
How I Made $13,490.50 With Adsense Last November - trevin
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/how-i-made-1349050-with-adsense-last-november
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ianstallings
This article makes me nauseous. How on earth is this "hacker news"? And who
the hell is voting this garbage up? Please tell me I'm not surrounded by SEO
guys.

~~~
mcgwiz
Yeah the keyword stuffing nauseated me. But I found the empirical information
interesting.

I agree it doesn't feel "hacker-ish" per se, but despite the name, Hacker News
has a broader following that includes startup people, i.e. the business
counterparts of hackers (roles often shared by the same person). The core
interest for them is in creating useful things that ultimately must generate
revenue for sustainability. Online advertising, as superficially repulsive as
it is, is a significant model for doing so.

Also, like most people, Hacker News readers are interested in individual-
focused stories.

~~~
offordscott
I'm glad you found my article useful. I tried my hardest to be factual and to
back my observations up with data. ~ Scott (the website's webmaster)

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pdog
Relevant paragraph, in case you're thinking of trying this next year:

 _> The year-over-year growth of TBFA had been extraordinary until this 2012
Black Friday because of a Google penalty. (Yes, I tried removing bad links,
uploaded a disavow list, apologized and then resubmitted the site for
reconsideration, but I have a feeling Google is putting off the
reconsideration until they know it's too late for me this year... I submitted
the reconsideration request on Oct 19th and followed up again on Oct 31, but
still have not heard a word from Google.) This year, organic traffic is down
95% due to the penalty. It doesn't help either that Yahoo/Bing decided to
globally deindex almost any site that had the words "Black Friday" in its
domain name too._

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.

~~~
squeee
This is an interesting play. Normally I'd assume you wouldn't go out and tell
everyone, hey I make website X.com and it earns $Y every year during November.
Clearly he's concerned about being penalized by Google and is trying to get a
link juice boost; would love to see a follow up December 26th with what worked
and what didn't.

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xpose2000
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_f...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/12wyk7/i_run_a_black_friday_ads_site_i_made_16k_in/)

~~~
offordscott
Hi xpose2000, sorry to here you are disappointed. Like I said before.. I'm
pretty big on sharing my knowledge. I hope my experiences can be used to help
someone else avoid the same pitfalls I did. That's all. I'm pretty sure SEOmoz
decided to publish my article because they saw value in what it was saying and
figured their user base could benefit from it. ~ Scott

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trotsky
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?

~~~
chatmasta
It sounds like his website was pretty popular. People came to his website
looking for something, and left having found it. That sounds like enough
"redeeming value" to me.

~~~
trotsky
I'm not saying they're impartial parties but the fact that he's been punished
everywhere suggests to me that it used to be pretty low value at least before
he made changes trying to get back on google.

it's not some across the board black friday penalty either, as four of his
competitors rank above him for the terms in his url despite him being the only
one that's using g+;
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=thanksgiving...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=thanksgiving%20black%20friday%20ads)

~~~
offordscott
Hi Trotsky, the site and content are not low quality. I understand what you
are trying to get at, but it was really just my poor choice in linkbuilding
activities that got my site penalized. Also, the fact that I have an EMD
(Exact match domain) doesn't help as much either. ~ Scott

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micheljansen
Am I the only one who finds this incredibly sleazy? Basically he makes money
by tricking people to click on ads disguised as content.

~~~
offordscott
People click the ads on my site because they find them relevant. ~ Scott
(Site's owner)

~~~
micheljansen
But don't you find it at least a bit disingenuous to make a site promising
"these black friday ads were leaked" and then blending in other ads with
those?

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FiddlerClamp
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").

~~~
offordscott
Are you saying I only revealed my secrets because they don't work any more?

Actually, this year my ads are making me more money per visitor than last
year, so the opposite of what you say is true.

~ Scott [ owner of thanksgivingblackfridayads(.)com ]

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ashray
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.

~~~
offordscott
Hi ashray, I'm the owner of that site / author of the article.

I'd love to do more of this Adsense and affiliate marketing stuff in the non-
November months. My day job keeps me pretty busy though.

Doing affiliate links did make some good $, but really, the revenue from
Adsense is where I make most of it.

