Comments on: Online Business in Spain – Getting Rich from Google Ads

By: Simon

Simon — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:36:06 +0000

I have a website about digital TV. The main source of income from that site is as an affiliate for Sky Digital. For each person that is passed from my website and pay for a Sky TV subscription I am paid between £75 and £100.

You cant make vast sums from books or other cheap items, you may as well go for the bigger priced products.

People out there make a good living off just promoting other peoples stuff.

By: Jonk

Jonk — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:57:32 +0000

@ Ben

Yeh you’re probably right. Hopefully I can figure something out, I’ll think about it more when the time comes.

@ Tom

Yeh that’s said quite a bit isn’t it. I have had no change in PR and my Google referrals are exploding as I’m drifting up the rankings. A lot of the sites above me for keywords would have much higher bounce rates because they aren’t 100% relevant.

@ SeePortgual

Do you need to be so snarky? I read your comments, and responded to them… I just thought I could add to what Ben said.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:53:07 +0000

@Tom, agreed, Page Rank is pointless, and in fact some say Google may be fading it out entirely. But Google have been known not only to wipe people’s page rank out for using text link ads, but to actually take them out of their organic search results entirely. So, I think they are best avoided entirely. Weird that you should be penalised for Amazon affiliate bookshops though…

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 08:29:54 +0000

Hi Ben,

I think PageRank is a total distraction now, and doesn’t have much direct bearing at all on your search engine positioning.

I added Amazon affiliate bookshops to two websites recently. Both websites dropped their PageRank within a week, but when I run Google Analytics on Google’s referrals – my referrals have actually increased during this same period.

I have read that this is the case in several SEO forums…that websites have even dropped from PR 7 to PR 3 and still increased their Google referrals.

Nowadays PageRank is merely is a little green bar in a browser plugin that people unwittingly become obsessed with

By: Stuart

Stuart — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:46:09 +0000

I’m quite thin, so I was probably the .5

By: SeePortugal

SeePortugal — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:03:47 +0000

Jonk — It might help to read the thread, especially my comments on it, before you respond to me.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 22:11:59 +0000

@We are never full – my method of making money, if there is one, has been always to see what works and what interests people and to adapt as necessary!

@Mrmark – thanks! And don’t worry, we started with 2.5 visitors too!

By: Mrmark

Mrmark — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:08:17 +0000

Well, I’ve got no plans on adding Google ads to my blog – not much point though as I’m only expecting 2.5 visitors per day (early days yet though)! It’s surprising I find that anyone even clicks on those ads – just as well that some do, otherwise a lot of sites would be out-of-pocket. Anyway, I’m glad that you’ve found a model that earns you money Ben without overloading the site with ads. You’ve a great set-up here – long may it continue!

By: We Are Never Full

We Are Never Full — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:02:09 +0000

We’ve hesitated adding google ads to our blog b/c of the ugly factor and I don’t think our traffic is high enough yet. But I have to admit, Ben, I did like that you kind of brought it down to basics about the indirect benefits that Google brought you. Those are the things worth thinking about, in my case at least. Also, thanks for letting us in on a bit of your own ways of making money and some blog hit #’s… I was always curious about those things. Interesting post.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:07:44 +0000

@Jonk – the trouble is that as soon as you tell advertisers that you are going to add the ‘nofollow’ attribute, they cease to be interested in tla’s. Amazingly even when it is explained to them that if they don’t have the nofollow then they will also be exposing their own businesses to potential problems, they still don’t get it.

As for affiliate links… to be honest even though the books section has lots of them left floating around, I don’t even reach 100 dollars a year from Amazon, so it’s just not worth the hassle of adding them in. Also, of course, it means people will know I’m recommending things I really want to recommend, not just for the potential affiliate hit. But, as I said there are still a few affiliate links floating around here, I just don’t have time now to remove them.

Finally, again, I have no problem with affiliate programs. Darren ‘problogger.net’ Rose cites them as one of his biggest earners, but I think he has, for example, a photography blog that links heavily to related products on Amazon. You make good money on links like those, not to books!