A Successful Google AdSense Story

For those of you who don't know Google AdSense:

is an ad serving program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image and, more recently, video advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on either a per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.
(Source: Wikipedia)

I use Google AdSense on both this site and my travel blog - Mad About Madrid. Though the revenue is small, it is still consistent and pays for the odd meal, book or DVD. I was interested though to read on the Guy Kawasaki blog about a contest that Google AdSense was running to find out how AdSense has helped them. Guy featured the winner of the contest Dan Vandervort and highlighted how his "home improvement, remodeling, repair, redecorating, and do-it-yourself projects" website (Hometips.com) went from:

paying for coffee to paying for lunches to paying for all salaries, overhead, and business development.

As Guy says in the article he did what many businesses seem to find impossible:

do what you love, focus on a niche, find a viable business model, and work for yourself.

It's quite interesting that the same model that generates revenue for Google works further down the 'long tail' for smaller businesses, too. In fact, it is people just like Dan who make Google what it is today and help generate the vast profits that Google and its shareholders enjoy.