I have had issue with some pages. For instance, if a page mentions a ministry that offers counseling to those struggling with homosexuality then the ads usually include gay dating sites and homosexual advocacy groups, the last thing my users would be looking for. But for the most part the ads are very well optimized.

I did find interesting that this was from a liberal political blog when I read recently that liberal blogs made more money than conservative ones.

Where they work is when they are placed on top of the categories break out pages. Google indexes these pages very well, and the google searcher hits them often and will be more inclined to click on the adsense ads.

Here is an Example

Scirpture says not to despise the day of small things. Look at Blogs like Wizbang can charge $500 a month or more for one ad and don’t tell me that with 14,000 hits a day they’re not earn some Ad Sense revenues. Even if they’re getting getting a Click Thru rate of half a percent, they’re getting some money.

It takes patience. I believe the old scripture, “Don’t despise the day of small things” applies to blogging.

When I go to his site I see a lot of relevant ads (ie ones focussing upon personal development, productivity etc) so I think that his CTR would be a lot higher than the average political blog.

Just kidding. I know what he’d say.

I think you’re right to give a good balanced perspective upon the blogging for money thing. I’m very aware that some bloggers talk blogs up in a get rich quite way – it’s something I work hard to address.

Not sure if you caught our poll a few month back that showed around half of my readers earn less than $30 per month from AdSense (of course another recent poll showed that half my readers have been blogging less than a year which could partially explain this).

Of course it also showed that 5% of those using Adsense make over $100,000 each year from AdSense and that 25% are earning over $500 per month from it. So while most don’t make their fortune, an increasing amount are supplementing their income quite nicely from it.

It’s not always right – somebody can have a lousy Alexa rating and get a lot of traffic,
and vice versa. If you combine it with Google PR and Netcraft’s rating, you have a pretty good idea. Summary: it’s not an unknown blog, but it isn’t very active.

But aside from that, it’s also true that blogs like that get less search engine traffic, and those are the folks most likely to click on ads – not your regular readers.

But he’s certainly wrong to generalize that there’s no money in blogging advertising. There is, though most of it goes to sites with much more traffic and to sites that are easier to provide valuable ads to.

As I said in a comment at his site, I think too many new bloggers get unreasonable expectations. It’s like musicians: there are stars and superstars, but most can’t even give away their cd’s. It’s part talent, part very hard work and part luck and you need two of those at the least.

My other blog, which is niche entertainment oriented, makes significantly more money using Chitika and displaying relevant magazine ads as a banner and electronics on the comments page.

I assume that politically minded people are usually more interested in the content and less interested in the ads, whereas the casual reader of an entertainment blog is more likely to click on an ad for something that catches their fancy.

Also, the entertainment blog gets significantly more traffic than the idea blog. The political blogging world is relatively saturated with the same types of ideas, but there are always openings for niche entertainment sites.

I took the Adsense off, even though it was producing some cash.

;D