When I first started out online, I was all about AdSense – making 5 page wonders and “raking it in” at $50-$75 a month on my first site. Other sites of mine made $3-$20 a month. I thought I’d hit the mother lode – only 492 more sites until ‘retirement’ baby…
[S]ince then, AdSense has become one of those parts of my life I’d rather soon forget – like someone robbed me of real opportunity and I bought it lock, stock and barrel.
Disclaimer: of course you can make a mint on AdSense. You certainly can, just ask Lisa Parmley, Spencer, Cary Bergeron or anyone from The Keyword Academy for example.
Edit: I forgot to mention Michelle, Sara and Carrie. They make loads more than I do on AdSense.
So if you want to, run with AdSense and totally ignore me.
By the way, I hold all those people in the highest regard. If you want to learn how to kill it with AdSense, I recommend you learn from those folks. I’ve NO affiliation with any of them (the last 3 I’d consider friends in the biz).
What I am about to say about AdSense isn’t meant to detract from their experiences, isn’t meant to stop you from buying their products, nor am I trying to prevent your progress if AdSense is your thing.
In fact, if you ARE pursuing AdSense, feel free to NOT read the rest of this post, and I’m serious. Getting distracted by too many ideas is NOT good for your progress: buckle down and plow on.
Meanwhile let’s all laugh behind their backs, shall we? snicker…
But seriously – I want you to check out their claims to balance what I’m about to say.
On yet another sidenote – don’t get all offended if you’re running AdSense and come across this post (if you do, at least leave a comment, it’s fun that way).
If you do get offended easily, maybe read what Leo said instead. He doesn’t bring up undead bovine to compare AdSense to, he’s much more level-headed.
Why I’m Nearly Thankful For AdSense
I started out making money online thorugh a little book – which was helpful with videos on how to set up WordPress, it got me started – called the Micro Niche AdSense Course until I looked at recent earnings.
(I have no affiliation with the Micro Niche AdSense Course or the new products John “X Factor” Robinson is putting out, that link is purely for reference. I have zero opinion on his new system. I’m utterly agnostic on the matter: I haven’t checked it out, don’t ask me what I think of it because I don’t know. I DO know his first book worked and taught me the basics in SEO from scratch.)
…great, now someone is thinking I just endorsed his new book – I’m neither endorsing it, nor warning you to stay away.
If I cared any less I’d become a blackhole in my office of not caring. But I don’t think the insurance covers blackhole singularities or event horizons inside the house…and no, it’s not an affiliate link.
Why AdSense Sucks Rotten Milk From Putrefied Cadaver Cows’ Shriveled Udders
(How’s that for communication?)
I’ll ignore here the way that Google totally PWNS your site if you tick them off. Don’t believe me?
You haven’t read online very long or widely I’m afraid. Give it ten more minutes and you’ll come across one of the legions of posts of people who’ve been PWNED from Google (I know: it’s their index, they can do what they want).
But let’s ignore all that – after all, every situation is algorithmically individually decided, I have no real idea why 1000′s of AdSense accounts get closed.
When the wrath of Google strikes, it sucks rotten milk from putrefied cadaver cows’ shriveled udders.
Quote me on that. Five times fast. With crackers in your mouth.
Why AdSense really sucks in my opinion:
You’re letting Google pay you pennies to increase your bounce rate, steal your customers, and take your traffic to a competing website.Call me a monkey’s uncle, but I checked my AdSense account recently. I was excited. I had recently decided to make some more pennies by putting the blue clickies back on my site.
Yahoo! I made $1.27 on a CLICK man!
That was one website, mind you. Others who are in the AdSense biz make many more clicks – but here’s what that meant for me:
Instead of potentially getting someone to sign onto my list, or getting someone to become a customer at $60-$200 a sale, I said, “SURE! I’ll take a buck and change instead!”
AdSense IS Madness!
If you think you can’t make a sale online, or if you’re chasing markets that make you pennies on a transaction – then you may think that $1.27 is killer – you didn’t need to sell anything.
But if you target buying terms to begin with, you’re more likely to get a BUYER versus a BROWSER on your site.
Buyers, by the way, are also more likely to click the blue clickies…so either way, you’re milk toast with AdSense.
Conventional AdSense wisdom is to target buyers. They’re more likely to click (since they want something you didn’t offer them: the product or service they were looking for).
Rather than make a sale, you make a click…
Then again, I don’t make $20k a month on AdSense like Cary Bergeron or Lisa Parmley or Spencer.
Still, every time I find a “Made For AdSense” website with no way out BUT the blue clicky linky, I cringe…This person is throwing THOUSANDS away and settling for chump change instead.
Why AdSense Rocks
It’s easy. Set up your site. Make the links stand out. Leave no way out BUT the AdSense clicks. Easy money. No thinky.
Web design consists of:
- Ginormous double-stacked AdSense blocks above the fold…
- Make sure your background and foreground color scheme is so bland that the ads “pop” proper…
- Scrape something and rewrite it. Better yet, just pay someone a buck for 500 words.
- Stuff a keyword here….H1 there…alt tag here…bold and italicize that keyword until you hit 4% or something “modest” like that…
- Get fancy and find some of them thar Ell Ess Aye deals…stuff those “Ell Ess Aye” words in, too.
- Whoops! Almost forgot to add a fake navigation bar set of ads, too…
- Decide if you want your ads to be blending into the text or popping out…
- Maybe use a theme like Clickbump, Heatmap or CTR theme (which Clickbump copied proper!).
Honestly it doesn’t even need to get that complicated. But the point is that web design is cut and paste – the ads, rather than the user’s experience, reigns supreme in AdSense publishing.
AdSense User Experience
Joe Q. Visitor is looking for a barbecue grill. His last one rusted through after 90 years of use. Started to go to the Home Depot but figured he’d simply drank three too many beers.
Joe decides to search for his new grill online…and finds BBQ-Grillz.com (I’m making this up if you can’t tell).
At BBQ-Grillz.com, he sees a 500 word article and….and….nothing but AdSense. So he clicks one of the ads.
Joe leaves frustrated, wanted to BUY SOMETHING but instead clicked an AdSense link to go back to Home Depot after all, only online…
Moral of the story?
AdSense Mostly Sucks
Not only does it suck, it sucks rotten milk from zombie cows’ udders and makes you feel like you’ve accomplished something besides making your visitor utterly frustrated you didn’t actually have that product for sale that you optimized your MFA site for.
Then again, you didn’t want to make tons of money – just tons of websites that Google could de-index at any time because you didn’t use a Kleenex when you sneezed on your keyboard, or because you actually bothered to optimize your website to get a higher clickthrough rate, which is “obviously” against their Terms of Use, right?
Yeah, I see that now. Makes perfect (Ad)sense.
Just sayin.
Disclaimer: If you work at Google, I’m sorry, I meant Bing ads suck.
In case you miss the madness, it goes like this:
- Optimize for buying keywords, since they “convert” into CTRs better (mo’ moniez, amiright?).
- Instead of showing product links or having an actual ecommerce store…you put up AdSense since it’s easier.
- Buying traffic finds your site…comes to buy something…
- Finds nothing but ads. Either clicks an ad or the red “X” to leave.
- When customer returns to Google’s SERP’s, they see your site listed but with an invitation to block all instances of YOUR site in their listings…
- Visitor clicks the link and you disappear from yet another potential customer’s screen for good.
- Google collects this data and in turn, you rank lower come the next Panda update.
Yes, Google – I’ll take your nickel AND give you my traffic! I don’t want real money or customers anyway…
If you’re making money with AdSense – I guarantee you you’re throwing away more opportunity than you’re keeping in hand.
Site-for-site, page-for-page, you will need more work to make it big on AdSense than you would if you simply did CPA ads, or straight up affiliate marketing (or list building).
I used to get it.
Now I’m convinced I was stark raving mad with the “pennies rather than dollars” model that AdSense presented me with – and I proved it in my own business once I stopped chasing AdSense and started chasing the sales people were making elsewhere.
Think about it: an AdSense clickthru means the person was not satisfied with what they found on your site, or what they didn’t find.
So you drove them off. But they paid a competitor the real money at the point of sale.
I just don’t get it anymore.
What Say You? Killing It With AdSense? Think Me a Fool?
It’s all good – this is an opinion piece. So what’s your opinion?
If you’re killing it with AdSense, let me ask you if you’re also doing affiliate marketing? If not, why not?
Just to confuse you further – if you’re making real money on AdSense, I’m not telling you to jump ship. I am challenging you to be a smarter business person, though – and find other ways to profit from those same websites that would net you bigger wins.
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James, why are you accusing Scott @ Clickbump of copying the CTR Theme? If I remember correctly, Clickbump was out and for sale WAAAY before CTR Them was.
I’ve seen you rail against AdSense before, and that’s fine, but what I’d love to see from you is how you make money from a site that was previously used for AdSense and now you make money from it with affiliate marketing. I’d love to see the differences that you incorporate into to a site to make it much more profitable than simply using AdSense.
Thanks!
Chris
Chris Hunter recently posted..Chris_Hunter: Never knew Jobs was Buddhist. Enough with the Heaven jokes then! Steve Jobs In Heaven | MakeUseOf Geeky Fun http://t.co/IZld7cYf
Like he copied the Bluesense theme and now the CTR theme. His copy is called “CTR Plus.” I should know since I own it. :)
Note that I have no idea which came first: Scott’s “CTR Plus” or the “CTR Theme”…but Scott’s done this before (case in point with Bluesense and now he offers his own version of it).
Re: the Bluesense copycat theme, Scott himself said:
This was on the heels of him copying John Robinson’s latest theme, which runs on the Clickbump Engine, called “XFactored 2.0″…his first copy of John’s original theme (SuperOptimized) is called “XFactored.” It’s blatant, he’s not hiding it.
Scott’s not DUMB and I was actually trying to give the guy props when I said that – he finds winning themes and re-creates them. I have his “CTR Plus” theme as it’s called (and it’s a good AdSense theme, I bought it while back). Scott has no problems doing that, either – for example, I own his Clickbump SEO plugin.
The True Story about Clickbump SEO
One day, Scott visited one of my sites’ admin panels on a technical call, saw SEOPressor and asked me some questions. About 3 weeks later I get an email about “Clickbump SEO…”
Um…yeah it’s SEOPressor cloned practically, but with LSI terms. (BTW I prefer THAT to SEOPressor, and it’s cheaper).
So Scott Blanchard is a SMART businessman. Sort of like how you don’t JUST see Fords running on the freeway.
People copy technological advances, improve on them, re-package them. Happens in every industry – and Scott released Clickbump theme COPYING John X-Factor’s “SuperOptimized Theme” to begin with.
Funny, I thought everyone knew. I’m not accusing him of anything he doesn’t openly admit to: web design is NOT under copyright. You can copy a theme, layout, overall design…that’s what Scott does. It’s not “evil,” it’s smart business.
I have NO problems with Scott, by the way – he’s a sharp cookie. Don’t use his themes on affiliate sites though (or you’ll want to strangle yourself.) They’re made for AdSense and work much better that way.
I’ll have to post about that. Good idea – but I do talk about what I do here and there.
http://theaveragegenius.net/changing-wordpress-themes-increased-amazon-ctr-400-percent/
http://theaveragegenius.net/recovering-from-google-panda-getting-pagerank/
I just scoured my old posts and see that you’re hired as an editor. I pay in compliments, like this: “Wow. I thought I wrote about that. Way to look out for a brotha.”
Honestly I think I was waiting to do this in my MMO book, but I think it would be a good post or series of shorter posts. Thanks for the idea, Chris.
JamestheJust recently posted..AdSense Can Bite Me
I understand everything in this rant, and I personally experienced a ~50 domain delisting back in the day related to running MFA sites.
Yet there’s always room in my heart for Adsense!
Why?
It’s paid me, without fail, every month since 2004.
It’s been my most consistent and reliable form of online income.
It doesn’t take much brains or creativity.
It can be outsourced for relatively cheap.
But:
You will not be proud of your work at all!
You’ll feel especially vulnerable in your relationship with Google.
You’ll always think about switching to affiliate marketing or somehow cutting out Google.
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Thanks for making the case, you’re right about the ‘stability’ factor (so long as they don’t algorithmically write you out of their index, or devalue your links, or penalize you for whatever). I’ve not been on many sites to my knowledge where AdSense and great content went hand-in-hand – although maybe I haven’t looked too hard.
To be fair, I’m sure I have…maybe the AdSense was an image block vs. text and I didn’t pick up it was AdSense. But the model is, as you say, largely a brainless publishing enterprise (and why not? You can churn out content really easily if no sale is needed). I hear you though on AdSense having “room in my heart” – there’s part of me that wants to get that monthly check from them like I used to, but not really when I make more in a month than I did all of 2009-2010 from AdSense. :)
Well, as someone who currently earns about half of my income from AdSense and half from affiliate marketing, I would say one of things I really appreciate about AdSense is its consistency. True, if my AdSense account suddenly got disabled I would be screwed, but I’ve found affiliate marketing to be much more unpredictable – even if it can be more lucrative as well.
I think that when it comes to selling products, you are right that affiliate marketing is definitely the way to go. I actually came to the AdSense came around the time the Xfactor micro-niche was at the height of its craze, but was always suspicious of the model – if only because so many people were embracing it. Instead, I’ve found that the best AdSense site tend to be informational versus product centered. I also target high CPC terms as well, so $1/clicks are not unusual at all for me and my highest sites have clicks that tend to be in the $5-$10 range, which isn’t chump change in my book at all.
But in the end, for me it is all about DIVERSITY. I really like having multiple income streams. With the last update, it was my affiliate sites that got hit – my AdSense sites are doing great. Not sure why, and these sites may eventually come back and my AdSense sites might be hit with the next one (who knows?!) – but I’m certainly glad I have these sites in my portfolio right now!
Michelle recently posted..September 2011 Update
Ha! I KNEW I could sucker you into the comments. I’m on your list you know, and YES I am JEALOUS with greenest eyes over your AdSense earnings. Way to go with that, by the way.
Can’t really argue there. :)
There are ups and downs in aff mktg, I think the reason for AdSense consistency is that you’re spread out in your earnings – and the earning pages only make chump change (some make good amounts of it, but that’s what it is: one page making $100 a month gets taken out, you have 10 others making $15 a month).
Good point.
Lastly: diversity. I’m a Cali boy. All about it.
Thanks for not biting my head off, it would’ve been funner if you did though. >:)
So would you say that you learned from the 100K AdSense Blueprint stuff you didn’t learn from the XFactor method that made the difference in your mind?
Lastly: if you target info KWs then I think it makes sense – but on my sites where I’m beefing up the content, I’ve not put up AdSense or any other CPC ads only because I know I’m still doing the same thing: accepting chump change vs. making a sale or having someone join a list.
Good points, M.
JamestheJust recently posted..CommentLuv Premium Giveaway
Yeah, you certainly suckered me in… ;)
That is definitely one of the things I liked about the A100K Blueprint: the whole focus is on building content rich informational sites – not product centered ones at all. Also, the model is really an authority site model – their sample sites have hundreds of pages to them. (Of course this doesn’t mean some idiot won’t ignore the fact that they say many, many times to continually post to your sites – and instead slap up a 8 page MFA site with crappy content on it and then wonder why Google isn’t happy… – but whatever! ).
And yes, there are some very high paying informational niches – particularly those providing information about different career paths, finance, dealing with certain diseases and so forth. And I have to say that on days that I just don’t think I can deal with one more product review, I find writing content for my AdSense sites a real relief – since I often feel like I’m at least learning something when I’m researching and writing articles for several of those niche sites.
That said, I do remember when I first started earning money through CB affiliate programs it really felt like “easy money” to me. $15-20 for one ebook sale was GREAT – given that it might take multiple AdSense sites to earn that much in a day.
But my affiliate sites do not bring money in every day, and they also tend to have much more dramatic seasonal fluctuations. AdSense, however, does bring me money every single day, which is why I’m definitely planning on relying on it for quite a while to come…
But hey, what’s working for you seems to be working pretty well – so I can certainly understand why you would want to be focusing on building more lucrative affiliate based sites for yourself! I don’t bother putting AdSense on my product centered affiliate sites – since I don’t want to divert attention from where the real money for those sites are (affiliate programs) – and I certainly wouldn’t encourage you to do that either. I do agree that for the most part, AdSense on a product centered site is probably not the right way to go. And Micro-Niche AdSense sites are definitely not the right way to go!
Michelle recently posted..September 2011 Update
Keep talking like that and I’ll have to recant – I find it incredibly interesting that the A100K isn’t about product-focused sites – I want to say Lisa Parmley is all about that sort of approach, too in InLineSEO.
Thanks for the rich comment, M. I’ll be the first to admit you may have a fine point there.
(Notice how softly I said that: you “may” have a fine point there…maybe…and if you DO have a point, it’s a FINE one.) =)
I wouldn’t say I am killing it with AdSense but it accounts for 30% of my total monthly income for my blog. If it were to disappear I would have to turn to something like Chitika, or something else to recover those costs. I find it inconsistent for me day to day but this is because of the type of site I run. Overall though I stay around the same 10% up or down earnings for the same site.
90% of my AdSense earnings come from only 1 of my 3 blogs, the others don’t get enough traffic to earn from AdSense well.
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Do you think you could make more money by reviewing the products that your ads take your visitors to instead? Or: creating a product to compete in the same circles as your advertisers?
I’ve recently joined Neverblue and another CPA network just to explore some other options, but even then would make $$ from CPA type stuff: leads, for example.
JamestheJust recently posted..The Secrets to Google Ranking
I had no luck with Neverblue, Hydranetwork or any of them. Just never found good content matches that converted. I had my most affiliate sales last month where I sold 14 copies of Formidable Pro, WordPress plugins seem to be the only thing I can sell which is ironic since WordPress / Blogging makes up only about 15% of my audience.
That being said, I have sold lots of tech products via Amazon affiliate, the problem is Amazon affiliate pays out 4% commission, upped to 6% after 7 sales in a month. This is still only $4 on every $100 product which is very low, so selling 20+ products a month and I still may only get $50-$70 from Amazon. I tried upping to larger item products to boost commissions and this helps a little, had over $120 from Amazon in one month.
I do review most of the products I put an ad up for except for some of the BSA ad purchases. Every ad at the bottom right is a product I reviewed and have a post on. I also realized that I tried to buy AdWords banners to link to one of my product reviews which could convert to a sale, but every combination of creative and wording I used was rejected by the Google AdWords website. Not sure if because I was linking directly to a post instead of a homepage or what.
As far as creating a product, I can’t write a better “How to blog” or “How to SEO” eBook, so no point doing it to try and convince people to buy it. I won’t sell something if I can’t convince myself “Would I buy this from me if I were someone”. The only book I see myself creating is poetry volumes on my poetry blog at the moment. Again a primary tech/entertainment blog selling “how to blog”.
Nope, by biggest method of earning will be getting traffic/readership and enough attention that bigger tech companies will partner with me. Though I say I didn’t earn a lot of money, I have had companies give me hundreds of dollars worth of free products to test and review on my blog. I get to keep it and in some cases they give me a product to giveaway to a reader. Though this isn’t cash, I have gotten items I would have had or wanted to pay for so it does provide some incentive.
Justin Germino recently posted..Samsung Galaxy Nexus Announced with Ice Cream Sandwich
Very inspiring post!
It made me go and check my sites with a google adsense preview tool and find some affiliate opportunities… This however forces one to create specific content for a specific sale to be made. So generic s#it stuffed with keywords is not of much use… damn! :)
Mark recently posted..Cursos decoracion de interiores
The best way for affiliates to make sales I’ve found is through reviews of the product being sold, a pre-sale page before you send the visitor to the product page or something like it. So you’re right, it does demand some further thought, but the tradeoff is bigger money.
Your “generic sh*t stuffed w/KW’s…” will still work to bring in traffic, only you should also include internal links to your reviews once they arrive – just food for thought. A bit more work but you’re leveraging your own content anyway…good luck!
James,
This article had me rolling. Those poor cows. Err Zombie Cows….
Like Renee Zellwegger said, “You had me at hello (and adsense can bite me)” “You had me at hello”
Sure adsense can make money in situations. I am working on an authority site that will use Adsense. (the first time i have used it in about 3-4 years)
This is as much about the content as anything else. There isn’t really as much of a “product” to sell from this site and the adsense is high. (It is about Military Bootcamp …adsense from the .gov)
But generally I have avoided adsense like a Plague of Zombie Cows with putrefied udders, for the reasons you point out.
I am sure there are ways to make it work, but I am not into penny marketing, except when it seems like the “best” method.
There may be times and sites where this is the best thing out there, but I would rather link to Amazon and sell that BBQ for a commission around 5-6$ than get the $1.25.
Even better I would rater have the lead, get the guy on my list and sell BBQ’s, meats, summer sports gear and all other sort of things over time.
(of course good email marketing is an effort unto itself)
-Steve
Steve recently posted..15 “Google-Proof” Ways to Create a Quality Niche Site [Niche Affiliate Income #2]
Steve -
First off – I will say that “if AdSense is a better model” for a site, I’ve simply not found “that” site or niche where that’s the case.
This all stems from my learning from John “XFactor” Robinson about AdSense, in which course we were told to target buying or product phrases because they were more likely to buy A.K.A. clickthru.
So on my first site it was all information about a physical product – but when I started breaking the ‘rules’ and put up affiliate links…
Well then my life changed. I retired when I changed the theme to a more pleasing one, added product reviews, and took down AdSense so people quit leaving my site for pennies.
That site made up to $75 in AdSense a month on 5 pages, so it wasn’t bad – but that told me I was the idiot since these people wanted to BUY something. Anyway, if you DO find a site where AdSense is the better option, like your site, then go for it of course.
Michelle said something above that she’s targeting “info” type of traffic, which flies in the face of what I personally thought made the most CTR…shows what I know!
Your money quote:
Now that’s marketing. And I’m almost done with your book, by the way, Affiliate Marketing Without the Bulls**t – which you’re essentially summarizing right there nicely.
Spot on stuff, Steve.
JamestheJust recently posted..AdSense Can Bite Me
What are you trying to say?
Carrie recently posted..September Earnings and an Update
AdSense is opiate for the masses – we’ve been duped and sold out for much less than we’re worth as publishers.
But I am jealous you make more than I do from Google.
I don’t do drugs.
I’m disappointed you didn’t pull Soylent Green out. You’re slipping.
Carrie recently posted..September Earnings and an Update
I hate adsense!!! I FINALLY made it over the $100 threshold and they disabled my account and ignored my appeals! They owe me $130 and aren’t giving it to me! Jerks.
That’s weird – sorry to hear it, Sadie.
Do you use the ReplyMe plugin, I don’t think I get email updates when you reply to my comments.
Justin Germino recently posted..Troubleshooting MaxCDN 502 Gateway Errors
No but I used to. Hostgator was telling me I use too many plugins so got rid of it. I (think) I use a subscribe to comments plugin, it’s a checkbox you opt-in for the comment thread itself.
AdSense makes up the bulk of my earnings – not enough to stop working, but it does pay some expenses.
I have been looking into more affiliate products and selling ads, but so far AdSense as been the most stable for me. For me, I have been increasing the amount I make each month with AdSense, so while the ePC isn’t high, it is slowly increasing over time.
I am hoping to eventually make more in affiliate sales going forward so AdSense won’t be such a large chunk of my earnings each month.
Paul Salmon recently posted..iPhone 4S – Features And Specifications Of A New Technological Wonder
Fair enough, Paul – here’s to hoping you increase your income any way you can. The biggest jump in my income was taking my top AdSense site and making it 100% affiliate sales-based. Jumped from about $1,000 to $50-60 k a year, and that’s just one site.
Hi there James…
I agree with what you say about Adsense but it gives me too much money to giveaway. I have invested the last year or more in diversifying as I know how unpredictable this form of income is.
I have been wondering how much money Adsense makes from me, having ads on all of my pages. But slowly I am implementing other advertising or products that sell for certain pages…
The biggest thing that makes me keep Adsense is the fact that they deliver targeted ads, changing to the needs of the customer.. I cannot do that or replicate that..
Mitz recently posted..My Daily Blogging Routine Exposed!
Interesting idea about AdSense giving contextual ads – for me that has translated into more opportunities. If for example AdSense serves up 80 different landing pages for the content on your page, that could simply mean 80 different opportunities on that one site for you to multiply your income 80 different ways.
That’s how I see it, and the mindset is different from an AdSense publisher’s typical mindset. Usually in AdSense publishing, the idea is to churn out content and websites rapidly as possible, it’s easier to do with AdSense opposed to affiliate marketing…
But with affiliate marketing, once you prove a niche (e.g. my top AdSense earners turned out to be my strongest sites in affiliate marketing), and massage the content or put a bit more care into it (depending on what you’re selling, it doesn’t have to be too much more difficult than AdSense publishing)…then you wind up with fewer websites but more sales per website.
After reading through some of the AdSense publishers’ comments here, though, I may have another think on it. It’s been a great discussion! Thanks for sharing.
For most bloggers, adsense is very reliable when it comes to earning money. The good thing with adsense is it can give opportunities to other people especially if they are driving traffic to their sites. However, not all are really good with adsense because I also know some bloggers who got their account banned so they’ve decided to change it to infolinks.
I don’t know what to say. I am a fan of Google AdSense but on the other hand, I heard that they are doing some bad things like not paying money or suspending account for ‘nothing’. I don’t know if I am ready to risk and ‘kick it with AdSense’ or going with other advertising companies. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Amit recently posted..Finding Forklift Training And Certification For Free
I personally use Adsense. I’m not making a lot or anything, but I’ve never had a problem with them. I can understand why people don’t like Adsense, but I also see why people like it. So far, I definitely like it!
Nick recently posted..Take Notes or Live Life? There’s Your Blog Post!
Thanks for weighing in, Nick.
Adsense is a good starting point if you don’t know of any products you can sell online but I agree with your post that it makes more sense for people to make money themselves instead of sending their website visitors to another site to make money for other people.
Gina recently posted..Games Like Club Penguin
That’s true about not knowing what to sell/making money w/AdSense. I don’t start sites though unless I know what I’m selling first, unless it’s just for fun really. BTW I know one of the financial guys behind Club Penguin – I worked on his apartment in Charlotte, NC…
He was having me renovate his apartment to sell it, he was moving I think to New York City or someplace like it. Told me he was part of a start up called Club Penguin. At that point I thought he was an idiot – I hadn’t made a dime online and the whole enterprise seemed foolish…didn’t know Disney was behind it though. :)
I understand your point there. Why would somebody make use of adsense if he/she will just let the potential customers to other’s site. I know that it isn’t a great idea to integrate adsense into your site, but I guess the main reason why others are choosing it is because they want to earn money right away from adsense. Imagine, it is much easier to let somebody click on a link than push them to buy something from you in order to earn money.
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Is it easier to make money on AdSense, where you need lots of websites to make a noticeable income, or to make websites where you’re selling what people are already buying? The myth of AdSense is that it’s easier to do, because people think that you need to, and I quote:
That’s the myth as it stands: affiliate marketing is not like cold-calling people on the phone and pushing them to buy something they don’t want. Thanks to the technology of search engines, you simply target what they are already looking to buy.
There’s no pushing involved, no hard selling.
People think that’s what affiliate marketing is because of face-to-face salesmen, insurance and car salesmen – who get paid to close a sale on the spot. That’s not content marketing, however, and not search engine marketing. In SEO, you’re simply attracting the right people who are already in a buying mood anyway.
Then you simply give them what they’re looking for: reason enough to buy. It’s a matter of knowing your market, knowing your product, knowing what the searcher’s intent is – usually simply answering their questions about the product, like, “Is this a good buy or should I look at another product? Is this the best price or is there a coupon?” Etc.
But “Push something onto somebody?” No, that’s not at all what I do for a living. That’s not affiliate marketing.
I forget where I first heard it, but sometimes I have it up on one of our whiteboards:
The easy way is the hard way. The hard way is the easy way.
Adsense is the easy way that turns out to be hard when the g-bot decides it doesn’t like you doing exactly what Google’s other mouth suggested you do.
All that time, content and links to build a business that is totally at the mercy of someone else.
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Thanks for weighing in, Dave – and reminds me of what makes ecommerce so compelling. :)