I recently came across the Google Mini Fridge which is sent as a thank you gift to Adense publishers who cross the 1,000,000 click mark. I've been an Adsense publisher for three years so I was curious to see how far I have to go to get my own. Turns out I'm only 10% of the way there, but I've still learned plenty that I'd like to share with you:

1) If you’re doing this to earn money, choose topics that big spenders flock to.

If working on your Web site is a fun hobby and makes you happy, then keep on enjoying that. If you are building a Web site because you want to make money, than you've got to carefully choose topics and niches where payouts are good and you can achieve some volume of traffic. The Digital Point Forums are littered with posts asking, “I'm averaging 11 cents per click. Is that good?” If you're just in this for the money, then no it's not! Stop creating proxy sites or doing RSS feeds about Britney and build out some ORIGINAL content around a tightly focused topic that advertisers are going to care about. Think about expensive products where vendors/merchants are willing to pay a high price to generate a sale (hints: loans, travel, insurance, cars. NOT Mesothelioma, erectile dysfunction or warez.) Carve out an interesting, tiny little niche in those areas and you can average a few bucks per click.

2) You've got to invest

Six months from now, how much money do you want to make per month? $100? $1,000? Well, you better be prepared to invest that amount as a bare minimum today to get your business started. If you can't design, go to rent-a-coder and hire a designer. If you can't write, hire a writer. If you can do both of those things, buy some directory listings. HSA Facts cost me $50 for a writer, $25 for a designer and $300 for startup advertising costs. It's a low earner for me, but probably still does better than 90% of the Adsense sites out there and will soon earn back that investment each month. You don't have to spend a lot, but you if you're not willing to make any kind of investment, please go back to you prettying up your MySpace page.

3) Fewer ads earn you more money

Plaster your sites with more ads than content, and it’s just not going to work. Too many ads not only clutter up the page and it make look like schlock, but they lower the your payout too! If you’ve got 10 ads showing on a page, at least half of them are going to pay you ten cents or less, if they ever even get clicks. None of my pages have more than two ad blocks, and they are usually a 468x60 ad unit and a link unit.

4) Test link units

I don't know why people are so opposed to link units, but I tend to make the most money off of them! Try making them very complimentary to your site navigation to really boost clickthroughs.

5) Don’t cheat

You can click on some ads, make a few bucks and usually get away with it. Click on more than that, and you’re probably out of the program. Either way, you’re an idiot and a petty thief. Spend your energy on building your business, or go mug an old lady if you really want to steal from people.

6) Adsense is a drop in the bucket compared to affiliate marketing

This is the hardest lesson for most people to learn, Adsense is incredibly easy, yields instant gratification and can result in a nice check for some people. It’s all a drop in the bucket compared to what you can earn via affiliate marketing. If you are going to be a serious online marketer, Adsense should be your 3rd or 4th largest source of revenue. Try experimenting with affiliate offers (or even Adsense Referral offers) in the same real estate that you have PPC ads right now and see how much more you can earn! I took all of the Adsense code off of App-o-Rama and saw affiliate revenue soar!

7) Find a mentor

Don’t go guru crazy, but find someone who seems to know what they are talking about and listen to them. Spring for an ebook or online class. Many are probably quite similar, but they should all teach you the basics and save you months of trial-and-error learning. I went to Elite Retreat and have already earned the $5,000 tuition back dozens of times over.

8) Find some friends

Online marketing can be a very secretive and lonely way to earn a buck. Find a few friends trying similar things that you can regularly check in with to share successes and challenges. The market is plenty big enough for all of us, so if you’re too worried about someone ripping off your $50/month idea, you are too paranoid to get ahead and probably need better friends anyway.

9) Thinking = 10% of Success, Doing = 90%

Stop reading, stop thinking, stop talking and just go do something! See how it works and then do more of the good and less of the bad. I guarantee that if you spend the next six months pondering your idea, you will make exactly $0.00. If your idea is more than two weeks old and you haven’t done anything about it, it’s time to move on to the next idea.

10) Try Something!

Hopefully at least one of these tips was interesting to you. So what are you waiting for?