Comments on: Financial Blogger Abandons AdSense

By: Mike - Boat loans

Mike - Boat loans — Mon, 19 May 2008 07:17:07 +0000

Its about having control vs generating revenue. If you can make more money having more control over ads, it makes a lot of sense. This could be a case when there are advertisers who want your space. But for most people making some money from adsense would be more important than knowing what ads they show.

By: Anil Tandon

Anil Tandon — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:57:04 +0000

Adsense also saves you the bother of getting advertisers for your site, uploading ads and taking them off. Then why bother about control?

By: kev

kev — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:51:55 +0000

He put the ads back on, but only because he was bombarded with reader comments urging him to do so. The readers’ reasoning, and his response, can be read here:

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/02/03/a-decision-on-ads/

In the end, he decided on a compromise: he put the ads back up, but underneath each of them he provides a link where readers can report distasteful ads.

Sounds like a good solution to me. My guess is this, as well as Google’s new Ad Review Center, will solve his problem.

By: garcia

garcia — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:47:56 +0000

Well, so much for all the “integrity” – he put the ads back on his blog again.

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:38:35 +0000

As always its nice to read the varied opinions that make blogging what it is. The topic is interesting but I think too much attention is paid to relevant ads. My blog (6 months and counting) has AdSense recently placed them. I’m not concerned so much with relevant advertising. The few that I found distasteful I blocked.

Many people land on a blog and just as there are diverse opinions on this one subject, visitors land on your site for various reasons. An unrelated ad may interest them who knows.

I visit my own blog quite a bit in this season changing and adjusting things which I’ve heard is not good if you have advertising. But I still have to visit my own site. I’m trying things out and still finding “my voice” as they say. So I can’t blame advertising. I’m a visual creature thanks to a background as an artist so seeing my site is important.

There is so much online about blogging, AdSense and Google that most readers know the system better than we do. Those who don’t will, that’s a guarantee. And after all we’re readers ourselves.

AdSense is the best shot for newbie publishers and others who don’t want to spend a lot of unnecessary time making decisions about advertising.

On the other hand I think we might be overlooking something in the AdSense war and that is we are helping to create it. This one source of Advertising dominates blogs and websites. People read and form an opinion. Then they visit a site with AdSense and have already decided its taboo without even trying it out to see if there is something there.

Google is about search. Even their advertising program is about search. They have not meandered away. They are steady in their mission. I should be so focused.

I’ll be posting some future content on the subject, but for now it might raise suspicions that I’m trying to get my visitors to click on ads, so thanks for the article Darren, really helpful and thought provoking.

By: Elaine Vigneault

Elaine Vigneault — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 16:28:40 +0000

That’s the same reason I dumped adsense. I need to be able to carefully control what ads display on my blog. Otherwise I lose credibility to my readers. So I decided to go another route entirely and I signed up with BlogHer ads. I’m much happier now with that choice for my main blog.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:22:16 +0000

Interesting read. Bold move. I hope it works out for him!

By: razmaspaz

razmaspaz — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:49:58 +0000

I read his post when he did this. Courageous. Sounded like this was the bulk of his revenue stream.

By: John Lutter

John Lutter — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:52:50 +0000

What always kills me about adsense is that I get all kinds of off-topic and completely un-related ads displayed on my site.

I realize that they are just serving ads based on keywords (and probably a bunch of other nebulous criteria) but it sure would be nice to be able to pick and choose the types or category of ads that are displayed.

I think I’d be a better judge of the types of ads that would perform the best on my blog. Not some algorithm.

By: Tom Hanna

Tom Hanna — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 07:59:20 +0000

I think we may all be missing the biggest advantage of Adsense here – you don’t HAVE to control every single ad. That’s a huge improvement over the bad old days when the only way to make money online was with labor intensive affiliate ads. “Your creative is expired!” and “New creative available!” Bacn in your inbox daily. The big names shaving sales/leads. Readers getting bad link messages if you were too busy producing content to mess with constantly changing the links. These are things I can live without, but if you want them and you insist on working with Google, try Google Referrals – Google’s version of a horrid, unprofitable affiliate program.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 07:19:19 +0000

Darren,

I have spotted that there is still Adsense running here on your blog on certain pages, for example
http://www.problogger.net/31-days/

Just wondering if you knew this or if it was something that has long since been forgotten. Thought I’d point that out.

By: Abelicio Padilla

Abelicio Padilla — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 06:07:11 +0000

I use adsense, but sometimes the ads don’t seem to match my content. Maybe it’s my wishy-washy writing…lol

By: Keral Patel

Keral Patel — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:42:55 +0000

Adsense is becoming more of a wallpaper on websites then the revenue source. All due to this junk ads that earns us 0.001 USD per click. ahaaha

By: Dan Cole

Dan Cole — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:13:17 +0000

Adsense just doesn’t appear to work and when it does mum is the word. I’ve only hear of a handful of good things about Adsense, compared to a truck load of bad things. But then again it takes years to become a good source of income.

By: Suzie Cheel

Suzie Cheel — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 02:26:28 +0000

Thanks for the link, I have been thinking of putting adsense on after not doing this so far. So the post gives lots of food for thought. The relevance is really an important factor

By: Dustin

Dustin — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:00:49 +0000

Even with Ad Review, it sounds like you’re only able to limit advertisers who specifically target your site. For someone like myself who runs a real estate blog for real estate agents, I had to take off Google Ads because the most relevant ads were almost always from agents competing in the same market… even if they weren’t targeting my site.

By: Janette Toral

Janette Toral — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:00:38 +0000

I think AdSense can still be of use if the site is very much clear with its theme and targeted to an audience who are still beginners. They may appreciate the ads that they see on the site as it compliments the content (being keyword sensitive).

However, for blogs, where everything can be discussed under the sun, the kind of ads that appear are too volatile. Like in one of my blogs on women empowerment, if a post contains the word “Asian” or “Filipina”, it will likely show ads on Asian girls dating sites which is very inappropriate. We saw this happened in my many blogs who joined our writing project lately focusing on the Filipina theme.

One of the many suggestions, Google can consider to ask AdWords advertisers – for what audience groups are their ads meant for – or any other tool to figure this. For AdSense members, require the listing of blogs/sites and put an audience classification.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:44:19 +0000

I’m not too surprised by this. It’s one of the reasons that I have not put AdSense ads on my blog. It’s too unpredictable what ads will come up when and I don’t have time to police all of the ads.

By: Rohit

Rohit — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:40:05 +0000

While this throws light that Adsense cannot be considered as the supreme earner for all bloggers……..his decision came just when the AdReview center is launched..

He should have tried it …

By: Johnny

Johnny — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:08:27 +0000

i’m one that went back to adsense. i swapped out my 728×90 banner spot for some affiliate offers…came out zero. so i guess any adsense cents would be better than that.