I signed up with AdSense in June 2003, starting small by serving AdSense off just a few of my pages.
By the end of the day, I'd delivered several thousand AdSense impressions — which netted me the princely sum of… $3.00. I didn’t exactly burn down the house.
While I didn’t see a great deal of potential based on this initial figure, I figured it couldn’t hurt to place AdSense code on more pages. Over the period of a couple months, I increased my impressions 25-fold, but the clicks just weren’t happening. That was when I hit my lowest point as an Internet publisher. My click-through ratios were so bad; I needed thousands of visitors to net about $30 per day.
At that point, I knew something had to change — and I was going to change it!
It was as late as April 2004 — ten months after I signed up with AdSense — that I had my eyes opened to what I had been missing all along. It was one of the “Ah-Ha!” moments where I felt as though I was being hit by the proverbial two-by-four. Immediately, I began experimenting with my Google ads, testing various placement and colors to see if my assumptions would hold water.
The results were fast — and fantastic!
By applying the same easy tweaks discussed in my ebook, I nearly tripled my click-through rate, and my income shot up to $600 PER DAY! I still remember that golden day in April 2004 — and for me there's been no looking back.
From my early days of being an "AdSense nobody" to becoming a leading AdSense guru, when a five-figure monthly income no longer surprises me… it's been an eventful journey full of learning experiences.