Adsense is by far the easiest monetization tool for blogs. It has no set requirements, no specific conditions for a blogger to start using this tool. A blogger can build his site and in minutes can have adsense running on the blog.
The question however is, is it right for your blog?
There is no hard and fast rule governing the implementation of this tool. There’s just the uncomfortable truth that adsense works really well in some blogs and not so much on others. I came to this conclusion not by some serendipitous event but by observing the actual development of this blog, and reading other bloggers’ thoughts on the matter.
Take problogger.net for example. One would think that a blog of such gargantuan following would be all over adsense. As a matter of fact he was using adsense a while back. But if you visit his blog right now, you’d easily notice that his site is devoid of any adsense advertisement.
I watched his video explaining his decision to strip his blog of adsense and what he said actually made sense, at least to me. In the video he explained that the decision was brought about by a confluence of factors, chief among this is that he earns far more on direct advertising than from adsense. He even related that when he was then approaching direct advertisers for his blog, some wouldn’t commit unless he remove adsense saying that the presence of adsense on his blog ‘cheapens’ the site.
Adsense cheapens the site – that is an interesting point of view. Perhaps the advertiser was thinking along the line of everybody’s doing it so problogger shouldn’t? But anyway that’s for another article.
Darren then said something that really floored me. He said that his other blogs were out-earning problogger.net in terms of adsense revenue. And that most of these blogs are targeted towards a specific product.
His last statement confirmed what I was thinking all along. When a blog deals more with educating readers on blogging for example, visitors to that blog are really not primed to click ads. They’re there to learn a thing or two about blogging. Whereas a niche product blog visitor would like to have options for his impending purchase, and that’s where those adsense suggestions come in, they become more palatable to the visitor.
Of course this is just one man’s view. I’m sure there’s a blog out there that’s making tons of money off adsense even without selling a single product. But if were gonna talk about averages, I’ll put my money on product/services blogs out earning how-to blogs everytime.
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Well, i agree with this article, but only partially. In fact it is true that adsense makes your blog looks "cheap" and not very professional. But this point of view depends on how your blog performs. As a matter of fact if you have few thousands visitors a month, well Adsense is great and you will earn decent money. But if your blog has got a lot, really a lot of traffic, then it is wise to look for other ads which performs better and look more professional. Saying that adsense cheapens a site is too minimalist. It depends from many factors. it is like saying: owing a Cherloted Matiz is cheapens my look. it is better to have a ferrari!!!
Hi Web Talk, agree. It all depends in your POV. As for mine, I do think that most people who go to search engines to look for 'how to' articles are much more inclined to read articles rather than click on ads. Those who are searching for specific products however, would like to have other options apart from those that you discuss in your blog and are therefore more predisposed to click on ads.
I agree that if you are generating a great deal of traffic, it may be more advantageous to go for direct advertising as the returns are even greater and you have more control over the look.
The key to making money from Adsense is to get the right type of traffic. Social traffic, those who visit because they are just browsing are most unlikely to click on Adsense ads. The click through rate would be very low so Adsense would figure the traffic was not the right type of traffic and lower the payout per click.
If the page was targeted around a specific keyword, and most of the traffic came from search engines looking for information about those keywords, then the click through rate would be better and Adsense would therefore pay over more.
I've not been to the problogger site, but I expect it is a broad church which would confuse Adsense. So to make money from Adsense stick to the niches!