Making Money with Yahoo and Google – My story
Getting Started as a Webmaster
I first decided to make money off the web, in 2005. Back then, there were two big players in the contextual ad game, Google’s Adsense, and Yahoo’s Publisher Network. Really, it was just Adsense and Yahoo decided to join the party later in 2005 because of Google’s success. In those days, the earnings were great, the competition not as fierce, and there was enough for everyone to make some money.
My goal in making money was rather modest. I had no plans to do it seriously. Since contextual ads were rather new for a lot of people, many didn’t realize how lucrative it could be. Sure, Google was successful, but they were a big, faceless corporation. Why would a mom-and-pop website, or individual expect to get anything from that? Well, that kind of thinking was out of place in 2005.
The emergence of social networking.
When I first started, Myspace was all the rage. While many people searched for layouts and backgrounds, many webmasters completely ignored this audience. Too many “serious” webmasters thought Myspace was equivalent to an AOL. It was simply for the newbies and not for serious web development. That was my first lesson on the web, never underestimate your audience.
Since the Myspace crowd was being ignored, I decided to focus my webmaster activities entirely on serving them. The results were phenomenal. Both Google and Yahoo ranked me #1 for many Myspace-related terms. The traffic was pouring in to my humble website. I couldn’t believe my good fortune! But, a problem arose. How do you make money off all this traffic?
First, I tried dating websites. That was a disaster. It was all wrong for my audience. As a matter of fact (I didn’t know this at the time), most of the Myspace traffic was female. I guess that would explain why the mostly male webmasters didn’t understand the mostly female Myspace traffic. That taught me lesson #2, know your audience.
Discovering Adsense and YPN.
After much trial and error, I stumbled onto Google Adsense. It seemed like a very easy way to get ads in front of my Myspace traffic while I figured out what they really wanted. Well, it seems Google was the answer, not a temporary solution. With Google Adsense, my website started making a little at first. Then more and more until it began out-earning anything I had made in computers, doing anything.
Google was a real find. It took several months before I really understood how to use it. But, it was time well spent. While this was happening, Yahoo decided to get in on the action. They created the Yahoo Publisher Network. To attract Adsense users, they offered very attractive payouts and often complemented Adsense. Traffic that did poorly in Adsense would do well in YPN. It was a great arrangement. That taught me lesson #3, always diversify your ad networks.
Competition Is Tough.
The YPN/Adsense arrangement worked great through the balance of 2005 and into 2006. Unfortunately, while Adsense continued to do well, Yahoo began to suffer. It seems that earnings were declining for the entire year of 2006. While, many other webmasters attributed it to many different things, a general consensus seemed to be that Yahoo was not what it had been the previous year.
While 2006 was weak for Yahoo, Google remained strong. In 2007, that began to change for Google. While it continued to do well, in the face of Yahoo’s seemingly unending fall, Google began to show very slight decreases also. In hindsight, it’s clear what was happening. Many of the advertisers were beginning to suffer. But, at the time, no one was sure what the problem was.
By 2008, Yahoo’s Publisher Network was a shell of it’s former importance. The excitement of joining began to disappear and many realized that Google was the king of the contextual ad game. Despite the mighty Google’s slight decline in payouts, it was still far and away the premier choice among webmasters.
We all know what happened in 208. The United States suffered a major financia meltdown that did not spare the webmaster nor Google. Earnings for everyone dropped or stopped growing. It was a time of $4 gas and disappearing mortgage and credit card ads. Things got tough but Google weathered the storm. However, it did show me that Google is not invincible. Google is not immune to the economy.
Spending 3 years with Google can make one lazy, if you’re not careful. With the rampant uncertainty of 2008, it was time to look into the affiliate game and other ad networks. While none matched the size of Google, they offered many ways to protect oneself from being dependent on just one advertiser (e.g. Google). That led me to lesson #4, there’s more to webmastering than Google.
Saying goodbye to Yahoo!
By 2009, I was extremely disappointed with Yahoo. My sites still carried their ads, despite 90% drops in earnings from 2005. Things looked very bleak, yet I persisted with the hope that one of these years things would change. Well, when someone makes an offer for cold-hard cash, you see how deep your loyalty is.
One day, while browsing a webmaster forum, a user offers to buy my YPN account. They offered a sum that was irresistible, given my earnings with Yahoo over the past couple of years. With some negotiation, I sold them my account. Thus ended my belief and hope Yahoo would ever become a relevant ad network again.
That leads to the last lesson I learned over that incredible period from 2005-2009, this is business, not personal.
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