Comments on: Why AdSense Might NOT be Best for Your Blog

By: I am a US Blogger

I am a US Blogger — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:28:36 +0000

It has been months blogging but I have only made $ 3.54 from adsense. Whats the better option for me?

By: Steffen

Steffen — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:33:38 +0000

it gives me just a basline figure – not more not less

By: Young

Young — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:30:43 +0000

This post will be translated into Chinese on Essentail Blog late today.

By: Jeremy Steele

Jeremy Steele — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 06:48:19 +0000

Affiliate marketing FTW. I’ve made much more money with that than I ever did with adsense – and you have full control over what appears, how it looks, etc.

By: Making Money Online World

Making Money Online World — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 23:55:33 +0000

Hi Darren,

I have been experimenting with the idea of putting adsense on my blog in different forms from content to referral ads ,with a mixture of affiliate links also.what i have found recently is that many visitors seem to ignore the adsense ads in all shape or forms -no matter how you blend in or position them. Most of the clicks are made on the affiliate links which pay me more money.

By: JaWar

JaWar — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 00:24:50 +0000

Darren, thanks for the post. I wasn’t sure how I stacked up amongst other bloggers, not that it should matter, but it gives me a gage as to if I’m on the mark or not. Once I better overstood SEO I decided to start several blogs within my niche, the music business. Doing so has positioned me to hit the $100 min a while ago.

With that being said, I’d recommend others find additional niches to blog about and spread their adsense over all their blogs. This may improve their earnings in a shorter time period as it has done mine.

By: Alicia

Alicia — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:32:01 +0000

I agree, using AdSense might not be the best option for us smaller bloggers. Seems like a better thing for certain niche markets, where readers are more likely to click on a certain ad to buy a certain product.

By: Justin Dupre

Justin Dupre — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:45:34 +0000

So if we shouldn’t use Adsense, what should smaller blogs that aren’t getting the traffic necessary to affiliate with bigger advertisers be using?

http://www.moneyandblog.com

Justin

By: Personal Development for the Book Smart

Personal Development for the Book Smart — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:08:43 +0000

Adsense is good for capitalizing on exit traffic…

The problem is once someone, especially a new visitor, clicks on the ad, they are likely to be gone for good.

With your own ad management system, you can set ads to open in a new window when clicked. This is likely to work out better…

By: Hectril

Hectril — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:27:18 +0000

Thanks for the insights about Adsense. I have my own blog I just started and I notice that some visitors don't generally read your content but go directly to your ads and it get away from your site as well. Also I have to agree with you about having affiliate ads and adsense together it somehow gets in the way when you have a high paying ads compare to google adsense. I'm trying to check if Adwords can work as well as Adsense for my blog. Any ideas or tips on this.

By: Meg

Meg — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:30:42 +0000

I think you hit it perfectly with the “set it and forget it” point yesterday. Yes, I might be able to make more money by finding advertisers on my own, and negociating my own rates, but AdSense gives a (small) income stream from what’s essentially my hobby, without me doing much work.

By: Frugalforlife

Frugalforlife — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:29:00 +0000

I was loving adsense up until the 10th of December and then my daily revenue dropped to 10% of what it used to be. It appears that in switching my domain on a 3 year old blog has caused the problems along with a possible adsense revenue of only 1-2¢ given per click now!

I’m fried! I dropped from a PR 4 to a 0 – back to the beginning.

By: Advertising Hits Your PageRank

Advertising Hits Your PageRank — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:13:37 +0000

It can also take away clicks from your other pages. That's crucial to the idea behind PR. See more on the theory behind this here. Advertising Cuts PageRank

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 10:29:13 +0000

Been running AdSense a while. I wish there was more control on the ads. They do seem in general to be well matched to content, and I have filtered a few sites, but now and then one slips through, advertising lingerie or something even more inappropriate.

By: Gisele B. from myBeautyMatch.com

Gisele B. from myBeautyMatch.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 05:41:03 +0000

Hi Darren,

I think that Adsense will work for certain niches and not at all for others.

I think as bloggers (aka marketers) we need to test and see if we are better off using AdSense or going for other types of ads.

What do like about your approach is the fact that you presented both sides and you allow readers to decide based on all the facts.

Greatt approach! Well done!

Gisele

By: matt

matt — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:04:46 +0000

I have a small blog that deals with carbon offsetting. I looked into other advertising programs but none of them have the advertiser pool like adsense

By: coolthought

coolthought — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:01:14 +0000

minimum payout may be a problem at first when the traffic to the blog is light. But it does makes sense when one think in terms of cost when checking into your earnings. Since there are things like handling fees, etc.

By: Gigi Griffis

Gigi Griffis — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:28:58 +0000

I wish I would have read this before I signed on with AdSense. I’ve been in the blogosphere for a while, but just recently started a regional blog for Denver, CO. I had never used AdSense on any of my blogs, but decided to give it a shot on this one. Unfortunately, as my hits are still pretty low, the AdSense payout is minimal and I’m running into the problem you described: its going to take me a lot of time to get paid by them at this rate.

Hopefully as traffic increases so will my clicks, but I wish I would have known their $100 policy from the get-go. I would have waited until the traffic was more significant to give them a shot.

By: Cindy

Cindy — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:59:30 +0000

Thanks for both sides of the coin on Adsense. From what I’ve read I’ve decided to opt for a test run of Adsense (that is once I’ve got my blogging act together). What I’m wondering is how long should the test run? I want to stick with it long enough to for a test run to be valid but I don’t want it cluttering up the screen if it isn’t going to work. Three years seems like a lot of clutter time but then is three months enough exposure to get the real picture?

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:12:15 +0000

I have a couple of points to make.

First, those of you who have gone for months or years without getting a payout from AdSense should not drop it just yet, but concentrate on building traffic instead. No program is going to perform well if you don’t have any traffic!

Second, I make money using AdSense on a political site. It’s rather difficult — I have to have ten times the traffic of some other site to make the same amount of money — but it definitely can be done.