Getting Over the $100 AdSense Hurdle
- Posted by Badi Jones on October 19th, 2007 - Comment on this Post »
A few years a go, back when I was just getting started with online marketing, someone (I can’t remember who it was) made a comment in a forum (Can’t remember where either, but please, bear with me … :)) that at the time I thought was probably just a bunch of hot air, but looking back, he couldn’t have been more right.
Basically, what he said was …
The biggest and most difficult hurdle in AdSense is getting past the $100 per month mark.
Once you make it past $100, getting to $1000 per month happens before you know it.
At that time, I think I was probably making less than $10 per month, and again, I was pretty skeptical about what he said, but at the same time, I was extremely intrigued, and motivated to find out if that was true. Or at least I hoped I would be able to find out.
Instead of going over some bullet points about how to get over the hurdle, I’m going to share with you my experience, and some of the things I did to achieve this goal.
Getting to the $100 Mark
So in the beginning, I had 1 site that I was running AdSense on (It’s this site . seologs.com), and the thing that was bringing me traffic and the $10 or so dollars per month, was the small set of 2 or 3 SEO tools that I had on seologs.com. I figured that if 2 or 3 SEO tools could bring $10 per month, then the next logical step would be to make more SEO tools. And that’s just what I did.
July 2005: As I said. I started out with SEOlogs.com. My goal was to learn about SEO and making money, blog about it, and make SEO tools.
This was’t my first month using Adsense, but it was when I started to make money. $8 this month.
October 2005: My new SEO tools were starting to pay off. One of them was actually mentioned by Danny Sullivan on SEW. I doubled my income in 3 months to almost $16.
January 2006: 3 months later, and not much had happened money wise, but I continued working hard on my tools and had a few more mentions, including one on nichewatch.com. I also held a promotional SEO contest.
At this point I was starting to wonder if I would ever get to the $100 mark, but I was having tons of fun, and that was great motivation.
Jumping the Hurdle
March 2006 to June 2006: At this point, I started to see a noticeable increase in my AdSense income. This spike was actually started by a Pagerank update. Traffic to my tools almost doubled, and that was the push that gave me the momentum to get over the $100 hurdle.
July 2006 to October 2006: As you can see, it took just about a year to get from nothing to $100 per month, but the next 3 months saw an average increase of $100 per month. October also saw my first Digg. It took me completely by surprise, and took my site down, but after all was said and done, it was a great thing.
Jan 2007 to March 2007: I decided that I better start to diversify at this point, so I started working a several new projects. As you can see, that really paid off.
May 2007: Now you can see that march was definitely a spike, and not in line with my average rate of increase, but it was the most I’ve made yet in one month with AdSense.
Aug 2007: Not much of an increase for August.
At this point, I can definitely see another hurdle in front of me, and that is the $10,000 hurdle. It may seem like I’m pretty far from it, but keep in mind, I don’t keep all my eggs in one basket. 
Adsense is a big chunk of my monthly income from my websites, but it’s not always the biggest.
I’m still working harder than ever, and have more projects and content in the works that will hopefully help to propel me over that next hurdle.
So if you are struggling, and starting to wondering if you’ll ever get over the $100 hurdle, just keep working. You will make it. I won’t lie. It’s not going to be easy. I have definitely worked my share of 16 hour days (this plus my full time job (which I also love)), but if you enjoy what you are doing, you can definitely make it.
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18 Responses to “Getting Over the $100 AdSense Hurdle”
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November 18th, 2007 at 7:48 am
the opposite happened to me, and my nightmare has started this week. My earnings dropped by half! and adsense ads are not showing on my pages except for the text link which doesn’t convert much.
November 25th, 2007 at 9:00 am
My adsense earning suddenly jumped from around $60 / month to $130/month a few months back. I think i should work more on increasing it.
BTW, is the verify email field really necessary? It is a very big nuissance
December 11th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
To be quite honest, I have been using your site for some time know. I got into domaining and I heavily relied on your site for vital information that helped me pick up a few bargains. I dont’ think I ever actually emailed you and thanked you for creating this site. Of course, I have seen it morph into something much more reliable than the early ALPHA days, if I am be so bold to say. However, I also know that I showed my appreciation by clicking on your ads a few times
which were not so helpful, but hey maybe like minded ppl have helped you further. Nonetheless, I would love learn more of your secrets and I would for you to actually do some step by step tutorials on SEO and link building. Perhaps do a project by creating a new site and walking us all through its infancy to adulthood on the SE’s.
Cheers
December 11th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Thanks Ken. That would definitely be a fun idea. Sort of a live case study.
December 13th, 2007 at 6:28 am
I have a relatively new blog which is monetized with Adsense.I can see already that it is going to be a nice income generator, already hitting the $100 mark.All it takes is to work harder.
December 29th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
nice post,actually i’m a regular visitors of your site since 2006 ,i find this most useful..but i just wonder why pagerank don’t work for .in domain ..it always says not valid domain.
December 30th, 2007 at 3:17 am
It was me you fool.
December 30th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Yeah I have passed though some of those hurdles. My first month earning was only 2$ second 6$ and it kept doubling until it reached $140 in 6 months time. Social networking sites like digg and stumbleupon had really been a angles to me. as you said about the digg traffics that happened to me to. I had my account suspended due to huge amount of traffic.
January 15th, 2008 at 2:00 am
Well guess what I completely agree with you. I have been patient with my site and especially more nurturing to it after reading your this post. Websites in my opinion are are plants you have to nurture them and give them nourishments before the fruits of your labour can been seen or harvested. I mean I can’t really go into what I am earning but I must say that its a tremendous learning curve. The more your learn it seems the less you know (quantity wise of course). My site is about ringtones. I think I am going to write a few articles about the ringtone industry in general and of course in direct conjunction to my keyword, free ringtones. But I don’t know how to go about doing the RSS feed for it. Any thoughts on that? I am well hoping that other sites would pick up the article and give me backlinks of course … talking about I would greatly appreciate if you could put a post talking about generating backlinks.
Thanks
Ringaholic (I am addicted to free ringtones)
January 15th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Hey mr Ringaholic.
Here’s an article about generating backlinks
February 25th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Wow! I wish i could reach that $1,000 a month in adsense, could you please specify the tools you actually used? Please please
May 10th, 2008 at 5:30 am
I am working towards clearing the $100 hurdle.. The progress is slow.. but i can feel it coming! Thanks for being my motivation
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 am
On a different website I have had for a number of years I am still trying to break the $10 barriers - so cheers to showing that progress is possible.
August 30th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Great story, and very encouraging. I’ve gone from $1 to $4 to $13 in my first three months, so it’s moving the right way, but $100 a month does seem so far away right now. Back to work
September 6th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
i wish that i could break $100 limit level too. thanks for sharing
October 16th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Hiya,
I am generating over 100$ per month; how on earth do I get sent a larger cheque than $100.
Help!
Thanks
October 16th, 2008 at 9:05 am
@Alex
- Get more traffic
- Make another website.
- Add another method of monetization on your site. If you’re already using adsense, try adding Kontera or text-link-ads
- Look into other affiliate programs
- Look into direct advertising. Who is advertising in your adsense ads? Try contacting them directly.
October 28th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Very interesting information, thanks for sharing it with us. It’s true that when you start off you do have to work really hard and you may not see a great amount of income in the beginning… but if you keep working on it you eventually will.