me see the potential. It gives me new motivation to work on the site and get it back to the top 3. I am also planning some new sites. This month will be a hard one to break. I guess the AdSense income for July will be a bit lower…

I will keep you guys updated!

AdSense Page-level ads review

A few weeks ago I started using Google AdSense Page-level ads on one of my niche blogs. The ads were running for two weeks and just got 2 clicks resulting in €0,47 AdSense revenue. The average of clicks a day is around 20 now, so the CTR is really low for these Page-level ads. I decided to quite AdSense Page-level ads for now.

Google Rankings

While reading my older post about using AdSense Page-level ads I state that the site is getting 100 uniques a day. Well, things has changed in last couple of weeks. The site was getting up to 400 uniques a day last week. I was ranking on #3 in google.nl for one of the keywords I was aiming for. A great success and the site was bringing in some extra AdSense money. But, this success didn’t last long. Just a few days ago Google put me back at #8… Bye bye traffic. The site is back at 100 uniques a day now.

Potential

My site was on #3 for about 1 week and I saw the potential of this rank. I am not sure why I am put back at #8 after one week. I even got one very related strong backlink from quite a big site. At least I know the potential of this rank and I will work to get it back. I did a due diligence on the number 1 and 2 and they don’t seem that strong. The backlinks they have are not super related and not from very high profile websites. I think I can beat them but it will take some time.

Google AdSense revenue

The AdSense revenue for June is setting a new record again. When I got that #3 position for my niche site the average AdSense revenue was around €5,- a day. Unfortunately the site is now at #8 and bringing in €1 or €2 a day. If I am able to push the site to the number 1 position, I guess the AdSense revenue will be around €10,- a day.

Google AdSense Income May

June is here! This means I got an income report to share with you. In April I made a bit of €20,- which was a great improvement of the month before (March). The Google AdSense income from May were even better. I was aiming to at least €30,- but it got much better then that!

Google AdSense May Income;

€51,95

Yes, thats right. After the €20,- month, income shot to over €50,- in May. I am happy with the growth last month. One of my sites that was picking up rankings did very well. It made 28,76 in May alone and I am not yet into top 5 in Google for my main keyword.

Competition

I am focussing on the site that is making me the most money on AdSense right now. I found out one guy owns the top 3 sites in google for the main keyword I am trying to rank for. So the top traffic is pretty much controlled by 1 guy. It is not the only site I am working on though. This site made about half of May’s income, so I will keep working on my other sites as well.

More updates are coming soon

Trying Google Page-level Ads

Just installed the new Google Page-level Ads. I chose to install the Anchor / Overlay Ads, not the full page ads. I hope to see some results in the upcoming week. These ads will only show on mobile devices and only if Google thinks they will perform well at the specific user browsing my website. It gets its own report so details will follow and I will share it with you on my blog.

The ads are installed on the website I talked about in my last post. The site is getting around 100 uniques a day now on average and is holding its position on the first page of Google. The ranking is between 8 – 10 currently and I didn’t see it any higher yet.

I will keep updating the site and adding more pages to it. I hope to bump a few more places to number 5 or 6 in the next couple of weeks. The number 1 spot is hold by a website that is just 1 year old. I think it is beatable.

The Google AdSense revenue so far this month is looking good. I am not disclosing any numbers yet. That will follow at the beginning of next month. If you have any questions, just ask in comments and I will reply.

Rankings are picking up

One of my new niche sites gained rankings since a couple of days. What gets my attention is that the higher rankings in Google are not just from 1 or 2 keywords but from several keywords. Even keywords that I am not particularly targetting.

Check out the screen below (30 days of traffic). As you can see its going up, up, up. I am checking the numbers for today and it looks like it will not surpass 100 uniques today. It might stabalize around 100… I am not sure. But things are definitily moving.

Get more traffic

75% of the traffic is coming from Google. A good amount I guess. With this kind of traffic you are pretty sure it is targetted. The average time is over 2 minutes per visitor and bounce rate is below 5% (!).

Top Channels

The Google AdSense income from this site is also up compared with last month (obvious). Not sure yet where it will go. Will keep you guys updated!

Google AdSense Income April

The goal to make €100 a month by April failed. Last month earnings were just €5,65 so it shouldn’t be a surprise I didn’t make it. I made a few new website just for AdSense but those are not yet bringing in visitors or money. I have to admit that I didn’t work as hard as I wanted. If I put in more hours and work smarter the goal should be easy to reach.

For now; the Google AdSense income for April;

€21,13

That’s much better than March. This gives me new confidence that I can reach the €100 a month goal. I also made it to 100,000 ad impressions on AdSense.

100kviews

I am also working on an affiliate site on which I am selling shoes. It’s more a test and I am not yet putting in serious work. Will share the outcome of it with you in a later post.

Clear DNS Cache through Command Prompt

While updating or changing your site, it might be helpfull to clear your DNS cache through command prompt to clear any inaccurate data.

Clear DNS Cache on Windows

Depending on what Windows version you use (Windows 7, 8 or even Windows 10) the first step is to search the CMD program.

1. Search CMD
2. Right click -> Open as Administrator
3. Run the following command;
ipconfig /flushdns

Windows IP configuration successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.

Clear DNS Cache on Mac OS

To clear the DNS cache on your Mac OS you need to follow the following steps;

1. Go to Applications
2. Click Utilities
3. Click Terminal

Now depending on your MAC OS version, type the following command;

MAC OS 10.10;
sudo discoveryutil mdnsflushcache

MAC OS 10.7 10.8 10.9;
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

MAC OS 10.5 10.6;
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

If the command succeeds the system does not return any output. Make sure you know the admins password to execute this command.