Originally posted by RussBecause I can't subscribe, I click the ads as much as possible. I'l try harder.
Don't do it with the intention of making money unless you have a great idea and money to burn on marketing.
Best to just create a site about something you enjoy, get some ads on it, and see what happens.
One thing that is worth mentioning though, a good personal site makes a great reference site when getting work - I have won plenty of work on the strengt ...[text shortened]... uss
Oh, and this site clocks up an insane number of hits, and ad revenue is still miserable.
if you want to make money from adsense, forget what your interested in. build a site that deals with what people pay big bucks for. that way your adsense ads with be big payers as well. it is no use having a lot of traffic if your adsense ads dont pay . and some adsense ads pay in low dollars PER CLICK! so you have to get the right ones from google onto your site.
secondly you can have the best site in the world and still get no visitors, there is a hell of out lot of competition out there and that is putting it mildly. so promotion, promotion,promotion is the key. you may find that the time you spend on promotion will not make up for your adsense return. but you adsense returns should easily cover you basic hosting costs, WHEN you get the promotion sorted out. it also helps if you know how to "fiddle" your traffic/hits and you have to know a little to do that or spend a vast amount of time doing it manually.
PS: i've pulled the adsense ads from my site as i just couldnt be bothered with such nonsense anymore after my initial interest waned.
there are easier more challenging ways to make money: gambling in the financial markets for instance, but that also takes skill and lots of knowledge..