Hi,

we started last month with Google Adsense. About a year ago we published a Halloween (http://halloween.jigetiser.com) site with free stuff, like wallpapers and printable posters. About 9 month later we got a higher position at image search of Google (http://images.google.com/images?hl=de&q=halloween) and AOL (http://search.aol.com/aolcom/image?i...y= halloween). After some server outages we realized that the traffic came from these search engines. Meanwhile, we conquered the top 10. At AOL the first nine, at Google the first two (althouth it seems to us that Google only allows two images from the same source ;-)). After some optimizations and a server change, there was time to think about Google Adsense. A first implementation is done. The growth is exponential, but the cash result is still "small".

It seems to us that offering free content and adding Google Adsense is a good combination to make money. We transfer the Halloween idea to Xmas (http://xmas.jigetiser.com) at the moment. There are some ideas in the pipe, too. Having a look at the numbers it is already clear that everything depends on the traffic we get. This is the weakest point in our new model. After Halloween, the traffic from Google will slow down pretty soon. It will maybe higher next year. But, what can we do in the meantime?

Some ideas:

* Blogs with Google Adsense (http://blog.eschen.name, http://blog.rainer.eschen.name, http://blog.silvia.eschen.name)
* Seasonal-independent content (e.g. European Graffiti Collection)
* Free tools (e.g. client-side search engine creator, based on our Webetiser (http://www.webetiser.com))

Any comments?

Silvia I think I answered this on another forum where we both post, but I'll answer again and maybe have some new ideas today. I do think the idea of adding more sites for different holidays can work well since you are finding the sites do well around the holiday and then naturally drop off after.

It would allow you to continue to collect a certain amount of passive income from these sites year round, while only needing to really focus on each for shorter periods right before the holiday.

I think some experimenting with the add placements, etc can help improve things, but I agree most of the money will depend on the traffic you get. While a Christmas site will obviously draw most traffic in the month before Christmas it should still draw traffic at other times. That's why the idea of the different holiday site would be a good one in my opinion. You could have a site for a variety of holidays each drawing traffic during a month of the year and still pulling in a passive income the rest of the year. That passive income might not be a lot for each site, but it could add up to something significant with all of them.

I think as you grow each site the pages will naturally start attracting more traffic overall to each site and more traffic should lead to more clicks and more revenue.

You should be able to add pages around long tail search phrases.

Have you tried adding affiliate products at all to the sites? That might be another way to raise revenue. If the traffic gets large enough you might even be able to sell advertising around each holiday too.