Google Adsense | Jim Donovan's Blog

A Guaranteed Way to Derail Your Success

March 25th, 2008 by Jim Donovan

Several years ago I was listening to Google Adsense Guru, Joel Comm at one of Ken McArthur’s, JV Alert Live Events in Philadelphia.

By the way, If you don’t know about JV Alert Live, check it out. It’s the premium event for anyone interested in internet marketing and making money online. Ken brings together the best of the best and you have the opportunity to get to know these experts up close and personal.

It’s a great networking event and, as a matter of fact, I’ll be at the next one June 6th – 8th in Philadelphia, so if you can make it, be sure to stop by and say “Hello!”

Anyway, I was listening to Joel when he remarked how, as entrepreneurs, we tend to get distracted and “follow the new shiny object.”

I can hear some of you chuckling, as I did, because we know he’s right.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, and it’s quite natural for a creative person to want to explore new ideas, it can delay your success by distracting you from your primary purpose.

After listening to Joel talk about how you can make more money with Adsense for two hours, I found myself thinking “Great! I’ll put up a blog with ads and add it to my web pages. This way, I can start making money displaying ads from Google’s Adsense program.” After all, this is a valid business model which has worked for lots of people.

According to a recent article in Entrepreneur magazine, blogger John Chow earns in excess of $30,000 a month from his blog – no that’s not a typo!

So there I was following yet another new shiny object until fortunately, I caught myself and asked myself a powerful question:

“Will this action take me toward or away from my major goals?”

The answer was obvious. For me to run off chasing Adsense dollars would take me away from my mission: “To create and communicate information which will have a massive positive effect on people’s lives, empowering them to reach their full potential as human beings.”

This, by the way, is the purpose statement I created almost 20 years ago, a time when I was not doing the work I am now doing. As I’ve said before, it all starts with the vision of what you want.

I did however, find a reasonable compromise. After learning the basics from Joel’s book “The Adsense Code,” I added Google Adsense to my article pages and blog, as well as, our Himalayan cat website, which was just sitting there. Am I getting rich from it?

No. But I receive unexpected amounts of money regularly, which I totally enjoy spending:-)

On the other hand, if you’re newly in business or looking for an online business model to use, by all means, investigate Adsense, Kontera, and other pay-per-click (PPC) programs as a part of your business plan.

If you have my new book, Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck, beginning on page 68 you can learn more about how to get started with this.

If you don’t already have a copy, get one now and start learning how you can increase your income immediately.

However, if you already know your primary mission, are running your own business and are moving toward your goals, don’t let the shiny new objects derail your success.