The First AdSense Payment at FreshBlogger

The First AdSense Payment

Published March 1st, 2007 in adsense, blogging, blogs, google, income, life, networking, relationships, writing

It may come as a surprise to some readers that I’ve only just received my first Google AdSense payment. Even though it’s not enough for me to quit my job and start living the high life, it’s a significant milestone for me.

I started blogging on Blogger.com back in January of 2006 and then moved to FreshBlogger.com at the end of August. In the time that I’ve been blogging here, a great deal has happened both in my online life and my personal life. Things have changed quite a bit for me.

I didn’t start blogging with the intent to make money, though. I really began in the hopes of forcing myself to write something every day and also to build some connections within the writing community. In the last year I’ve made some progress on those goals, but the purpose of this blog has changed, too.

I’ve made some great connections and begun building relationships with some really interesting and cool people all over the world. This alone has been worth all of the hard work of blogging. And, yes, it has been hard work. My new friendships have added a lot of value to my life and helped me to learn some important things about writing, blogging, and life in general.

I’m still struggling with writing a post (or more) every day. Some days it’s just too difficult to fit in the time to get it done. Other days I’m able to write several posts. For the most part, though, I’m able to provide content in a consistent way so that this blog stays active.

Though I’m not making a lot of money from this blog, I do see the little income that it’s beginning to bring in as sort of a validation that what I provide here is valuable. Blogging has been an incredibly valuable experience for me and I’m happy to be able to share this with you. Thanks to all for reading these posts and being a big part of that experience.

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8 Responses to “The First AdSense Payment”

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1 mark from 45n5.com Mar 1st, 2007 at 10:03 am

Congrats! Don’t spend it all in one place
2 Leroy Brown Mar 1st, 2007 at 2:03 pm

Congrats Ray. The first check is always the hardest by far. They get easier and easier, and larger to boot. Here’s to many more checks with Google at the top!
3 ray Mar 2nd, 2007 at 6:35 am

Thanks, Leroy and Mark! It really has been loads of work, but even more fun. I’m looking forward lots more money and fun in the future!
4 cherie Mar 2nd, 2007 at 12:19 pm

congrats! that first payout is always a rush, no matter what the amount! hey, have you ever hear of moola.com and what is your take on it if you have? just wondering, seems like another slow builder but with potential to me.
5 ray Mar 6th, 2007 at 6:19 am

Hi Cherie. Thanks! You’re right about the first payment. It’s really only when you actually receive some real money that you feel like you really can make money from the internet. It’s like magic. I haven’t yet heard of moola.com, but I’ll take a look at it. Thanks for commenting!
6 Matthew Jabs Mar 8th, 2007 at 4:28 pm

Hey Ray:
Interesting post. How long until you think you’ll be able to be a professional blogger? Can I ask what are all the different income sources you use for freshblogger? I’m really looking to diversify my online income (all Adsense right now), but I haven’t been approved for Text Link Ads yet. I think my traffic is high enough, but I don’t think eJabs.com has been around long enough (Nov. 2006). Any advice on getting approved from them? My monthly traffic is now between 15,000 and 20,000 hits.

Anyway, congrats on your Adsense payment, check out my post on the same subject here.

Thanks
7 ray Mar 11th, 2007 at 10:42 am

Hi Matt. I wish I knew how long it will take. I’m confident if I were able to spend more time with blogging and starting websites, I could eventually make a decent living. With that said, and unless you have some sort of viral idea, I think it takes a bit of time to build up enough traffic to make a blog generic good income. I would bet that by the time this blog is about 18 months old, it will be making a decent amount each month, but probably not enough to live off of. It’s going to take the combined earnings of several projects to make that much.

Hang in there on the TLA. I tried several times to get accepted and was turned down every time until I contacted Patrick Gavin directly. He hooked me up and I was accepted and set up in less than 10 minutes. Great service! By this time, though, FreshBlogger already had PR 5 and a fair amount of traffic.

If your blog is more than 3 months or so old, I would probably contact Patrick and see what he says. They have a huge backlog at TLA and things can move very slowly there sometimes.

Thanks for your comments! I’ll be checking out your blog on a regular basis now.