It makes AdSense to diversify your income

When in my book I describe the motivations for monetizing a blog or website using AdSense, I don't focus on making a living off of AdSense. Instead, I focus on the ability to use AdSense to pay your hosting and domain registration fees and to generate some extra discretionary income. Really, I think that's the realistic goal for most of my readers. There are people, though, who go the next step with AdSense and actually make a living with AdSense, though everyone's definition of “make a living” varies a lot. Darren over at ProBlogger just put up a posting about how long it took him to earn a six-figure income with AdSense. You can do it, but it takes time and effort — like anything worthwhile.

If you're going to go down that path, however, you should give some serious thought to income diversification. “Don't put all your eggs in one basket” is the classic investment advice. If you're trying to make a living from your websites or blogs (most people who have multiple sites/blogs, which is really your first level of diversification) then you should give some serious thought to this question: What will happen to me if I lose most or all of my AdSense income? If your answer is “I will be bankrupt”, you need to put some thought into income diversification!

Diversification isn't that hard to do if you're already making a living with AdSense. Why? Because your sites and blogs get lots of traffic — that's how you're making a living, after all (remember The AdSense Formula). So you need to take advantage of that traffic in the following ways:

• Make sure you use the alternate URL feature of AdSense to get rid of public service announcements and show alternate ads instead.
• Explore the other pay-per-click ad services. An obvious one is Yahoo! Publisher Network, still in beta, but promising to be stiff competition for Google.
• Sell add space on your site directly or through a service like AdBrite.
• Join affiliate programs like ClickBank or Amazon Associates and make money by promoting products and services.

That last bit, using affiliate programs, is sometimes controversial, because it may give the impression that you've “sold out”. But you can be careful as to what you choose to promote. Naturally, I'm an Amazon affiliate and of course I'm happy to plug Make Easy Money with Google using that program because it effectively doubles my royalty rate on the book (which shows you how little I earn per copy!). But I don't mind plugging other, competing books or products. I will happily send you over to see What Google Never Told You About Making Money With AdSense or The Definitive Guide to AdSense if it ends up making me money. Why not? Everyone needs to diversify!

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