Convert or Die Blog by Darwin Hall

For those of you who are cashing Adsense checks, you are in good company. I started Adsense in 2002. I was shocked to see all the money you could make. By 2003 I was making over $100 per day. It was an exciting time to be a post internet-crash webmaster. Between my regular job and Adsense I could finally pay my bills on time. It wasn’t long until I was making enough to quit my job, well I actually was laid-off, and started marketing online full time. I would pick up the occassional contract job here and there doing some web design or something, but like so many webmasters during thoses times, I became dependent on google cash. Google cash accounted for 90% of my monthly income. Big mistake.

I bought a new car and hired my wife as my assistant. And yes, I flirted with my assistant all the time. The base of my traffic came to 4 financial sites I made back in 2001 and 2002. I became somewhat comfortable and foolishly lost my edge. After making all the web pages, and link garnering, one day after one of Googles now famous updates over 70% of my traffic flew away like a little sparrow. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was going to die. Well, I’ve learned a valuable lesson about web marketing and that is to never put all you eggs in one basket. Unless you own the basket and the eggs. Justin Khoury has an excellent posted about “Making the most of Google Adsense“. Also check Brent Wilson’s post and article on Adsense double standards. He makes some really good points that I’m sure many of us have noticed about the policy of double standards in websites.