To speak for myself, I visited his site because I actually liked some small portion of his articles, like How to become an early riser, Polyphasic sleep series, article about online forums addiction, etc. Those are things lots of people finds interesting, but not many info can be found online about it. Basically, I don’t see any trick there - he just writes originally about popular topics, so the huge volume of traffic makes those money.

He writes long articles. Much longer than most bloggers. That makes the Adsense ads much for accurate. They are exactly the same theme as the text.

He also writes stuff that people don’t find elsewhere, making them come back. And e-mail friends etc.

Actually it has nothing to do with the length of the article, but more about traffic. The bottom line is simple as that!

If you are interested here´s an post about my last year of Adsesnse My Year 2005.

But how did he get to those traffic levels? I tend to agree with Quirkyalone and Oyvind on this one: unique/interesting content that caters to a guru-hungy market. Once you have a captive market, any material you post, good or bad, will be interesting.

nico, I know that the length of the articles has nothing to do with how much he earns. My point was that many, many bloggers write small posts, with few words, and not much to remember. Steve writes long, well-thought articles, and backs them up with examples etc. Like his articles on sleep, he actually tries it. And post regular updates. That will of course make people to come back and also e-mail others links to his site.

Also, it’s no secret that longer articles will give Google more “to work on”, than very short ones. Making the targeted ads better and more according to the content in the article. Which make more people click his ads, giving him a higher CTR.

I really think that good articles draws people in, just think of the likes of the BBC and Guardian.
Of course a single writer can’t turn out the same number of articles as them, but in their focussed speciality it’s not impossible to build up a reputation.
Also don’t underestimate the importance of the location of ad blocks.
When people get to the bottom of a piece they are looking for somewhere else to go.
On this page for example, I wonder if you’ve experimented with the ads at the bottom of an article?
People are interested in reading at least the opening paragraphs of story so there is more chance they will zip past the ads at the top of the column.
There are also so many spam sites using this ‘technique’ that it reflects poorly on sites which are trying hard to produce good articles.

Steve Pavlina appeals to the ” I can do better than this ” desire that most ,if not all of us have within us .

Whilst I differ in his opinion on spirituality. I fully concur with his well written coherant opinion on self-discipline , time management and goal setting ……

His appeal is that he appeals to the masses, his is not a niche market ..

Well done to Steve ..I wish him contiued success

Rob

I think Google is great for little guys like me who have posted a LOT of content online but have seen very little revenue as a result. I began posting Google ads on my website this spring after reading numerous stories about all the money some people are making off Google. My experience hasn’t been anything to gloat about, and I’m not about to quit my day job, but the revenues are slowly building (about 10% a month) and I hope to see more as time goes on. It all seems to hinge on how many visitors a websites gets, and how many visitors click on ads. I’ve noticed my click through rate has slowly improved each month, going from 2 to 3 percent, up to about 6 percent. Apparently the Google ads become more relavant as time goes on.

How about this. Maybe Steve is not telling the truth? Why should we believe him just because he posts some pretty graphs on the internet?

I too could build a site with no traffic, post some pretty graphs claiming to be making $4,500 per month, then watch my traffic go ballistic as everbody swarms to get the lowdown on how it’s done. This is not to say what Steve is writing is wrong, I actually like his site, it does make one think, and it is original, thought out stuff, but that still does not mean he is making all that money from it. If I saw original bank statements confirming the amounts involved then I would believe, until then, I’ll take it all with a pinch of salt.

Not sure how he manages to get such a high adsense revenue, my website (see link) only manages about half of that

Good articles really bring more people to your site.

He’s making money from his wife’s psychic business. The bottom has dropped out for psychics on the internet so he created a new venue for her. He’s bringing in just the right kind of clients for her too. From the rates she charges, $4500 a month is probably a low-ball figure. Self-help junkies will buy anything to make themselves feel better. I think that’s why Steve started disabling comments on his site. Maybe people are getting wise to his scheme.

Has anyone done any background on Steve Pavlina to verify what he says about himself?