Is there any point in Adsense?
Or is it just an ugly distraction from your blog content?
This is a question I have been wrangling with for a while. After all, when I decided to try and make some money from my blogs, this seemed like the easy way into some revenues. However, I’ve been blogging for two years now and I can honestly say that Adsense has been pretty fruitless. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve received a few payments from Google, but nothing to warrant the amount of time I‘ve put into my blogs. In fact as a business model, I’m pretty sure if I took the proposition to the Dragons Den I’d quickly find hear those dreaded words “I’m out”.
To be fair there are lots of little tips and tricks for optimising Google ads that I haven’t employed, such as putting links next to images, tweaking colours and styles to match your blog content and more. I’m sure if I had enough web properties I could generate a reasonable little trickle of income, but, I think it would always only be a trickle and to make any serious income I’d need a lot of blogs. In addition, I would need to think of multiple tactics, such as affiliate programmes and text link ads.
However, for the majority of bloggers I doubt that would produce revenues of a big enough size to quit your day job, not unless you have a lot of traffic – which most blogs don’t of course. So, I’ve taken the decision to remove Adsense from my blogs and to focus on the content along with pursuing opportunities that link my online and offline life i.e. work contracts, sponsorships, events etc.
I would be interested to hear of anyone else’s experience with Adsense.
Both from the perspective of people who own the content channels i.e. blogs etc, and those who advertise on AdWords using the content network. From my experience in both, I can honestly say I am doubting the value for most businesses. But I am happy to be proven wrong.
Of course, I’m not doubting Payperclick on the search networks which for me is an essential ingredient of any businesses marketing tool kit.
Tag:Advertising
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39 Responses to “Is there any point in Adsense?”
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I too find Adsense a lame activity, the money is pocket change, I find on my blog that relevant banners, and recommended relevant products are far better money makers. I still have the Adsense, but I do not spend time on moving the ads or analyzing their position and colors…blah blah blah, I’d prefer to spend my time on content and getting traffic. There are so many ways to monetize websites and blogs and Adsense is just a very small aspect, for me anyway.
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i have an adsense ads on my blog.so far i received 3 payouts from them.
I have a good read, thanks for the information and insights you have so provided here. I will certainly bookmark your blog for future reads. Thanks!
So I guess, Adsense makes sense if you are optimizing your your website very and and you are receiving more traffic. I guess that could help in earning more click outs from your visitors and thus earning in your adsense.
Adsense is not good enough for blogs. From my 1 year experience I have felt this. It is better for any other site but not blog.
Thanks for the informative read! I haven’t tried adsense yet but I think I should consider again after reading your post.
Just wondering who clicks on those AdSense links?
According to this study:
http://www.smvgroup.com/news_popup_flash.asp?pr=1643
Natural Born Clickers
Just ask yourself: Do you click on AdSense links?
There are lot of points with adsense. If a person really like it and want to use it positively then no other program is better then this.
So I guess, Adsense makes sense if you are optimizing your your website very and and you are receiving more traffic.
i have adsense in my site ..i feel it is good before they paid very good rate in early days but now it hard to get the bucks from them ..
They are filling there pockets
Its chief selling points are that it’s easy to insert and adds _relevant_ ads to your content _but_ you must optimise it.
Make it look like part of the content, cut down the number of ads, use Google’s code to ignore irrelevant parts of your page, etc.
I’ve never understood the point of AdSense. It’s pocket money and in exchange you have to place horrible looking AdSense ads all over your blog or website. I personally much prefer going down the route of affiliate links and product recommendations.
I felt good to know that you are making money from adsence. Congratulation! But, sorry to say i am not happy with adsense regardign my health blog. I am wonderign for some good tips for making money from my blog.
I used Adsense on a few blogs until I started researching alternatives because those measly checks weren’t cutting it. Look into applying for a CPA network, they have a bunch of offers for things that have made me 10x what Adsense was doing for me.
I don’t like to use adsense to make money.I prefer to use affiliate program ,text ads and paid membership.Try those out!
I can see why people use adsense to produce an extra bit of income but generally the ads look totally out of place as people tend to place them in awful places like slap bang in the middle of a page! Terrible!
I use on my blogs adsense but also other affiliate programms. By Adsense the ads normally have a good relevance to the content.
I have been blogging for almost 5 months already. Haven’t been paid anything from ad sense. I am also asking the same question in my mind? Does ad sense really make money?
I find you are better off selling paid sponsored ads than adsense. I can say that I’ve made a good chunk of change from adsense, but it is really up and down.
You may like this even less, but have you considered display ads on your blog? With Google Adsense, you can set it up to show display ads. I have had more luck on blogs using these. Maybe because the text ads blend too well with the text of the blag and do not get noticed.
I felt good to know that you are making money from absence. Congratulation!
I find your adds may be find more and attractive to me .you can show the display adds also. By Adsense the ads normally have a good relevance to the content.
Adsense depends on traffic. A LOT of traffic. Then it can be profitable. Unless it’s a forum, if you are getting lots of traffic from the search engines, Adsense is a very good alternative compared to CPA which requires the user to buy something.
From my experience, whether it’s a blog or a site, doesn’t make much difference; the niche also doesn’t make much difference, CTR is not affected much by site format or niche. Just pick a niche that has relevant ads and it’s ok. To get some(much?) more traffic, it’s best to have your content translated to other languages too(french, german, etc); ranking in english is very difficult.
Like many people I make very little on adwords. But mine are fairly discreet and non-invasive - so I don’t think they do any harm. And at least they pay for the hosting and a bit more for the site.
Ian
If you try and use Adsense as a ’side benefit’ to your blog, it will be pocket change. To make serious money with it, you will have to build blogs and sites that are built with a monetization strategy in mind. I’ve had the same unsatisfactory experience as you did when I added Adsense to one of my existing blogs. I do however, believe that it can be made to work.
I like adsense too. Most of my net income is from adsense and it is easy to setup and approved. Unlike some text ad, Kontena, it require minimum page rank to get your site approve for publisher.
I haven’t tried adsense with my blog.After reading your post I came to know that I should consider adsense.Thanks for sharing your experience with us!
I think it depends on the niche. I speak from experience with websites only (not blogs) but I have found that some niches pay much more per click than others (Google picks up on your website theme from analysing the words on each page). Niches like finance/mortgages can pay over $1.00 a click so I hear while other niches average only around 10 cents. I read a report by one guy who builds lots of sites to target these high paying niches - said he only needs a few clicks a day from each minisite an they turn into good little money spinners. But of course it would be boring to blog on some of these high paying topics.
I have adsense on my site. I do similar with JR i do not optimize my adsense look but I just focus on traffic building and adding content.
Also, I start to add more ads beside adsense. Don’t depend on adsense. There are many bloggers have bad experience with adsense.
its really worth..
what you need is high niche content..
from my very little experience, the best to do is to find direct advertisers for your blog.
i dont gain much from adsense, but thanks to it, i am able to cover my blog’s expenses! (a basic hosting, domain name, some commercial plugins)
kind regards!
I have used adsense for few of my blogs but did not earn cosiderable amount. For one year I earn around $100. I only have 3 blogs. But if I have around 100 blogs I could definitely earn something.
Good content will increase the visitors stay on your website and the chances to clicking on ads become high.
I agree, Google will do anything they can not to pay bloggers, it doesn’t seem too fair. Very well written btw.
People usually look over the website before they read too deeply into it to see if the site is even worth reading. The best place to put an ad is the top left or right corner. Sometimes a bottom horizontal ad works well too.
I’ve never used Adsense but I guess it’s not really worth it. Thanks for the info.
First of all i know google adsense doesn’t bring me alot of money & The real problem that they will send me a money through a check which means that i’ll never receive the money because i’ll not go to a bank for $ 10 only …..
The point is
1. adsense position must good.
2. relevant to your content to increase CTR
I’m a bit late to the conversation, but coming from the point of an advertiser, I noticed that the number of clicks vs impressions from google itself vs “content network” (blogs and the like) was very different. Basically the number of times people were seeing our advertisment vs clicking through was very very low on blogs. Maybe it was us, but to me it seems you would have to get enormous traffic to even get a few clicks and a few dollars from Adsense.