Les Kenny was around 50 years old when he first used a computer. BuildEazy was his first website, designed to show people how to make everyday things out of wood. Every BuildEazy project, whether it’s a guinea pig hutch or a picnic table, comes with detailed plans, material lists, tool lists and step-by-step instructions, so anyone can give it a try.

What began as a hobby soon became a source of income as Les began dabbling with AdSense on the site. By experimenting with the position of ads, he went from earning a few dollars a day to a steady income.

Eventually Les was able to give up his day job as a building contractor and host BuildEazy full time, giving him the freedom to do what he loves (and hang out with the grandkids). He’s still authoring projects and BuildEazy is going from strength to strength.

Almost two million people are using AdSense right now. Learn more about how to start turning your passion into profit today.

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Posted by Stacey Garcia

AdSense Marketing Manager

When it was created in 2011, French company digiSchool was a pioneer by offering free teaching content for which users would otherwise have had to pay. They were growing rapidly. However, they had to make an important decision to grow even further: mobile site or mobile app?

After extensive user testing, digiSchool noticed that mobile apps were best for delivering content like quizzes, lessons, and videos, but a mobile site was better for reading the news. “Depending on the device, a user needs very specific interfaces. We had to figure out whether content worked best on a mobile site or an app.”,  Thierry, co-founder of digiSchool, explains.

They decided to build a mobile site with Responsive Web Design (RWD) to meet their visitors’ needs. This has been key to the success of digiSchool’s mobile site. It has proven to be a scalable, complete solution that doesn't require changes across multiple sites, and has enabled digiSchool’s mobile site to evolve rapidly.

Discover how digiSchool decided to go mobile and how they became a market leader for digital education in France. To learn how you too can provide a great site experience for all of your users, don’t forget to check out our Multi-Screen Starter Guide.

Posted by Anne Goldmann
AdSense Account Manager

Nursingcrib.com provides extra study materials for student nurses, an idea that came to Michelle Bartolome in 2007 when she got frustrated with textbooks and in-person lessons. She and her husband, Deric, thought the Internet must have a better solution, and it did. The Bartolomes created Nursingcrib.com, implemented AdSense, and today the site receives visitors from across the globe. With the ad revenue from Nursingcrib, Deric and Michelle have been able to build their dream home, support their family, and work full time on their website. We asked them to share their tips for other entrepreneurs.

How they got started:

Michelle: The concept of Nursingcrib.com came from me. I happened to take up Nursing as a second course from 2004 to 2006. At that time, Nursing was an in-demand course. Almost 90% of college students were taking it up. First, I just wanted to have a blog where I could share my notes with other aspiring nurses like me. I uploaded several care plans, modules, and diagrams, and instantly it became a hit. It became even more popular when I published the names of nursing board passers, which happens twice a year.



What were their main challenges:

Michelle: It was back in November 2007 when we first hit the $100 minimum AdSense payout. Deric and I were so happy because the dream of having another source of income opened up. By 2008, we were earning enough so that Deric could quit his call center job and go full time with our websites. People thought we were unemployed because we were always at home in front of the computer. They said we could not do it because we were young. They said it was impossible because we were not working abroad. Well, all I can say is that they were all wrong.

How to push through obstacles:

Deric: The biggest challenge was getting the site recognized. At first, I thought it would be easy. But with the Internet being so big, you have to compete with established websites. Learning how to market our new site was the key to overcome every obstacle that came our way. Online business requires fewer people, but it’s still not easy. The main lesson we've learned is that success doesn't happen overnight, it takes time and effort to build your dreams.

Posted by Michelle and Deric Bartolome, co-founders of Nursingcrib.com

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Lewis Sandbeck founded ThriftyFun.com in 1999 as a community for people who seek creative and cost-saving household projects.  With the help of AdSense, it grew into a full-time job for his brother, mother, and him.

When the Sandbecks noticed that 40% of their users were actually using mobile devices, they decided to redesign their site using responsive web design. With the help of Google’s multi-screen resources, they began designing “for the smallest screen first” with added experiences for desktop users.

Today, ThriftyFun.com works for users on all devices.  Lewis notes that “we’re seeing mobile users actually visit more pages thanks to the new design”. Watch the video to learn why ThriftyFun.com decided to go mobile.

To learn how you too can provide a great site experience for all of your users, follow our multi-screen starter guide.

Posted by Hye In Kim,  Multi-Screen Specialist
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Welcome to the third part of ‘Paired for success’, a blog series dedicated to the stories of publishers and Certified Partners who have joined forces to get the most out of Google AdSense.    

With 1.5 million terms, kotobank allows users to look up words in over 100 dictionaries at the same time. With such range of content categories, this online service started using AdSense in 2012 to target its users with the advertising they want to see.

Mr Kazuyuki Uchiyama, kotobank Business Development Manager

But kotobank soon felt they couldn’t stay up-to-date with all the changes in the advertising world and sought advice from adingo, a Google AdSense Certified Partner based in Tokyo. adingo quickly analyzed the potential of kotobank’s site, implemented some changes and monitored the effect on performance. This partnership soon led to positive results, with kotobank’s revenue growing by 200%. Now kotobank can focus on updating their site with the latest terminology, trusting that adingo will take care of their AdSense account.

Read the full story here.

Are you looking for a managed solution too? Find out what Google AdSense Certified Partners can do for your business or check out our partners worldwide.

Posted by Alicia Escriba, Inside AdSense team
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Welcome to the second part of ‘Paired for success’, a blog series dedicated to the stories of publishers and Certified Partners who have joined forces to get the most out of Google AdSense.    

When Dimitriy was getting ready for his move to Germany, he collected a range of learning materials about its language, culture and traditions. That’s why in 2010 he decided to share his knowledge with others and to set up De-online.ru, a portal with a wealth of useful information about all things German. Since the early days, Google AdSense has been part of De-online.ru growth.

De-online.ru is managed by a small team. It was this lack of in-house resources that led Dimitriy to approach YoulaMedia, an advertising agency and Google AdSense Certified Partner based in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

YoulaMedia quickly tackled Dimitriy’s challenge: increase De-Online.ru advertising earnings without impairing their users’ experience. This partnership exceeded Dimitriy’s expectations, and he can now invest more time in creating interesting, high-quality content.

Read the full story here.

Are you looking for a managed solution too? Find out what Google AdSense Certified Partners can do for your business or check out our partners worldwide.

Posted by Alicia Escriba, Inside AdSense team
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A few months ago we introduced the Google AdSense Certified Partner Program to connect publishers with recognized consultants who can help them make the most of their AdSense accounts. Since then, hundreds of publishers had their AdSense accounts set up, optimized and managed by these accredited businesses, freeing up their time to focus on creating great content. Over the next weeks, we’ll share with you some of these stories of shared success.

NetDoktor.de is a leading German health portal offering medical information explained in layman’s terms about diseases, symptoms, research and medications. They started using Google AdSense five years ago, but soon realised that they lacked the in-house expertise to make the best use of it.

It was then that they decided to approach Click Performance Group, a Google AdSense Certified Partner specializing in AdSense consulting. The partnership soon led to positive results, boosting NetDoktor.de’s revenue by 150% through account optimization and ongoing experiments.

NetDoktor.de can now focus on editorial tasks and their service offering, knowing that the management of their AdSense account is in good hands with a Google AdSense Certified Partner.

Read the full story here.

Are you looking for a managed solution too? Find out what Google AdSense Certified Partners can do for your business or check out our partners worldwide.

Posted by Alicia Escriba, Inside AdSense team
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Wondering which web design approach is best for mobile? Evan Britton of FamousBirthdays.com had the same question back in 2012. He looked to Google to help develop a mobile strategy for his website, deciding on responsive web design (RWD) as the best solution for his needs.

Evan chose RWD for a host of reasons, especially as it meant the site would adjust to fit various screen sizes, giving users a positive experience regardless of what device they visited from. Additionally, he liked that RWD is low maintenance once implemented, allowing him and his team to focus on growing the site.

Before implementing RWD, FamousBirthdays.com received around 100,000 mobile visits a month. After implementing a mobile-optimized site, this number grew to over 2 million. Evan believes that “the potential in the mobile space to grow ad revenue is huge”, and attributes this twenty-fold mobile growth to better user experience after implementing RWD. Today, the site employs a team of twelve to manage their fast growth. Evan claims, “without RWD, we would not have been able to grow as quickly.”

Read the full story, and hear from other publishers who have successfully adopted a multi-screen strategy, over in our Help Center.

Elise Thygesen, AdSense Multi-screen Specialist
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We’re fast approaching the biggest sporting event of the year and are excited to see which team will triumph. As World Cup fever takes hold, online activities are set to increase and you could potentially reach more users and advertisers as a result. We’ve created a five-part blog series that will run every day this week. The series will focus on how to make the most of this exciting seasonal event. We’ll look closely at how World Cup events can help benefit sports, news and travel sites.However the tips we’ll cover are universal and apply to most sites and sporting events.

To get us into the World Cup spirit, let’s drop by Italy to meet the team behind NapoliSoccer.net and get inspired. Created in 2004 as an online community, NapoliSoccer.net has grown as an online community. The site has even opened a cultural association and started a newspaper over the past few years. “It’s a completely non-profit project” says Sergio Massimo, one of the managers of the website.

“Now NapoliSoccer.net has about 25,000 page views a day and 12 people dedicated to writing content, creating press reports and managing relations with local radio and TV,” Sergio continues.

From 2005, NapoliSoccer began using Google solutions. "The role that AdSense plays is very important” says Sergio “since it allows us to cover more than a half of our costs. Moreover, 70% of our total revenue comes from AdSense."

"We started to use AdSense to secure revenue to cover the costs of our non-profit activities. AdSense was a natural choice that gave us a guarantee to keep our project alive."

Sergio explained that the ads are relevant and that when he doesn’t want to show certain types of ads, he uses the features available in the Ad review center.

"We are using a range of other Google products” Sergio tells us ”including Gmail, which is used by all of our copywriters. Fans can also follow us on our YouTube channel and on Google+. And Google Drive is very useful for sharing documents."

Sergio concludes by telling us that his on-going plans for the site include more integration with social media and launching a mobile app.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow where we’ll take a closer look at content creation and promotion.

Posted by Marta Lysiak - Inside AdSense Team
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Time sure does fly - we’ve now reached the end of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series. Thanks for following the series and for sharing your own stories. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher and check back soon for more publisher stories.

Total Race was created by five friends and racing enthusiasts. Covering Formula 1, stock car racing and IndyCar, the site receives 135,000 monthly visitors and employs a team of 15 editors and reporters.

Total Race partners, Ivan and Erick, were already familiar with Google AdSense and using it as a monetization solution for their other web projects. The decision to also choose it for totalrace.com.br was an easy one says Erick and today “AdSense earnings represent around 70% of our total advertising income”.

(Don’t forget to enable english captions using the Captions button under the YouTube video)

The team also partnered with DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business to manage their advertising and save them time. Erick is pleased with this decision stating “the process from start to finish is very fast and easy to use. I’d highly recommend this tool for publishers seeking more detail and control of their advertising campaigns”.

According to Erick, these products have been fundamental in the growth of the site. With the structure they bring, he’s ready to focus further on taking his passion for racing to an even wider audience.

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Raffaele Brogna is the creator of Ioleggoletichetta.it. Meaning ‘I read the label’ in english, the site is dedicated to consumer awareness and protection offering advice on how to get the right information from product labels and tips on saving money when shopping. As a social crowdsourcing project, the site has a large community following who regularly contribute and report on their own experiences and findings as consumers.

Alongside his wife, Raffaele looks after the day-to day operations as well as the broader strategy for the site. They decided to use AdSense at the outset to help cover running costs and considered the prompt payments offered by AdSense as a key influencer in their decision. They were quickly pleased with the results, in particular with the relevance of the ads displayed.

They also use Google Analytics to help identify the best placements for their ad units and to check on their overall ad unit performance. Today, revenue from Google AdSense covers the costs of running this project online. Looking ahead, Raffaele will continue partnering with Google AdSense to go even further in his quest to give Italian consumers the information they need to make informed decisions when shopping.

Posted by Suzy Headon - Inside AdSense Team

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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Quehoroscopo.com, a leading Spanish horoscope and astrology site, was set up by Hugo Conde in 2007. Hugo is based out of Madrid and works with a team of tarot professionals, editors and designers to provide daily content to their many users.

Soon after launching, Hugo started looking for a simple and easy-to-use solution to generate income from his site that would allow him to continue focusing on creating new content and a positive user experience. Fast forward to today and AdSense represents 90% of total advertising revenue for Quehoroscopo.com.

To make sure Quehoroscopo.com is performing to its full potential, Hugo has tested a number of ad formats to find the best fit for his page. He also uses Google Analytics to understand what content performs best on the site.

Looking ahead, Hugo plans to grow his audience with new platforms including mobile.

Read the full story.

Posted by Suzy Headon - Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Four years ago, Roberto Andre Diaz co-founded maestrodelacomputacion.net for the Columbian tech community. Today, the site receives over 150,000 visitors every month and the family business has grown to cover seven other sites. 

The team chose to partner with Google AdSense from the very beginning. In Roberto’s opinion, there was “no other ad network that could compare to AdSense in terms of performance, ad quality, monetization opportunity and dynamic ad formats."

(Don’t forget to enable english captions using the Captions button under the YouTube video)

Right now, AdSense represents 95% of their advertising earnings. According to Roberto, the impact from AdSense goes beyond revenue alone: "AdSense has paid our college fees and moreover has allowed us to travel to lots of fascinating places and meet people from around the world."

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Cape Town-based site memeburn.com is focused on technology and innovation coming out of emerging markets. The site receives over 350,000 unique visits each month and together with a number of sister-sites (including Gearburn, Ventureburn and Memejobs) employs a team of 28.

As the site’s revenue comes from many different online advertising streams, memeburn began using DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business to manages each source through one accessible tool. They also monetize their non-guaranteed inventory with AdSense, which is integrated with DFP. Owner Matthew Buckland tells us that this integration “provides a constant, reliable revenue stream”, with approximately 93% of the company’s ad impressions being served through DFP at any given time.

Given memeburn’s readers are broadly dispersed across the world, the dynamic allocation feature in DFP also helps them ensure the ads on their site are relevant to each local market. In addition to using DFP with AdSense for their desktop site, memeburn is partnering with Google in the expansion of their mobile presence, using AdSense exclusively on their mobile site.

Memeburn continues to focus on their existing sites as well as looking to expand their platforms with further sites in the future. They plan to continue partnering with DFP and AdSense to fuel future success. Matthew concludes that “in an era where there is so much digital noise, AdSense provides useful, relevant, quality content. You can’t put a price on that.”

Read the full story.

Posted by Suzy Headon - Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Tecamachalco.net, a news portal and business directory, was founded in 2004 by Jorge Eustaquio. The site covers news, history, sports and culture from Tecamachalco, a city in the south-east of Mexico. Today, the site employs two people in addition to Jorge.

Jorge read about AdSense in a blog and decided to test the monetization solution. "I liked the idea of not only having local advertisers from Tecamachalco, but also from other regions in Mexico as well as internationally," he says. The revenue generated since beginning with AdSense has played a key part in enabling him to invest in similar projects for other towns in Mexico.

Using combined AdSense and Google Analytics reports, Jorge was surprised to learn that almost 40% of his audience currently come from users located in other countries. He plans to continue with AdSense, as his earnings have allowed him “to invest in new projects and take on more staff when necessary."

Read the full story.

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. We’re half-way through the series but still have lots more stories to come from South Africa to Italy to Brazil -- stay tuned! Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Tsuyoshi Doh founded Amo Italia in 2004 after moving to Italy and discovering his passion for the country. The site, which is one of the largest online travel guides for Italy in Japan, offers its users a wealth of information on tourist attractions, local restaurants and things to do across the country. 

Not long after he created the site, Tsuyoshi began using AdSense initially just as a way for him to make sure he’d keep adding new content. However, as more users visited his site, he was pleased to see his AdSense revenue increase to the point that it was funding his travel all over Italy to compile new articles and travel information for visitors to his site.

Today, AdSense is a dependable source of income for Tsuyoshi and a key part of the success of Amo Italia. In addition to providing revenue to fund further research trips, AdSense ads have themselves become useful sources of information for visitors to the site. As Tsuyoshi says, “AdSense can offer relevant ads for my website such as hotels, tours and flights and I’m happy that the ads can provide additional 

information for visitors.”

Throughout it all, Tsuyoshi has always made sure he keeps a firm focus on providing great content for visitors to Amo Italia. His advice to those thinking about launching a new site - “create a site that’s really enjoyable and has plenty of useful content”.

Read the full story.

Posted by Natsuko Takagawa - Inside AdSense Team

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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Biologist Karlla Patrícia created Diariodebiologia.com in 2007 to teach science and biology to readers without using complicated terms and explanations. Today, the site receives 840,000 visitors monthly and has over 800 posts. 

When Karlla began searching for a monetization solution for her site, she decided to go with Google AdSense. "The possibility of partnering with a company like Google, that gives relevant advertising to my users, interested me a lot,” says Patrícia. “I was also very attracted to the low investment and low risk combined with the potential for income generation."

Using performance reports in her AdSense account, Patrícia discovered that the medium rectangle (300x250) and wide skyscraper (160x600) sizes perform best on her site. Moreover, after following optimization tips from the AdSense team, Diário de Biologia saw a 200% increase in revenue.

For Patrícia, AdSense has proven to be an excellent way to earn from her site. Looking ahead, she plans to continue investing in new ways to grow her audience, a key component for the future success of her site. 

Read Patrícia’s full story here.

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Inside AdSense Team

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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every week we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. We posting our next publisher story a couple of days early to celebrate Valentine’s Day! Read on to meet Gerald and Janice, the husband and wife team behind Istorya.net. As always, feel free to share your own success story with us.

Gerald Yuvallos and his wife Janice run Istorya.net, the biggest online community in the Southern Philippines. Istorya.net was started in 2002 by the couple who are based in Cebu City, as a virtual place for local users to talk. In Cebuano, their local language, ‘istorya’ means ‘talk’ or ‘story’.

Today, Istorya.net receives over 700,000 unique visitors every month and acts as a virtual ‘home away from home’ for Filipinos all over the world. According to Gerald and Janice, "AdSense has been our main revenue stream. It’s probably the only reason we’ve stayed online.”

“The revenue that we get from AdSense has allowed us to upgrade our servers and software,” the couple affirms. “This in turn, makes our community better. Without AdSense, we wouldn’t have been able to support growth of our site.”

DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) Small Business has also been an essential tool in supporting the site’s success. “All I can say is that the integration of AdSense with DFP is heaven-sent!” says Gerald. “This integration is our favourite feature as it is now much easier for us to manage our inventory.”

Looking ahead, Gerald and Janice plan to continue improving the user experience on their site, and investigate the possibility of launching a mobile-friendly version of Istorya.net. 

Posted by Catherine Candano - Inside AdSense Team
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As part of our ‘20(14) Publisher Stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Six years ago Pablo Rabino created Pintomicasa, a blog about home painting and decoration. Over 150,000 monthly visitors look to Pablo’s site for advice, tips and ideas on decorating their home.  

Pintomicasa have been using Google AdSense from the very beginning to monetize their content, with Pablo estimating that today approximately “80% of the blog’s earnings come from AdSense”. Pablo attributes this factor to the quality and relevance of the ads run on his site through AdSense. 

Additionally, "the site’s page views and subsequently it’s revenue have greatly increased thanks to the integrated AdSense reports and insights from Google Analytics" says the blog creator. With Analytics, Pablo knows where his visitors are coming from, and with this information, he has created a mobile-optimized site for those viewing his blog from a tablet or smartphone. 

Looking ahead, Pablo is eager to continuing optimizing this site with AdSense while continuing to invest his time into creating quality content for his blog viewers.

Read the full story here.

Posted by Barbara Sarti - Inside AdSense Team

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As part of our ‘20(14) publisher stories’ blog series, every Monday we’ll introduce you to a publisher and share their success story. Read on to meet this week’s featured publisher, and feel free to share your own success story with us.

Mobile88.com is one of Malaysia’s leading mobile portals, dedicated to covering  and reviewing mobile hardware and software, including content and virtual goods media. The site also provides up-to-date news on the latest developments in mobile technology.

Launched in 2004, Mobile88.com now boasts over one million unique visitors a month and has 20 employees based in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. Alongside its flagship site, Mobile88 currently has three regional websites, with another one set to go live in September 2013, and two more sites covering lifestyle, technology and gaming.

Gerald Lim, CEO of Mobile88.com, tells the story of how the company began its relationship with AdSense. “We looked at what other sites were doing to monetize and what were the most effective networks. AdSense provided the easiest way for us to get started. It was flexible, completely self-service and we could manage ads ourselves.” 

Over the years, as the relevance and quality of ads has continued to improve, Mobile88.com’s relationship with AdSense has grown stronger, as has the company’s partnership with Google. Alongside AdSense, Mobile88.com uses DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) to control how ads are served, Google Analytics to track and analyze performance and Webmaster Tools for site optimization.

Mobile88.com is continuing to expand into areas like digital content, virtual goods and rich media such as console-quality games via the cloud. Meanwhile, AdSense revenue is still helping to fuel growth. As Gerald explains, “Since the beginning, AdSense has provided a very stable and consistent income. Even today, our AdSense revenue is continuing to grow.”

Read the full story.

Posted by Valentin Cornez - Inside AdSense Team

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