The Internet now contains over 124 million websites. They cover every topic you can imagine, many that you would never have imagined, and some that you would never want to imagine.
Not all of those websites make money. AdSense is served on a little more than a million websites — a big enough number — but it still means that fewer than one in a hundred sites is using the Web\’s most effective advertising method.
And even those million-plus AdSense sites aren\’t all making meaningful amounts of revenue for their publishers. Many are, and some are making very handsome incomes indeed. But that still leaves plenty of sites with AdSense units and pitiful levels of revenue.
There are all sorts of reasons that could happen. Ad optimization is one reason, but that can usually be seen in the clickthrough rate. If you\’re getting lots of visitors but fewer than 1 percent of them are clicking the ads, then you need to be looking at their location and color schemes, and you need to be checking too whether those ads suit your users\’ interests.
But the most common reasons are usually content and marketing.
Sites usually fail to make money because they don\’t gain traction. They don\’t produce the quality content that users want to see. With 123,999,999 other sites out there to look at, every website has a lot of competition. It has to produce the goods if it\’s going to build the audience that generates the revenue.
That\’s easiest to do when you really care about the content you\’re producing. When you\’re knowledgeable about the subject, when you enjoy writing about it and thinking about it, you\’ll find it easier to do the research and offer knowledge that other users will enjoy reading.
But even that won\’t be enough. A site with great content won\’t make money unless people know it\’s there. That takes time, and that\’s where even the publishers of great sites fail. They don\’t put the work and the time they need into reaching audiences and contributing to the conversation. They don\’t introduce themselves to the other experts in their field. They expect to see five-figure AdSense checks three months after going online, and when it doesn\’t happen they stop adding content and stop promoting the site.
Internet marketers fail when they expect too much too soon. Success online takes passion, it takes effort, it takes patience and it takes time. If you\’re willing to invest all of those then your website won\’t just be one in 124 million. It will be one that\’s actually making money.