Today I want to talk briefly about Google AdSense. It is the publishing program we all have to come to grips with at some point during our webmastering career. Do we attempt to cash in on AdSense? Or do we say “No Cents” and opt instead to attempt to monetize our visitors in other ways?
The debate is a simple one. By clicking on an AdSense ad on your website, your customer is being redirected from your site for a fairly small payout, usually a few cents, perhaps a dollar or two if it is a really high paying keyword. Now of course, money is money, and AdSense can make a very good payout to webmasters who own sites that get high amounts of organic traffic.
We must realize however that if a visitor gets to your site, and then clicks off the site via an AdSense ad, we are gaining a small amount of money from the ad, but we are potentially permanently losing a customer. We do not know if the customer will ever return to our site, especially if the visitor found our site via the search engines. We will never know if that visitor that made us 50 cents in AdSense commission would have given us significant eBay auction commissions. Or perhaps if they had spent more time on your site, they would have come to value the content you are providing (You are providing content… Right?) and may turn into valuable return visitors which you can profit off of for a long time to come!
So, it all depends on your business strategy. If you are confident that you have a quality website that can attract repeat visitors, and you can monetize it well without AdSense ads, I would recommend leaving AdSense off your site.
However, it cannot hurt to experiment with AdSense and see if it works for you and your specific niches and sites.
You do want to be sure though that you do not enable AdSense on one of your sites until it is ready for it. By this, I mean that you already have a good amount of content on the site, so Google is able to know what your site is all “about”, and can place relevant ads in your AdSense blocks.
There is no right or wrong answer on this subject, and every webmaster will feel differently about it. It all boils down to what works for you!
How have you utilized or not utilized AdSense on your blogs and niche stores?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I actually have one site that is specifically for AdSense. It didn’t start out that way, but AdSense became the dominant money maker for this site. So I have modified it so the traffic that is brought to the site will leave via AdSense. It is the only site I have that caters to AdSense. Although the earnings are modest, at best, this site is earning me more in a month in AdSense then I’ve ever earned with all my other sites in the 8+ years I’ve had web sites.
However, I have AdSense on very few of my sites. If I have bigger ways to monetize, and these sites are successful in these other methods, then I typically remove AdSense in preference for the bigger bucks option.
Rochelle
@Rochelle:
I am really happy to see you getting back into the swing of things Rochelle, you have been in my prayers!
“MFA” or “Made For AdSense” sites as I call them, are also a worthwhile thing to look into as a webmaster. If you can manage to get a steady enough stream of organic traffic, it can be a great revenue stream, I am glad you have had some good results with this method!
My point was the exact same one you point out… When *better* monetization methods are available to use, AdSense should more often than not be left out!
I really find it irritating whenever the ad clicks worth $0.01. My site’s traffic is totally wasted
Hmm Good analysis Tyler.
I didn’t used adsense on my TechZoomIn yet..waiting for more views. It sucks to see 0.00…….$ on the accounts
I have played with AdSense on a few of my niche stores, and decided that it is not worth it. Most of the clicks I get are for $.10 or less, and I much prefer my eBay commissions which are generally between $.19 and $3.00. I have also found that I get significantly more clicks on my eBay affiliate links than my AdSense links, anyway. I know some niche stores incorporate AdSense, but I think that it detracts from the goal, which is to earn $$$ by referring people to products, not other websites.
Nice post, thanks
Excellent post. Good points made. Thanks for this.
Adsense is a pain and when i finally start to make a real earning from it they close my account without any explanation!
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