This is my first short article contribution here, as a piece of advice to those Malaysia webmaster that are starting out. Feel free to disagree with me or give me any comment.

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To Webmaster Beginner: Focus on Adsense and you are doomed!

I have noticed several (or should I say MOST) of the webmasters that start out their journey of making a fortune from the internet, putting too much focus on google adsense. Especially here in Webmaster Malaysia Forum. A lot of questions were asked regarding adsense such as:
"Why the Ads are not showing?"
"How should I integrate the Ads better?"
"How much can I earn using Adsense?".

Don't get me wrong. Those are GOOD questions, but only if they already have built a GOOD content site with STEADY visitors. In other words, the webmasters have to FOCUS on building a good website first, have a steady visitors, before they come to the adsense questions.

Yes, what I'm trying to say is, don't obsess with Google Adsense. It is the best contextual advertising program and made many of the webmaster rich. But, you are not going to be one of them if you don't build a good website first. If you put too much emphasize on monetizing, you will stare at a site like an empty shelf for months, check your stats few hundreds time already, while the clicks are few dollars at its best.

So, shift your focus when you just starting out. A few important questions you should ask yourself is:
"What value can I provide to my visitors?"
"How can I sustain those visitors so that they can visit my site again?"
"How can I reach my target visitors?"
"What make my site unique?"

Answer those question and you will lay down the groundwork of a good website.

This formula works for me. When I first started out http://chinesemusicblog.com a year ago, I simply have this intention to introduce chinese music to the rest of the world. I do not want to strike rich doing this website. I do not forecast the visitors I would get, and set the earning target each month. I do not try to sell anything to the visitors. I simply try to create value for them. Till date, the site has over 50,000 uniques visitors a month, and I built on a community of 1200 more members. Asks other webmasters that have a great website and he will tell you the same thing (example, Alang with his great osx-e.com website).

Another important point is finding your own voice.Ask yourself, "What do you really love to do?" "What is your expertise?" "Can I continue do this consistently for the next 2,3 years?" Because for a website to reach a highway, it takes at least 10 months to few years. If you don't love what you are doing, you won't last it for a long time.

So to sum it out, it is important not to focus on monetizing when you first starting out. Instead, focus on finding out how to provide value to your visitors and finding your own voice. I hope this post will help you kick start your webmaster journey and build a great website. Good luck.

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Read the Rules

yah its true, its true

I'd made the same mistake before, too much focus on adsense, less on content, being hit by smart pricing and visitors run away at the same time. And you need to know that there are life after adsense, so you don't have to worry if adsense does not doing well on your site/blog, there are always hundreds of ways to monetize from your site/blog, you just need to be little creative and learn from other successful websites.

Just to echo Google's advise to webmasters:

"Build for visitors, others will follow". Food for thought.

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a very very good advise...

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Malaysia's Best Web Hosting

great stuff!
with all the adsense hype right now, i guess a lot of people will be doomed.

It's better not to implement adsense first and to let the site ride the tides of world wide web for a few month. gain visitors, get indexed, get pageranked.

That is, my dua posen.

Speaking like a true master. Totally agree.

I think it's fine to implement adsense. Just don't be too focus/obsess on it.

Guess it's a clever move to follow google's advice huh?
"Build for adsense/money, none will follow" hehe, that's mine.

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Read the Rules