Adsense - Good route to take for newbie

[Lakhs]

I live in London and was thinking of setting up a blog about London. I was thinking of writing about many facets such as life in London, attractions, dinning places and so on and monetizing this with adsense to start with. The terms may not pay that much, but I think the most important thing is to action and learn and get better.

Just wondering if someone was doing or has taken the adsense route? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

 

[stackcash]

Travel/tourism is a gigantic niche. Just Google "attractions in London" and you'll see 10+ large sites that are already entrenched in the topic.

My advice to would be to "niche down" and focus on something really specific in London. Off the top of my head:

Best Pubs in London
London's Most Romantic Restaurants
Hotel Accommodations for under $100 in London

Pick something like that and roll with it. While an experienced SEO would possibly be able to compete with a competitive SERP like "Attractions in London," you're probably best served to niche down and focus on something much more manageable while you learn.

And, yes, Adsense is the easiest way to go when you're first starting out. Once you get significant traffic, start paying attention to what companies are being advertised on your site through Adsense. Then, contact them directly and sell them ad space on your site.

 

[Lakhs]

Thank you very much for your help. I really appreciate it. Time to niche down and get to work

 

[Ryuzaki]

I agree with stackcash.

Niche down for several reasons:

1. Quicker ramp up to reasonable traffic levels
2. The traffic will be more targeted and more likely to convert into clicks
3. You'll be able to learn far more.

You said the goal is to learn. This way, you'll make money while you learn, but not getting stuck at the traffic stage will give you a chance to get into optimization techniques like split testing ad placements, font colors, etc.

These are the things that will turn a $100 per month blog into a $110 per month blog with a 10% increase in RPM's. But what you're really learning is how to turn a $100,000 a month blog into a $110,000 per month blog. An extra $10k just for moving ads around is serious money.

To summarize what I'm saying is that starting in a tighter niche will make sure you don't bottleneck at the ranking/traffic stage, which will block off all opportunity to learn the skills that will apply to the bigger sites you'll eventually be making.

 

[Lakhs]

Awesome!! Thank you for the change in thinking that will make the difference