I had pleasant surprise last week as the 1099's began to roll in.
The one that caught me completely off-guard was the amount from Google's AdSense. It wasn't shabby. In fact, it was pretty good.
For the most part, I hadn't done much with AdSense since the beginning of last year. Most of my time had been spent doing 'mini-consults' as well as having a little fun networking with others.
More recently, most of my time has been spent reading while this blog has been 'on hold'. Reading, beta-testing and SEO experimenting is where my ongoing learning comes from. I LOVE writing, but I made a concious decision to put that on hold a couple of months ago. There was significant change in the Internet marketing space and this guy doesn't like to miss anything.
Back to AdSense ...
I realized quickly that the AdSense income was from websites that I had discontinued editing last year. My focus had changed, there's only so much time in a day and, if there's one thing I've learned in over a decade of doing this stuff, it's knowing when to close a chapter.
I visited my Adsense account for the first time in a while and made a few modest discoveries.
While many of you probably already know some of this, I felt it was worth sharing, as certainly in these times there's got to be more than a few of you that could use a few extra bucks.
The first thing I noticed was Adsense for Domains. Like many of you, I own more than a few 'legacy' web addresses that I keep for a variety of reasons.
In my case, they were parked at a reseller site (at ridiculously high prices :). The reseller sent (a rather lame) check every once in a while.
My take on Adsense for Domains was two-fold.
1) I was outright telling Google that these were parked sites (I would guess) and that I wasn't doing anything weird (or harmful) with them.
2) I was bypassing the reseller who was sending a (very) small portion of the proceeds while most likely using AdSense themselves.
The test.
I took 4 domains a couple of days ago and switched them over. A few, in their time, were well-known domains and (despite my e-mails) still had many websites linking to them.
The result was immediate and more important, measurable.
Instead of waiting for a pitiful monthly report, I was able to see what was happening in less than a day.
AdSense's domain system first set them up using the URL's as a keyword source but later (after approval), let me add the corrections as needed.
While, over a day or so, they haven't yet generated enough to go to a nice dinner, it's the concept of bypassing the reseller that I thought some of you might be interested in. No spam. Playing it straight with Google ... and maybe, some measurable income along the way.
The other cool observation I made during the process was a post to the Google Adsense blog a few days ago providing some useful Firefox add-ons that I hadn't used before. Web Developer 1.16 has definately come a long way. It's easy and non-invasive.
I suppose the most interesting part for those of us that follow this stuff was the mention that work was underway for add-on's to Chrome, Google's own browser.
As for SEO and Tech Daily (for those of you that have dropped notes....), it won't be 'daily' for a little while. I'm (thankfully) busy with all kinds of stuff. My immediate intention will be to post helpful hints and tips (like this one) and to share some of what I've been reading lately as the Internet landscape, SEO, Social Media and online marketing in general, continues to change at a 'more than hyper' pace.
It's really incredible, at least for me, to be watching. It also boggles my mind that there are tens of thousands of companies that still have absolutely no clue what SEO is (for another article..).
So ... there it is. I'm still breathing. I hope this piece helps a few people, and yes, there's more to come.
Stay tuned :)
Have a Great Week!
Charlie
Update: Apparently a few other blogs have noted AdSense for Domains over the past month. Nice to know it was relatively knew and I wasn't totally out of touch :) The actual page to find out more is here.