The Internet’s Biggest Google Whores
written by John Chow
The following is a list of the Internet’s eight biggest Google AdSense publishers. The information was compiled from interviews and articles found on the Internet. Whenever possible, I list the source of the information.
I apologize in advance if I missed anyone on the list. If you make more than the people listed, please send me proof of your Google AdSense earnings and I will add you on the next time the list is updated. This is a list of individual site owners - people just like you and me. Big corporate AdSense publishers like AOL are excluded.
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1: Markus Frind: PlentyOfFish.com - $300,000 per month
Markus Frind is a local Vancouverite who is turning the online dating world upside down. His site, Plentyoffish.com is the biggest free dating site on the Internet. Plentyoffish.com receives up to 500 million page views per month and make over $10,000 per day for Markus, who runs the site from home.
You think a site this big would be staffed by a hundred people but the only employee that Markus has is his girlfriend, who helps to answer the emails. Markus coded Plenty of Fish all by himself. The site is lean and mean and requires only four servers to handle all that traffic.
Doubts about Makus’s Google earnings were silenced when he posted this $900,000 check from Google. According to Markus’s blog entry, the check represented two months of AdSense earnings.
2: Kevin Rose: Digg.com - $250,000 per month
Kevin Rose started Digg in December of 2004 with just $1000. Today Digg is one of the biggest news sites on the Net, with over 400,000 members and over 200 million page views per month. According to this article from Business week, Digg will make $3 million this year from a combination of Google AdSense and Federated Media ads. Unfortunately, only Mr. Rose and his accountants knows how much came from Google and how much came from Federated Media. I can try to take a guess based on the number of times I have seen a Federated Media ad vs. a Google ad on Digg but, being in Canada, it’s almost 100% Google ads.
Whatever Google’s share of Digg’s $250,000 per month in ad revenues may be, one thing is for sure, it is not small.
3: Jeremy Schoemaker - $140,000 per month
If ever anyone can be considered an Internet marketing superstar, ShoeMoney would be near the top of the list. Jeremy Schoemaker is a search engine marketer who knows how to take advantage of both Google AdSense and AdWords. In the above photo, you see him with the biggest Google AdSense check he has ever received from Google. The income was earned back in the month of August 2005. Since then Mr. Schoemaker has moved to wire transfers. No doubt, he got tired to dealing with the bank tellers when trying to deposit $100K plus checks every month.
Unlike the other Google whores on this list, ShoeMoney, as he likes to be call, does not own just one site. He makes his enormous Google checks using hundreds of sites and thousands of domains.
4: Jason Calacanis: Weblogs, Inc. - $120,000 per month
Before Jason Calacanis sold Weblogs, Inc to AOL for $25 million, he got the network of blogs making over $4,000 a day from Google AdSense. So impressive was his AdSense performance that Google used Weblogs for a case study.
Now that AOL controls Weblogs, you can bet it is making a lot more than a measly $120,000 a month.
5: David Miles Jr. & Kato Leonard - $100,000 per month
According to this Washington Post article, David Miles Jr. and Kato Leonard, claims they make $100,000 a month from their site, Freeweblayouts.net, which gives away designs that people can use on MySpace.
The only problem with the revenue figure is it is not 100% AdSense. Free Web Layouts use other advertising networks in addition to Google. However, with a claimed $100,000 per month in revenues, I am fairly confident that the AdSense portion is higher than our next Google whore.
6: Tim Carter: AskTheBuilder.com - $30,000 per month
Tim Carter is a licensed master plumber and carpenter with his own radio show. He also makes frequent television appearances. He founded AsktheBuilder.com in 1995, The primary focus has been catering to an avid following of fellow builders on the site. According to the Google case study, Mr. Carter did such a good job tweaking the Google ads on his site that it now makes $30,000 a month.
Tim’s AdSense revenues now average $1400 a day and growing. Overall, Carter is enthusiastic about AdSense: it allows him to focus on content development, and gives him built-in tools to measure ad performance and make changes to maximize revenues. “People come to me for help,” says Carter. “They get what they need from my columns and advice - and also from ads delivered by AdSense.”
7: Joel Comm - $24,000 per month
Joel Comm is get rich quick guru. He wrote the best selling e-book, What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense. The e-book, along with the website that promotes it has a screen shot of Mr. Comm AdSense earning from November 19, 2005 to December 15, 2005. Whether or not Mr. Comm still makes this much from Google is anybody’s guess.
8: Shawn Hogan – DigitalPoint.com $10,000 per month
Back in January of 2005 the New York Times had an article about AdSense, featuring Shawn Hogan, founder of DigitalPoint. The article states that Mr. Hogan makes $10,000 per month from Google AdSense using a very unique revenue sharing model.
Google pays Digital Point about $10,000 a month, depending on how many people view or click on those ads, said Shawn D. Hogan, the owner and chief technology officer of Digital Point.
Mr. Hogan said he started the revenue-sharing approach in 2004 “as kind of a marketing gimmick.”
“But everyone seemed to think it was a cool idea,” he said. “I saw a lot of other sites doing the same thing maybe six months later.”
DigitalPoint have grown a lot since that article and while Mr. Hogun would not say anything, the DigitalPoint forum members speculate that he is making at least twice that amount now.
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Here's A Few More Related Posts
Andrew Leyden of PodcastDirectory.com receives nearly a million hits and makes around $30,000 to $40,000 per year.
David Miles Jr. and Kato Leonard, Freeweblayouts.net owners, say they make $100,000 a month from a site that provides ready made web design templates for MySpace social-networking pages.
Nice compilation!
Seems that most of them are having just one main site for the income, which I think is a bit risky because if goes down in SE such as Google or Yahoo, there goes your paycheck.
However for Shoemoney, “hundreds of sites and thousands of domains”? How can he managed to do that?
Go for ninth spot, John!
There are some sites that will never drop out of the rankings because they are far too important like About.com in terms of the number of, and influential links they have. So, for them, its not risky at all.
Shawn Hogan makes at least $15,000/month, he has even said it on the DP forum, but that is just from Adsense sharing. He makes much more through other things
It is true. Most of the really big AdSense publishers make their income with one site. However one doesn’t really have to worry about what you’re talking about (dropping down in SE).
This post should explain it: http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/big-sites-rules-small-sites-drool/
I know a few people who reached the 5000 - 7000 range and fell down to 500 in two months.
They either
1. didn’t know exactly what made them successful the first time.
2. relied on the search engins and lived to regret it.
So don’t rely on the search engines.
Yeah! This is what the internet is all about! MAKE MOENY! If you buy a domain, build a website, all you have to do is wait! The money will come ROLLING in! You know why? Because IT’S A BONANZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great post John. This is just one of the reasons why I check your blog every morning at work. I hope our IT people don’t put a block on your URL. LOL.
Nice list John!
John can you put me on the list as #9?? i make about 10 a day.
But really, those are the only guys who talk about their income. Theres lot more people making 100k a month but don’t want to share that among the community.
Well I use AdSense and I have not seen a dime. Maby you can check out my blog and tell me what is going wrong.
http://michael-mindof.blogspot.com/
I do not believe that Markus Frind makes as much as he says he does. Shoemoney is for real as is Kevin Rose (obviously). I just don’t trust this PlentyofFish guy. Great post!
I’m drooling. Thanks for the list. It gives me inspiration to not give up on adsense.
No mention of Max Goldberg from YTMND.com? Here’s proof he makes more through Google than #8 on this list.
http://art-has-no-monetary-value.ytmnd.com/
And he’s been feautred in Wired and other major publications…while nobody’s ever heard of most of these people!
But it’s great that krose is making money through Google, and I think he’s better classified as a “drunk” than a “whore”
Wow, only a measly $120,000 a month? How is he gonna eat, lol. But seriously that is something else. I get a lot of hits and so far my earnings are rather miniscule by comparison.
Keep in mind that these sites need to pay expenses too. 10k a month sounds like a lot, and it’s a good income for one person. But when you have to pay for staff, servers, bandwidth, etc etc it can end up being no more profitable than any other business.
Good article
i personally now 5 people making over 30k a month….
What do they do to get so much traffic.
I have made over $4.83 in just two months with my blog! I estimate I am #1,234,567 on the list.
Steve Pavlina makes $10,000/month, so he might be in the running for spot #9.
Ya Canada
I’m pretty sure this is very incorrect.. 10k a month isn’t much money .. I mean this should be very exclusive list…
I’ve had a website up for months, chock full of content and havent even broken $80. Can’t get google to index my site.
http://www.wikistock.com
How about Joel Comm and other gurus? They don’t get to the top 8?
These people are good at what they do. Simple as that. Its just like anything else. I’m sure they have spent countless hours producing content, coding, and optimizing. You get what you put in.
Dustin Jones
http://pafamilylaw.net
http://djonesy21.blogspot.com
all I can say is
Wow!
It would be interesting to see how much PROFIT these people make. For example, Jason Calacanis has to pay all of his bloggers. As somebody who often gets cash for posting on tech-recipes, I know that can be expensive!
This fact makes PlentyOfFish even more impressive (no matter how slimey that site may seem).
ATB
Hey guys,
I’ll keep this anonymous, but I fall in (easily) between numbers 5 and 6.
Your list is extremely incomplete - there are a lot more people like me.
Good article, even if it isn’t complete. I know Steve Pavlina and the guy from Problogger.net (Darren Rowse) should have made this list.
Wow, great list keep up the good work .
Internet’s biggest google whores
Sorry for the provocative subject but that is what this blogger put it as his title.
As I am waiting for Google to send me my 2nd cheque, the current earnings of this blog is dropping quite steep. Guess Siti Nurhaliza’s brouhaha is *really* over …
Very nice list, thanks for sharing.
The eternal verity of the Formular C.O.T.I. is what they are all using to stupefy the web audience. That formular would work for anyone that stritcly follows the its principles.
For your infomation, COTI means: CONTENT+OPTIMIZATION+TRAFFIC=INCOME
Congrats to the leaders and fore-runners.
@Marc Echols,
Joel Comm is on #7 spot and am proud he is my mentor.
@kay,
you’re very correst, the list is by no means comprehensive. Earning $5,000 to $10,000 per month is fast becoming the average for many expert publishers. I would not be surprised if over 200+ publishers are in this bracket.
Sharon of dogbreedinfo(dot)com was also a case study used by http://google.com/adsense, she is above the 25,000 dollar income solely from one site!
@Karn Griffen and Robert,
don’t despair, visit the expert sites that John Chow listed for us here and see how the gurus lay-out and optimized their adsense blocks.
Secondly, you have no right to complain yet until your traffic is significant. Can’t you see the terrific traffic and page views that the gurus’ sites magnetised? You can’t have that level of traffic and not experience an explosion in your adsense income.
I don’t think that 10 000 $ is a lot of money, I think that the list needs to be completed, good job thinks
Well — I like to know who hosted all this good stuff. Goodness, templates from various sources, Google doesn’t like my code, I can’t get it to fit things. Meanwhile — these guys are my new Gods. I think a lot of people are scrambling.
Adler
I know 10 people off the top of my head that would be top 5 on that list.
My little $10,000ish (heh) a month isn’t really anything in the big picture. I certainly don’t put up sites for AdSense. It’s more like, “Gee, I have an existing page that I guess I could put AdSense on it.” I wouldn’t change anything I do (at all) if AdSense was terminated tomorrow.
Now if I could just be a AdSense Premium publisher……..
Another article about biggest Adsense publishers: http://moneygeek.blogspot.com/2006/09/high-adsense-earners-and-their.html
Post about plentyoffish.com: http://moneygeek.blogspot.com/2006/08/plentyoffishcom-10000-per-day-and.html
i visted these sites that had links posted and supposedly make so much money. most of them are crap. its not the sites or the content, its the traffic. without the traffic, these sites are horse crap. seems like they find thier target and suck them in. works good.
Nice list. Too bad we don’t know how much the others make from this, “the ones in the shadows”. I could bet that many of these guys would leave your list if all the big earners would come out.
go work, you lazy bums
How can a cheque for $900,000 for two months earnings lead you to conclude that he earns $300,000 per month?
Actually, this is peanuts money. Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to be earning it, but if these are the TOP EARNING GUYS in their industry, then it’s a poor earning industry.
Most medium-sized investment banks would have a whole bunch of people earning more than any of these guys, for example.
I run my website from home, and I make on average $10,000 a month and I’m not even sure how I do it with my site!?
the real money makers stay in the shadows….
….shhhhh
That’s wonderful…. I’m not even sure if I am capable of doing something like that for myself….
Great post!
I wonder how many of these people declare it to the tax man
I seem to make anywhere between $1 and $10 a day. Its really variable, but at least it pays my hosting.
Great post John! I’ve had my site up for a little more than a year now and I’m finally getting my first $100.00 check from Google! I like to read about others making it big with Adsense, it keeps me going. We need all the $$$ we can earn to keep the site up and running. Hosting costs alot!
Dawn
StepTalk.org - Where Stepparents Come to Vent
I’m in the same position as James above me at the moment! Hoping to expand everything over the next few months so that I can afford a dedicated server.
Nice compilation you got there, and damn what an amounts. Probably everybody here would wish they would be getting turned out the same amounts of Google, or hell even 1/10th of it :D. I guess the secret behind succes is not that easily to unravel though :P.