I am Girish, and I started creating websites using HTML, JavaScript, etc., joining different ad networks and displaying their ads with the content of my websites in the year 1999, when I was in university for my graduation and post-graduation. My first website was dedicated to displaying job vacancies. I bought a domain name and a USA-based server for hosting the website.
I remember perfectly that the website performed well and was able to attract many visitors. With the growth in the number of visitors, I started earning online a little bit through the Google AdSense platform’s delivered ads. Slowly, due to growing traffic loads on my website, the American-based server company started informing me to upgrade the server or the website would be frequently offline, meaning no one could find my website. And it started to happen.
I also became tired of copying the content of other websites and pasting it onto my own. I wished to do something original. However, with time, I learned that the main reason for getting high traffic on my first website was because of its service-provider nature. Everyone searches for job vacancies—did in the past, does in the present, and will do in the future.
One day, the American-based server company suddenly closed my website, citing high visitor numbers. Also, the Google AdSense platform canceled my account, stating high numbers of clicks on the displayed ads. Sometimes, I was afraid of these high numbers of visitors and clicks, which could get my website shut down—and at last, it happened.
Learning from the Experience
During this period, I joined and worked with many ad networks to display their ads, but I found the best was AdSense due to its simplicity for ad code integration with website HTML, as well as monitoring performance reports and monthly earnings transfers to the bank.
Moreover, with this experience, I learned how to create websites, what HTML is, how to work with JavaScript, CSS, etc. I do not have an education in information technology, so all of this was new to me. But my engagement in solving problems on a daily basis helped me understand these IT tools and how to apply them for converting ideas into earnings.
At that time, I was paying $10 for a domain name and $30 for website hosting each year. As time passed, I started thinking about what to do next with my wish to continue online endeavors. From my first experience, I made a strategy to make a new website but display my own original content and look for ways to avoid the total cost of $40 per year.
Reducing Website Hosting Costs
I started to investigate and found that it is unavoidable to pay $10 for a domain name, but I could avoid the $30 hosting fee. I applied this strategy and still do. I have several domain names registered but hosted on Google Blogspot servers.
Currently, I pay the cost of my many domain names, but not for website hosting. The total cost of domain names is still a good amount of money. With this strategy, I developed many websites: www.Latestfoto.com, www.immigrationopportunity.com, www.freetraveltours.com, etc., and I write and post original content on all of them with ads provided by different ad networks under partnerships and affiliate agreements.
You can visit my websites to look at those ads and identify which ad network has been used to deliver each one. So far, two goals have been fulfilled: reducing website creation-related costs and publishing original content.
The New Challenge: Getting Visitors
Now, I have a new challenge: how to bring visitors to my websites. By comparing visitor data from Blogspot statistics, Google Analytics, and AdSense reports, I understood once again that service-related content is essential. Otherwise, no one will visit my original content, even though it is well-written and informative.
In today’s advanced lifestyle, people want solutions to their problems and spend time on content that serves this purpose. For example, people engage more in entertainment-related content because they want to escape their daily problems—family, social, professional, or health-related—if only for a few minutes.
It became my focus to write original content that includes something helpful for visitors. This is a point on which I am still working, thinking, and applying different strategies.
Applying SEO: A Turning Point
Whenever I searched online for how to increase the number of visitors, the common recommendation was to apply SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I decided to try SEO, but I had no idea what to do. With time and experience, I learned that SEO involves organizing your content with headings (h1, h2, h3, etc.), bullet points, etc., using HTML.
In Blogspot, h1 is built-in for the title, so I use h2, h3, h4, etc., for my content. Then, I find and incorporate keywords—trending keywords, long-tail keywords, specific keywords, low-demand and high-demand keywords—into my original content. I also write these keywords as labels for my web pages.
Next, I write a 145–150 word meta description that includes keywords. I create SEO URLs by including keywords in the permanent URL of the webpage. So, it's not just about writing and posting original content—SEO requires doing all this every time.
And I see the impact: thanks to SEO, my websites now receive more visitors.
Next Problem: No Earnings Despite Traffic
But now, I face another challenge: there are no earnings. What should I do? This is where my next journey begins: Turn website visitors into leads.
If I don’t know where to display ads on my websites, they will fail to generate revenue, and I’ll continue paying domain name costs from my pocket. Now, the domain registrar has increased the yearly price to $17 per domain.
Failed Strategies and Lessons
I’ve read different recommendations online, but in my case, most didn’t work.
Email marketing: This didn’t work for me, even though I have more than 10k emails. I made newsletters and sent them out, but Gmail can easily detect bulk emails—even if sent to a few recipients—and mark them as spam. I gave up on this option because, like many others, I ignore most marketing emails myself.
Guest posting: I’ve never done it. I don’t know where to post guest articles. Big websites often require minimum word counts, original content, verified sources, and still reserve the right to reject submissions because they receive too many.
Sharing: This strategy also does not work for me. One common recommendation I read on other websites is to share the weblinks of my articles on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. (YouTube and Instagram don’t allow direct sharing of links in the same way.) The idea is to share links through Facebook chats, Instagram chats, or other social media messaging apps, create groups on WhatsApp with social contacts registered in mobile phone including friends and family, make dedicated pages on Facebook and Twitter, invite my contacts to subscribe, and then share links regularly.
However, this approach did not work for me. People, including friends and family, might click on the links a few times initially, but eventually, they stop clicking and lose interest in reading the articles.
Doing Comments: Commenting on other websites and including weblinks to my own websites didn’t work for me, even though I tried many times. There was no real growth in visitor numbers. I understand why — I’ve also received notifications to moderate comments when someone writes on a webpage and includes a weblink. Many of those comments get flagged as SPAM by Blogspot’s servers. I usually don’t take action (accept or reject) when I see a weblink in the comment. I’m sure other website owners do the same with my comments containing my weblinks, so no visitors get redirected to my sites. So, this method just doesn’t work.
AdManager: I have more than 10,000 webpages across my websites and many agreements with different ad networks to display ads. These ads come in several formats — click-based, call-to-action based, impression-based, and more. I write articles and insert ad codes continuously, but after months or years, sometimes an ad network informs me that the agreement has been terminated, and I must remove all their ad codes since they won’t pay for any revenue generated after termination.
Some networks stop delivering ads immediately, but most continue showing their ads on my websites, even after the agreement ends. Removing ad codes from 10,000 webpages manually is nearly impossible. For years, I wanted to create a centralized AdManager to control ads from different networks across my sites. That way, if a network ends an agreement, I could quickly replace their ads with another network’s ads.
Finally, after many days of hard work and research, I succeeded in developing my own AdManager. One more problem solved!
Bounce Rate: I can easily find the bounce rate of visitors on my websites through Google Analytics. Earlier, I thought this data was not very important. But now I realize it is crucial if I want to turn my websites into leads. The bounce rate tells me how many people visit my websites but leave immediately without spending any time because they don’t find the site interesting at first glance.
Now the question is: how can I collect email addresses, phone numbers, or other contact information that allows me to reach out to these visitors and invite them to return? This is the key to turning visitors into leads.
Conclusion: The Ongoing Mission
Although SEO is working and bringing in traffic, I now need to learn how to turn website visitors into leads. This must be solved to generate earnings, sustain my domains, and grow online.
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