I've been blogging for a while now and recently, I published my first online income report, showing a grand total of eight dollars earned from Google AdSense. This might not seem like much, but it's actually an improvement from the previous years. I've been using Google AdSense on low-traffic websites since 2009, and over that period, I've earned just a little over $100. That's about $20 a year, or about $1.66 per month, or just $0.05 a day.
The reason my AdSense earnings have been so low is due to two reasons: first, I haven't used Google AdSense for all the 5 years, and second, my websites have had low traffic, barely reaching 1,000 visitors per month. I haven't paid much attention to CTR, CPC, and other metrics that could have improved my earnings.
That's why I decided to set my first goal for Google AdSense - to earn enough to cover my Linode VPS hosting bills, which I set at $40 per month. This may seem like a modest amount, but it's not about the amount, it's about being worth it. To achieve this goal, I need to optimize my CTR and CPC values.
To give you an example, if my CTR is 4% and my CPC is 0.20, I would need 200 clicks and 5000 visitors to earn $40. On the other hand, if my CTR is 2% and my CPC is $1.00, I would need 40 clicks and 2000 visitors to earn $40. As you can see, the number of visitors doesn't matter as much as optimizing your CPC and CTR values. The CPC rates will vary depending on the region and niche you're targeting, so it's important to keep that in mind.
And so, my journey to achieve my first Google AdSense goal of $40 per month begins.