₦airaland Forum

Although written back in 2008 this principle is actually quite true and remains valid.

I am the developer/owner of iCalculator http://www.icalculator.info/ which started as a project to provide calculators for finance work I was supporting.

The site has become very popular, particularly the tax calculators which I add on request (there are now salary/tax/finance calculators for 5 separate countries with India going live in the next few weeks).

The challenge I faced is that I had lots of people requesting features but didn't have the matching funds to support the project properly.

After reading this and other article on Google adsense, making a living from it etc I took the route of providing specific functional areas of icalculator as separate sites, examples are:

1. http://taxcalculatoraustralia.co Australian Tax Calculator: Which build on the tax calculator on iCalculator with specific tailored tax articles.
2. http://www.bradfordfactorcalculator.com Bradford Factor Calculator: Again focusing on that specific market (absence management) with supporting articles and tools.
3. http://www.pcp-calculator.com PCP Calculator: Provides car loan finance calculations (soon expanding into pcp car finance comparison)

The above three calculator sites have differing degrees of success and for the 30+ that I have which are successful there are twice as many that are not. I simply wanted to underline with example that the principle of supportive sites is a credible means of generating an income through adsense.

The challenge is keeping new content going. For this, I used Elance. There are some very talented individuals on there who can really help you turn things around.

The challenge I face now is increasing my RPM so that I can grow and employ more freelancers. I hope this example helps people. It used to (still does) drive me crazy that you see articles about making a successful living out of adsense but never any case studies or real example. Well, here is mine and I hope it helps.

And finally, a plug, because it's rude not to and you don’t get successful without a little cheek If you get chance pop over to iCalculator http://www.icalculator.info/, if there is a calculator you need (finance, tax, engineering, whatever) let us know. We are always adding new calculators on request. We could add a tax calculator for Nigeria if anyone thinks that would be useful.

Finally, good luck with your project. Have faith and stick with it. I started in 2009 and it took 4 years to get it right. You may get lucky overnight but it is more likely that you will need to work hard at it.