Those pesky 1 page sites…
Exactly a year ago, I wrote a paragraph about a 1 page website which I monetised using Adsense.
1 page Adsense Site
In a couple of Forums there has been quite a lot of talk about “1 page Adsense Sites” - I only have 1 of these and it never requires updating so it is quite a nice AIS. That 1 site raised over $51 which is quite outstanding. It just needs more traffic!
In other words, that 1 page site, during May 2006 made me just over $51.
I still have that 1 page site!
I thought it might be interesting to see just how that 1 pager is doing on Adsense - I don't have any other monetisation on it at all. Logging into Adsense and doing a "view by channel" allows me to drill down and find out some interesting stats;
- Total for May 2007 - $42.92
- Highest Day since June 1st 2006 - $9.10
- Average Daily Income since June 1st 2006 - $2.07
So, no great shakes - but an average of $2.07 per day, for a 1 page informational website that take absolutely zero work to maintain is not so bad, eh?
But, hold on…
I noticed that traffic to the site increased 3-fold from May 2006 to May 2007. But my earnings actually decreased by $10 for the month of May. This tells me that one or more of the following is true;
- people have become more adsense blind
- adsense are paying out less per click
- somehting else entirely
I suppose I should really look at monetising the site in a different manner - perhaps by creating a product to sell on it. But then again, why not just let it carry on giving me a couple of bucks whilst I work on other stuff?
And they say that Adsense Is Dead. I say BS.
Adsense certainly isn't dead. It might have grown up a little, and become harder to use as a monetisation tool, but it's in no way any less useful than it always has been.
Have you got any 1 page websites? I have lots, but only this one uses Adsense.

Comment by SarahG — June 2, 2007 @ 10:17 am
I've tried a 1 page site. I gave it a reasonable design (reasonable considering I did it!), used an RSS feed to grab the news content and plugged some adsense blocks in. However it just wasn't pulling in the visitors anymore, which is annoying because I made more when it was a simple one page with contact details and one adblock along the top!
As for AdSense is dead - we've made over $100 on one site last month, so no complaints here!
Comment by James — June 7, 2007 @ 4:16 am
I've just never figured out anything good for just one page yet.
I do need to try this yet.
Comment by gary — June 7, 2007 @ 9:02 am
Sarah; it's all about the traffic. Fortunately my one-pager has quite a bit of traffic, though more would be better of course.
James; good for sales pages
But also for grabbing a RSS feed, mixing up the content a bit, a few paragraphs of self written text, having a list of links and adsense.
Comment by Mike — July 1, 2007 @ 9:06 pm
What promotion was done to the one page site?
Comment by Gary — July 1, 2007 @ 10:37 pm
Mike, precisely no ongoing promotion. Other than a link from one of my other sites.