How much money can you really earn from Google Adsense? This is one of the common questions faced by bloggers and Internet entrepreneurs who wish to earn money from their website. If you have just started your website, you are probably aware of how difficult it can be to generate significant revenue.

Although Google’s Adsense is one of the most popular ways to make money from your website, its earning potential can seem limited to start with. In Spite of this, with hard work and dedication, it is indeed possible for you too to earn a decent income from Adsense.  There are many success stories of websites that earn millions in revenue every year from Adsense alone. These sites can be a source of inspiration for your efforts.

Here are ten websites that were started by individual bloggers like you and me and through their dedication and hard work have developed into stable revenue streams that they can rely on.

How does Adsense Work:

Before we start, let’s take a quick look at how Adsense works.

Adsense, Google’s advertising programme for publishers and site owners, is free to join.  Once you are accepted, you will be able to place Google ad units on your web pages, a maximum of three ad units per page. When visitors to your web site click on this ad, you will earn a share of the revenue Google makes from the ad.

The actual amount you receive per click can be anything from a few cents to a couple of dollars depending on how competitive your keywords are. If you have a lot of visitors and your click through rates are favourable, your earnings can easily add up. There are many ways to make money online. However Adsense is one of the easiest and most widely used methods.

In addition to making money by displaying Adsense on your own site,  you can also take advantage of other article sites that share Adsense revenue with publishers.

Here are ten top earning Adsense websites, not in any specific order.

1. Mashable

Mashable is one of the largest independent news source dedicated to covering digital culture, social media and technology. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world.

Founder – Pete CashMore
Adsense Earning – $6,00,000 Per Month
Launched – 2005
Monthly Page Views – 25 million

2. Weblogs

“Weblogs, Inc. is a blog network of about 90 blogs, covering a variety of subjects, from computers and gaming to the likes of food and independent film. It was bought by AOL in 2005 for $25 million.

Founders:  Brian Alvey and Jason Calacanis
Adsense Earning – $190,000 Per Month
Launched – 2003
Monthly Page Views – 25 million

3. Digital Point

Digital Point is one of the most popular discussion forums on the web related to search engines, including optimization, marketing, tools and other technical aspects.

Founder – Shawn Hogan
Launched – 1995 (under the name Data Point Solutions)
Adsense Earnings – $5,00,000 / month

4 . TechCrunch.com

This technology blog was started by blogger Michael Arrington. The site specialises in information for startups and technology.  High quality audience from around the world have made him one of themost influential bloggers in the world. in 2010 AOL bought it over for $30 million.

Founder – Michael Arrington
Adsense Earnings –  $2,40,000
Launched – 2005

5.Digg .com

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. The famous social news website was started by Kevin Rose Digg.com. He is valued at over $31 Million. Digg is another one of the high earning adses websites.

Founder–Kevin Rose
Adsense Earnings – $250,000.00 per month
Daily Visits – 1 Million Visitors a day
Launched –  2004

6. Perez Hilton

Perez Hilton was started by Mario Lavandeira who has earned a name for offering celebrity news and juicy gossips. He writes 25-30 post everyday. Blogging has made him a celebrity and he regularly gets featured on talk shows and events.

Founder– Mario Lavandeira
Adsense Earnings – $2,00,000
Daily Visits – 1 Million Visitors a day
Launched – 2005

7. Shoe Money

Shoe money is ablog that teached people how to make money on the Internet. The was started by Jeremy Shoemaker.
You may have come acrros the famous photo of him with a check for $130,000 (one-month earnings from Google AdSense) that became popular a few years ago.

Founder – Jeremy Shoemaker
Adsense Earnings – US$140,000 per month
Launched – 2003

8. Tweetmeme.com

Tweetmeme was a website that tracks conversations, stories and trends on one of the biggets social networking websites, twitter. The famous RetWeet button found on nearly a million blogs was initiallyu introduced by Tweetmeme. It was one of the fastest growing sites and rose to a global rank of 300 in just one year.

Founder – Nick Halstead
Adsense Earnings–  $2,25,000 / Month
Traffic – 385,000 unique visitors per month
Launched – 2008

9 .Plenty Of Fish

Plenty of Fish was started by Canadian internet entrepreneur Markus Frind and his girlfriend. In 2003 soon after starting his site, he was only making $40 a day from Adsense. However by 2007 on good days, his daily earnings had risen to as high as $30,000 a day from over 1 billion page views a month.

Founder – Markus Friend
Adsense Earnings –  US$300,000.00 per month
Launched – 2003

Reportedly, Markus Friend of Plenty of Fish.com earns an average income of US$300,000.00 per month.

UPDATE/Correction:   I would like to add that the above figures are average monthly earnings. As pointed out by Alex in one of the comments below, in some months Plenty of Fish have indeed earned more than US$300,000.

As an example, I am including an image of a 2 months cheque received by Plenty of Fish as far back as 2006 for over $900,000 as reported on plenty of fish blog on WordPress. This two month cheque alone shows an average of $450K per month. A big thanks to Alex for sharing a link to this cheque.

10. ClickIndia.com

And if you think only the big names can earn money via Adsesense, take a look at this site from India below.

Pankaj agarwal founded Clickindia 2 years ago and it zoomed up with classified ads posted by people all over india in alexa top 1k list. Adsense is clickindia only revenue model and thus they have optimised the site well for maximum CTR and for becoming the highest adsense earner from his country.

Founder – Pankaj Agarwal
Adsense Earning – $85,000/ month
Launched – 2007
Page-views/Visits – 5.5 million unique users a month

Conclusion:

There are millions of sites that use Adsense. However, a majority of them struggle to make even $1 per day, some even less. I have shared only the success stories above. I do not want to give you false hope that it is easy to generate revenues like this. In fact, it is far from it. Never the less, I firmly believe that it is possible to do so. And if you are willing to devote two or three years to write quality content for your website, your chances for making a full time income from your site are very good. If you think, you can achieve it without any effort then I suggest you look for alternative methods.

I have been blogging for just over two years now and will continue to do so as I am confident that it is possible to make a decent full-time income simply by blogging.