How Your Family's Home Page Can Pay for Itself
You don't have to be a "marketing guru" to make some extra bucks
with your website.
My dad recently retired after many years working in the concrete
industry. He suddenly had extra time on his hands, so he started
doing some fun things with concrete. One of his most successful
projects is the unique concrete leaves that he molds from real
rhubarb leaves.
He gives his leaves away to grateful friends and family, even
though leaves just like them are showing up in many landscaping
magazines as garden sculptures. Concrete leaves are also being
used in expensive fountains. My dad thought about selling them,
but the freight is just too expensive. And besides - he's
supposed to be retired.
I talked him into making a website to show other people how to
make the leaves for themselves. It took a few months of nagging,
but he finally agreed to it.
The whole family got in on the project - his wife helped him
write it, and was very patient when we grabbed the digital
camera and made her pose. My daughter helped with some design
ideas, and my dad took all the pictures. My job was to put the
website together.
This family project was a lot of fun, and gave us something that
we could all work on together, even though we live in three
different cities. And, thanks to AdSense, my dad's website is
more than paying for itself.
My dad signed up for a free AdSense account at google.com, and I
put the necessary lines of code on all his pages. He has fun
watching the daily stats for his AdSense account, even on days
when there are few clicks, because it shows him how many people
are seeing his web page. Of course, he has a lot more fun on the
days when he gets lots of clicks, and the $'s mount up.
I'm always surprised when I find a home page on the Internet
that doesn't have the AdSense ads. My dad's page is about
concrete leaves - not a subject that tons of people search for.
But his page is now number 9 in Google for "concrete leaves."
Some of the best informational pages on the Web are built by
people like my dad, who have a skill or information that they
want to share with others. Because their intentions are not
primarily commercial, they can concentrate on the subjects that
they know and love best. Their sites really offer a good value
to the hundreds of people who find their sites.
So, if you have a family home page of your own, and you share
some of your experience or knowledge, why not add one more way
to help your visitors? Get an AdSense account. If you can build
a web page, you can easily add the code, and the ads will be
specifically relevant to your visitor's interests. Plus - your
web page may pay for itself. Who knows -you may even get the
"bug" like I did and start building more pages. You could end up
making a good part-time income from your web-page hobby -
thousands of people do, and getting started is easy!
To find out more, just search for "adsense" on Google.com