I just finished responding to a post on the Warrior Forum about Adsense, so I thought I would post it here as well, in case one of my readers gets some benefit from it.
The question asked was:
Is there a downside to having just one domain for a bunch of different niche sites for adsense revenue?I am building adsense niche sites, each with several content pages, and then submitting articles to directories for traffic. Sort of like Captain Tim Gorman does.
But I think he has a unique domain for each site he builds. Why not just have one domain for everything, with subdomains for each site?
Since traffic is going to be coming probably exclusively from article directories, it seems like one domain is all you’d need.
So for example, I’d have one domain: www.superdomain.com
And then for each niche I’d just add a subdomain like so:
www.superdomain.com/dogtraining
www.superdomain.com/coffeebeans
www.superdomain.com/sodacans
www.superdomain.com/drugsIs there anything wrong with this?
Here’s my answer, especially after reading about 10-15 other replies, many of whom were complaining about how tough Google makes it for Adsense publishers, cancelling their accounts and so forth.
You can read the full post on the forum here: Google Adsense Question
So, here’s my response:
Interesting question… My opinion is that if you are only going to build sites with “several content pages” on a variety of different topics, that you would be better off going with individual domain names for each site.
That way, you can have the primary keyword of the site in the url itself. From an SEO point of view, that is definitely a benefit.
HOWEVER, I would encourage you to NOT build sites with just a few pages… That is a very short term thinking process when it comes to Adsense. In google’s eyes (more about them in a minute) its just a cheap’n'nasty site built just to earn income from Adsense (typically called MFA – Made For Adsense sites) and they don’t tend to like them.
You would achieve FARRRRR better results by building 1-2 bigger sites with as much unique content on them as possible, so that you target a broad range of keywords and ultimately draw in higher amounts of SE traffic.
I have 2 clients that have done this very thing, and when I added Adsense to their websites, their earnings went nuts in a very short period of time. One rose to over US$1000/month in her first month, and the other took several months longer, but has peaked at nearly $2000/month, with stable earnings over $1400/month.
I can guarantee you that if you build 20 sites with a few articles on each, you will NEVER earn that sort of money from them UNLESS you find some way to get HEAPS of dirt cheap or free traffic to them, and that will be tough unless you are willing to pay for it (PPC).
Now, to discuss the google issue…
I constantly see people complaining about their actions or living in fear of Google and their “supposed” arbitrary attitude to adsense site owners…
Folks, lets get one thing straight!
Google’s #1 PRIORITY (with adsense) is to protect the integrity of their advertising system & ensure that their advertisers (those people using the adwords system to put their ads out into the market place) do NOT get ripped off or scammed.
In Google’s eyes, a MFA site is nothing more than an annoyance to themselves AND their advertisers, especially if its a crappy quality site that truly offers NO value to visitors, except for the ad links there to be clicked on.
If google’s advertisers find that their ROI from using the content network to advertise (that’s what google calls the adsense network) is decreasing, or nose diving, then they will stop advertising using Adsense, which means google stops earning $$$ AND the adwords program gets a bad name with advertisers.
Think about it for 10 seconds, and forget about what YOU want (traffic, clicks & money) and you’ll immediately see that google MUST act to protect the integrity of their advertising system (after all, it’s their cash cow) AND they must protect their advertisers from people whose motives are less than pure, or their entire business model will stumble and fall rapidly, and they will fade into insignificance…
So, google is not being arbitrary about their rules to do with adsense sites, and nor are they out to “get you” … UNLESS you build crappy sites that offer no value to visitors and put their ads on them.
My two previously mentioned clients have large sites (well in excess of 100 unique pages), get lots of traffic (because they have lots of quality unique content) AND offer genuine value to the visitor WITHOUT adsense. They are google’s ideal sort of “client” when it comes to adsense, and hence they reward them for giving them (google) what they want, AND for offering an excellent site for their clients to advertise on.
Stop trying to nickel & dime your way to adsense riches. You won’t be the first to try, and certainly not the last, but all you will ultimately get for your troubles is grief & aggravation, and not much money at all…
Success with adsense comes from working WITHIN google’s rules & requirements, rather than trying to fight them. You could easily spend as much time building 1-2 larger, more helpful & high-value (to the visitor) sites as you could building 20 crappy sites, so why waste your time on the nickel & dime path, when it’s destined to never give you the results you want.
BTW: I know that tim gorman promotes this kind of method, but there’s lots going on in the background with Tim’s sites that you might not know about, and he’s not likely to divulge ALL of his secrets. PLUS, Tim builds his sites to be of genuine value to visitors, not just to fill electronic space so he can add adsense to them.
God, am I the ONLY person out there in the big wide world who is not frothing at the mouth about the newest “trend” to hit the get-rich-quick Internet Marketing community?
Joel Comm (of Adsense Secrets fame) has been promoting his 500words.com site around the net lately, and when I saw the site, a sense of deja vu wafted over me in a major hurry!
Reminds me of the pixel selling craze of a year or so ago, where everybody went ballistic buying 1 pixel ads on a site to get link popularity benefits from Google & co.
That was great for the first 1-2 players in the field, and it got a LOT of press and some good dollars for the early mover, but have you noticed that no one seems to be paying much attention to it these days?
Why, you ask?
Simple really – because it goes against what Google (in particular) and the other major search engines are looking for when it comes to measuring the worth of incoming links.
My philosophy when it comes to the “fad of the month” brigade is simple: If I can show it to a Google Search Engine “cop” and have him or her be happy that it’s legit and fair and honest, and give me full value for the link, then it’s all good.
However, if the Google cop laughs at me and asks me if I’m on drugs, I know it will ultimately be a waste of time. It might work temporarily, but once Google figures it out, they will add a small routine to their algorithm to ignore the value of links from sites like this.
Even more than that, I am really disappointed that Joel Comm is the one promoting this. Mr Adsense himself should know better than to try and get one past Google!
If his idea was SOOOO good, he would keep his mouth shut & just build these sites for himself to get the link popularity.
Instead, he’s selling the script to build the keyword sites instead – THAT’s where the money is. He’ll sucker in hundreds of get-rich-quick starrey eyed individuals who think they will make a fortune with it, and in reality, HE will make a small fortune and probably only 1-2 others will as well.
Folks, use some critical thinking here PLEASE!
If this was really as good as he says it is, why is he selling the system instead of using it for himself?
Simple really – he makes money on the people who buy the links AND he makes money on the people who buy his script.
However, I can guarantee you that within 6 months (probably less), Google will be giving links from these sites little or NO value. All these word links are doing at the moment is drawing traffic from the buzz, which is nice, but not sustainable long term!
If you want link popularity, spend the money you would have paid Joel to buy his script and/or buying a word on his site, and pay someone from rentacoder or elance to write you some unique articles instead.
Link your primary keyword/s in the author resource box and publish the articles on your own site. THEN, modify the articles sufficiently so that they have at least 25-50% different wording & content to the original, and publish them on the major article sites like ezinearticles.com.
The value of the link popularity you will get from doing this will far outweigh any value you will get from the 500words site over the medium to long term.
Just this technique alone has got my biggest client to #1 GLOBALLY on Google for one of their primary keywords in less than 6 months. It took me about 2 hrs of work to publish the articles for him, and that’s all I’ve had to do since.
The link popularity he has earned from those published articles has steadily climbed and climbed, until it is now at #1 against 115 MILLION competing pages!
Now, THAT you can take to the bank. It’s a solid strategy, it keeps Google happy, and obviously it thrills my client and makes me look good.
What more can an SEO ask for! 
I love Internet Marketing, but I despair at times at how many people just chase the newest fad, hoping to get rich quick, instead of working smart & hard and putting together a quality site.