How I Made $13,490.50 With Adsense Last November
Published in 2012, this chronicle by @trevin details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing. Key verified financial milestone: $13,490.50.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE 49 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 25 comments
Relevant paragraph, in case you're thinking of trying this next year:
It sounds like he was making good money until this year, and now he's scrambling to get reconsidered by Google after they penalized his site. I wish him luck.
I'm not sure why this was posted on SEOMoz. Seems to me Scott is looking to get quality links any way he can due to his penalty from spamming and buying links.
While I find the post informative, I am extremely disappointed by his methods.
More can be found on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12wyk7/i_run_a_black_friday_ads_site_i_made_16k_in/ ↗
it's kind of funny that he puts on a bit of a mock indignation when he talks about getting his organic traffic killed yet goes on to explain that he was serving unoriginal ad farm content loaded with affiliate links. duh?
wouldnt a month long seo engagement working for someone with real products and/or content pay similarly and would have the bonus of not being completely without redeeming value?
Pretty great case of being in the right place at the right time with the right website ;D Now if he could figure out stuff for the rest of the months he'd be sitting on a pretty cool fortune!
Still, a great and inspiring story of how to leverage certain ideas to strike it big. Makes me wonder though if affiliate marketing blackfriday deals would've resulted in bigger numbers than adsense.
Usually folks will only reveal their Adsense/etc. secrets once the secret no longer works for them, unfortunately. You see it a lot with information marketing products (the slightly more legit version of "Make Money Fast", usually with hype-y titles like "Google Bullet" or "Facebook Frenzy").