I logged in to check my Google Adsense account balance today (for the first time since I signed up for it earlier this year). I use a very small section of my Daily Photo Tips web-site for Google ads -- primarily to pay my hosting & bandwidth fees. I was pleasantly surprised! My earnings paid for all of my hosting fees year-to-date, and almost paid for the lens baby and gorilla pod SLR zoom kit I ordered from B&H today.

If you have a web-site or blog that is frequented by some-to-many people, think about using Google ads for passive income. No, I'm not in the David Jay / Gary Fong arena of passive marketing income (yet ), but I have turned my blog into a profit center and something that helps boost my page rank to my photography site. Just felt like doing a Liana dance this afternoon...

Excellent tip! Thanks!!

Great tips! I love passive income, almost any kind will do!

I'm more of a passive-aggressive income kind of guy...

Dan is the man with the plan...and I'm a fan!

Go Dano

Sounds like a good thing. Would you mind explaining how this work. Do you have google ads on your site?

That's awesome Dan! I'll join you in a banana-dance


Yeah for Passive (online) Income!! I buy my books/stuff via my Amazon.com associate link and between my own spendings and some other ones it gives me enough $$ to buy books on Amazon. LOL. Kind of like working in retail fashion and you end up spending all your $$ on clothes from that store. Fun though!

I'm no expert (yet )...but I have a couple of blogger blogs -- and blogger is owned / run by google. Google gives you the chance to sign up for their "adsense" program within your blog configuration.

Adsense can be configured in a number of different ways (in terms of how the ads are presented on your site) -- I chose a rather subtle approach.

Adsense combs your blog content and places ads based on keywords within the content. For example, if I post something on "destination weddings" the ads might feature Jaimaca, Cancun, Hawaii, etc.

I didn't have high revenue expectations...but when I got the plug for my Daily Photo Tips site (which really started out as an experiment!) from Matt Kloskowski on Lightroom Killer Tips...I saw a BIG spike in hits. I added a RSS feed so site visitors could sign up for updates (the RSS applications also add to your site hits...I'm pretty certain...but, don't quote me on that...yet ). Now I've got literally people all over the world checking the site. I don't have really earth-shattering numbers...but I get anywhere from 50 - 100 hits an hour.

Adsense may not bring in huge #'s on your blog...unless your content is relative to what people tend to "click-through" on. (You only make revenues when the ads are clicked...one thing I like to do is click on ads when I'm on blogs that have ads...not that I'm really interested in whatever I'm clicking on -- sometimes I am -- but I know I've just boosted the site owner's revenues by a few pennies. It's a way of thanking them for the free content...just as listening to ads on the radio allows the content to be delivered free.)

I do not have ads on my photography web-site...just one of my (four!) blogger blogs.

Thanks for taking the time explaining that. My blog is just a simple blu blog within my site. Perhaps I should consider changing to something like yours then....?

Only change it if it's not serving it's purpose. I would probably hesitate to put ads on a photography blog if the ads are going to be primarily for your competitors. (I use Xanga for my personal blog and I see ads from my competitors on the site...I'm not too worried since I don't use that blog as a marketing vehicle, per se.)

If you have other types of blogs (photography related or not, but not specifically as a marketing / promotional extension of your primary web-site).

Using the Amazon reseller option is another great idea (see Liana's post from previous). I haven't done this yet because I don't buy much from Amazon...but I might consider doing it if I think I could offset some of my admin fees.

Adsense isn't for everyone...but it's something to consider as part of the big picture...especially if you have a resource site as part of your overall "buzz" / SEO strategy.

Hope this helps.

BTW -- my next project (assuming I launch it) is a photo / small business strategy web-site. I'm not convinced that I'll launch this yet...but I do sense some demand for free-to-relatively inexpensive assistance with the business side of photography and / or entrepreneurship in general. Stay tuned...