The Lunch Factor - Not Being Able to Retire on AdSense Income (Yet!)

By Mindy Makuta

Well, like many people of the recent internet age, you are tempted to build a web-site and strike it rich in a very short while, with Google AdSense or some other advertising on your web-site. The point of this article is to let you know that no matter what the hype is, many people can create a good web-site that will make some money. First you may be making pennies a day. Then you are making 25cents, then $1, then $5/day or more (cross your fingers). This can happen over the course of a month but more often it may take 6 months or more to achieve usable money. What I am suggesting is that you aim for the lunch factor. This is the amount of money for a nice lunch for 2 persons once per month (about $1 per day = $30/month).

About 1 year ago, my husband and I each developed a separate new web-site from scratch. His was travel related and mine was wedding oriented. They are quality sites with good content. After an initial flurry of activity we have been adding to them slowly and the traffic to both of them has been increasing over time. Maintaining and growing these web-sites is not our full time job nor was it intended to be early-on.

Both sites have pertinent Google AdSense advertisements on some of the pages; the wedding related site has a few affiliate stores specifically recommended on some of its pages.

At the time of this writing, at about $60/month combined between our web-sites, we can go out for lunch about twice per month more than we might go otherwise. This is a lunch factor of 2. In Boulder, Colorado there are plenty of great places that are not chains or fast food where we can spend our lunch factor. On this particular day we ate a very relaxed late lunch at the Med, (which is one of our favorites). At these "free" lunches, we can discuss our success over lunch or we can choose to not discuss "work" at all.

If you have some computer software expertise and you have a topic/industry that you know something about and you can write articles, then you can create a good web-site over time. If your web-site has good content (that you write), and you point to it from articles like this one (that you write), you should be able to make some kind of money from that site. Just consider it as a hobby to start out - don't plan to make a killing and retire.

Whether the income ever grows to be more than this, at least we have met our goal of earning something from these web-sites. The added beauty is that the income is generally unattended and we can add to and massage the sites when we feel like it. The same goes with writing articles. If you feel a nagging need to write about almost anything, related to your web-site or not, just "pen" it, revise it a few times, and point to your site anyway.

Of course, you may have better site traffic if you understand and use basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques or you add inbound directory links or you offer subscriptions to a newsletter. However, I'm suggesting a way to start by doing what you know and working towards the lunch factor.