I’ve been building a few niche blogs on blogger, monetised only with adsense. I do not have many of them at the moment and indexing was slow, despite sending out articles, adding the blogs to technorati and back linking them from my higher PR mainstream blogs. But as this is a free way to make money on the net, I’m going for it.

I’m not really worried about the original indexing delay, and the fact the incoming search engine hits are slow, as the blogs haven’t taken too much time to make and keep up and I am getting ‘the good advert’ in the top of two (at the last look) of the blogs, so I guess they will make money for me over time.

The stupid thing is though, I am already making money from adsense clicks - but from this blog and from another which is not really geared towards adsense at all (there was a block for adsense in the template, so I stuck my code there). Okay, it’s only about 3 dollars a day I am making from this source at the moment, and mainly from the other blog, but to someone who had never given the idea of making money online from adsense a second thought until recently, it’s a start… of sorts.

The other blog’s theme was supposedly ‘designed with SEO and adsense in mind’, so I guess it’s working. Must remember to update it some time!

However, a couple of weeks ago it occured to me that I was missing out on making a living from writing about a subject I know quite a lot about, and where there is a huge potential audience - depression.

And no, this isn’t a ‘feel sorry for me’ post. I cope with this just fine. It has been there for as long as I can remember, and I have learned to deal with it.

But as I know so much about this subject, why not try to get some cash from it? So I set up a blog.

It was indexed surprisingly quickly and is also searcheable for the keywords I used, and getting incoming search engine clicks. It has no traffic from any other source (that I know about), as I did not link to it at all. Also I have not published one single article, or linked to this blog anywhere else to get backlinks. Big G analytics told me my incoming searches to this blog were 90% search engine and were targetted to my main keywords. This seemed good, it looked like time to monetise it.

I tried to find various affiliate schemes to make some money from, but they were either limited, or would not accept me as an affiliate because of where I live. I am waiting on a couple more who do look more promising, but I can be a little too impatient at times in my efforts to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to get some cash out of this blog now.

So I stuck a long adsense block in the side bar.

The dreaded ‘public service announcements’ did not appear, and for a couple of days the adds were very relevant to the blog posts. Then today I went to make a post and something had changed… Instead of the ‘depression’ and ‘therapy’ links, the adverts were full off entrepreneurs offering ‘bereavement help’.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I am feeling down, the last thing I want to look at is adverts about memorials…

So I made the post anyhow, putting in keywords and synonyms with no mention of loss of any description. I ensured that the tags and categories were correct too and then I pressed ‘publish’…

More memorials. I just didn’t get it!

So, I clicked on the titles of the various posts. Most opened out with the same type of adverts. This was getting ridiculous. How could I make some money out of adsense clicks if the damn adverts were likely to put people off?

Then I clicked on a post I had missed - about a self-help book. This one was not so well targetted as most of the others… and yet the adverts at the side of the page were for depression help.

And then the light finally dawned!

Although people are searching for the keywords I am pushing (and in this case they are willing to pay for help), the advertisers, being unable, in many cases, to sell them the products they are looking for, are trying to sell them something else.

Yes, I know, this happens with ironic regularity in the make money online niche. People will click on a link in the hope of being able to earn a living working online and end up buying a ‘how to make money’ ebook which is worthless.

But for some strange reason it had never occurred to me that it would be so cut throat in the ‘make money from depression’ niche. I realised that there would be a lot of ‘quick treatment’ schemes and ‘herbal remedies’ and whatever, but I had assumed that many of the links provided would also be to sites who, along with making money, also provided some actual help and advice. But it’s not that often, I’m afraid.

So basically, when I am talking about ’self-help’, all those links which will (hopefully) make me money from the clicks will appear, because they are aimed precisely at that. But if I target a post to the very subject people are really looking for (and would pay good money for), the links are getting confused as, in many cases, they cannot provide what people feel they really need.

And if that sounds confused, so was I after working this out!

So, basically, for this particular niche, I need to do much more research, both on the subject of keywords and sponsors who can actually offer my readers what they are searching for. It’s the only way I will make some decent cash out of this.

I have to say it is much easier making a living on the net from selling adult ‘products’. The surfer is looking for what you are offering and you can usually offer him what he is searching for (or at least, provide a money making link to it). Definitely more work required, but eventually I’ll sort it out.

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