7 Reasons Why Google AdSense Sucks
#1) The CPM’s are Weak
Yes CPM’s are dropping everywhere and the days of $50CPM are distant memories, but the CPM’s with AdSense always seem to be low. Why is it that the CPM’s suck if you are publisher, and the CPC are so high when you are on the other side as an advertiser? Oh yah, they have a market cap of $175,000,000,000. Yes that is 175 billion with 9 zeros. Why don’t they share publicly what percentage of the revenue they actually give to the publishers? Can you think of a reason why they would hide this? Every single ad Network and every single affiliate company in the world tells you what percentage payout they give you. Google is the only one that doesn’t. What kind of partner, doesn’t share that information with you? It should be illegal not to disclose.
#2) They Look Like Crap
This one is baffling more than anything. How can a company with over 20,000 employees not come up with a banner that looks more ascetically pleasing to the eye? The customizations are weak. Colors and rounded corners? Come on G, come up with slick looking ads! Even the Graphic ads, have the self promotion, ‘Ads by Google’ that makes them look ugly. Do you really need to advertise AdSense more? Thousands of top bloggers have pulled them off their site for the simple reason of how bad they look on their site, and you should too if you want your site to look more professional.
#3) Inverse Relationship to Revenue
After meeting and talking to hundreds of site owners over the years and meeting folks who say they either make money or don’t make money off AdSense, I come to this conclusion. AdSense revenue is inversely related to the quality of your content. If you have great content, readers are going to stick around your site and read more but if you content quality is weak they are going to keep looking elsewhere and click on the Google Ads with the keywords of what they are really looking for. So if you have keyword rich weak content, you will actually make more money with AdSense.
#4) PSA’s
Also known as Public Service Ads, these ads show up when Google can’t find a match for your site, and they normally only show up when you have the default set to display only graphical ads. OK, I can be as charitable as the next guy, but not only do you not make any money off these ads, they look like crap. I’ve yet to see a nicely designed PSA. Here is a tip to all you charities out there, hire a professional designer, or get a professional graphic designer to ‘donate’ his services and get some nice looking banner ads designed. Otherwise, keep those lousy PSA’s off my site.
#5) Anyone is Approved
This is the biggest joke with AdSense and the reason that the web is filled with millions of completely useless shitty sites. AdSense is the cause. Yes, the biggest search engine in the world, the folks who pride themselves on “helping your organize information” is the #1 culprit of enabling anyone to create a crap site and make money off it. Anyone can put up a website, plagiarize, steal and copy content and then slap on AdSense ads to potentially make a few bucks. Almost every single ad network in the world has some type of approval process and quality control, but not AdSense, everyone is welcome. Why? Google’s revenue is the ultimate long tail and those hundreds of millions of spammers are all soldiers in Google’s revenue army, all splogging and generating pennies that add up to billions.
#6) It Makes You Lazy
AdSense is a crutch for the lazy publisher. It is kind of like crack cocaine, when you get a small taste of it, you keep coming back for more, even when you know it is bad for you. You think, oh well, at least it is some money. I never hear anyone saying. OMG, I am making a killing off AdSense on my ONE site! The few bucks you get a month keeps you on a drip feed life support so you don’t go out and sell your own ads.
#7) They keep your Money
This is one of the things that really irks me with Google and should make you mad too. How many millions of dollars of other people’s money do they have in the bank that they will never pay out? They used to have a lower payouts lever and now it needs to be $100. I guarantee that there are litterly millions of small publishers with super low traffic that will NEVER hit the minimum payout level and just give up or remove it from their site. What happens to this money? Google keeps it. Hmm? I’m guessing that the guy in the 3rd world country with the $38 dollars sitting idle in his account needs the money more than they do? They should be forced to pay out all monies owning to small site owners!
Enough is enough. Let’s convince Google to disclose what percentage of your revenue they keep and force them to pay out all monies owed to small site owners.
How much money is sitting in your AdSense Account?
This guest post is by Chad Randall. He has been in the online advertising space for over 10 years, and is now the CEO of AdvertiseSpace Inc. http://www.AdvertiseSpace.com.
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- O adsense é bom ou nem por isso? | WebVicio.com - October 28, 2009 at 11:36 am
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Meh. Adsense give me a pretty stable income for absolutely no work after a site is up an running.
And the terms are clearly laid out. If you have $38 sitting in your account, it’s just a sign that you need to do more keyword research and create some more sites.
So you are satisfy with adsense ?
How much you are making … give us near about amount.
I make $100 to $150 per site per month.
Each site takes about 10 hours of initial work (initial 5 to 10 articles, links, CMS setup, etc), then 2-3 hours per month for maintenance and link building for about 3 months. I never need to add additional content.
Launch 4 sites a month for the next 6 months and you’ll have a hassle-free full-time income in less than year.
And what are the niches you are going for …
@Matt – exactly my point on #5. You are a splogger creating useless sites that never get updated. Adsense is the cause of this
SW,
Why would I tell you my niches?
@Chad
On the contrary, my sites are very helpful and rank well precisely because they solve a problem or answer a question people are searching for. I get “thank you” emails and comments nearly everyday from people who found my sites.
No other ad network and no method of selling direct ad space would provide adequate monetization of these websites because they’re traffic is so low. However, the traffic is very targeted, so adsense can create relevant ads very easily. Other types of sites, I do sell direct ads and that way works best . But one size doesn’t fit all.
If you write crap content, don’t expect to be very successful with adsense, because eventually (most of the time) you will penalized in the serps and will never help build a sustainable business model.
Typically, most of these “such and such service” sucks articles come from people who don’t understand it fully, or have tried and failed to make money with it, and so they blame the service or network.
I understand you not wanting to tell us your niches.
Can you tell us, however, the process you use to identify topics of interest. ( I guess by ‘topics’, I mean specific keywords).
For instance, I have seen certain keywords recently have $35 bids, but the search volume is low, maybe 100 searches a month.
Are these the topics worth pursuing? I know I can create 10 pages of useful relevant content, but because of the low search volume, am I better focusing elsewhere?
Also, can you tell us approx. the $ dollar value of the keywords you are targeting. (like if you are targeting the keyword “cars”, and the top ppc bid is $6, etc.)?
I am curious, is it better to have the $30 click with low volume, or the $1 click with lots of volume.
How much traffic do each of your Adsense sites bring in approx. and what is your average CTR of Adsense ads on these sites?
Sorry if I am overstepping my bounds.
Thanks in advance.
How in the world would you know if Matt is a splogger?
I think calling someone splogger isn’t justified here unless you can back it up. Btw, I hate sploggers, I don’t think they make up much of Adsense anyways though, that’s probably the 0.00001% of Adsense anyways. Just my 2 cents, I’ve been doing pretty well with adsense. If adsense didn’t exist, I would be working for someone else now.
Creating tonnes of sites and slapping up content that doesn’t get updated is the very definition of splogging.
That may be your definition, but that doesn’t make it true. Just because a site doesn’t get updated doesn’t make it not have value.
I have to agree with this, splogger is someone who takes “RSS feeds” and auto blogs, but content providers are not sploggers. If you create great content and rank #1 on Google, that’s the whole purpose of Google, finding the most relevant content for people. Well, just my 2 cents.
Yeah, agree some time there are some value in it. I more think that spblogger is who do auto blog.
Matt it’s not true… no words. If your all websites the same as linked, come- on! almost 4 mils on Alexa for 3 years of operation? give me a brake.
AdSense Sucks by default.
Thx, John for not hiding the facts
This is a guest post. John didn’t write it. Don’t thank him.
I assume that people who didn’t finish the post will not know who is writing the post, am I right?
I wrote the post, you can thank or bitch slam me…
No this one is nice post and covering maximum aspect of Google adsense.
Seems to me that you have in depth knowledge about adsense.
By the way … what was your maximum earning amount through adsense ?
I knew it was you who wrote the post.
Haha I have no idea Chad, perhaps I need to thank you for this great post, you have great point of views in Google Adsense, but I’m not planning to ditch my Adsense ads yet at this moment.
I won’t thank you since I think you’re completely wrong here so I guess I’ll bitch slam you. I make quite a nice living from adsense. I think the people that don’t understand how to make it work think that it can’t work and then write articles like this one.
I totally agree with you, I do have a construction blog which has less than 20 articles, I’ve stopped updating it for months but the earning keep increasing this few days.
I believe that updating is not a big deal, as long as we have some information that helps or answers people’s questions, then the site will be ranked well.
Yes, look at Carl Ocab as an example. Although he doesn’t update his blog too frequently (at least not these days) he ranks pretty well (if not fantastic).
Pearsonified is also a great example. He hasn’t updated in over a year, but he is still top 30,000 with PR 6 or 7.
That doesn’t mean Adsense doesn’t suck.
I think Pearsonified is great and he created Thesis Theme, many pro blogger links to him and I believe that he receives quite a lot traffic from referral site.
Same to you, Adsense doesn’t suck at all, some people still have great earning from Adsense.
That’s why adsense call as lazy making like in this article mention.
This is the point 3) Inverse Relationship to Revenue of this post and believe me guys follow this put less content or irrelevant content and get more money …
its is what it is. If you can get millions of people to work for you for free and not disclose what you will pay (So you can effectively raise or lower it whenever you want for any reason you want) then why wouldn’t you? Google is doing a pretty good job of not paying out to crap sites and this should act as a deterrent because the amount of effort in relation to payout is so disproportionate. But dumb people are dumb people and if they want to work for nothing then so be it.
I do not find the payout inversely proportional to quality, in fact the higher the quality the more you are paid per click.
I would agree there should be changes, but one has to realize they will not come until the free labor force demands changes… and they demand change by opting out when payouts are low.
The nature of adsense is such that people have to leave your site to go where the ad takes them. They wouldn’t click the ad if they were happy with the content on your site.
I have 1 adsense ad because I hate Kontera (which i think might be worse than adsense now), and I will probably take it down before I break $100.
It is dumb that Google has such a high payout limit. Ugh, the more I think about it, the more I’m pissed. I’m taking my ads down now lol.
Time to stop being lazy and hunt down some better ad networks and actually finish all the paperwork.
Good for you Blake ~ Go do it! Even if you only closed a few affiliate sales you will kill the few bucks adsense would make you.
I couldn’t agree more with this post.
It is unfortunate that if you want to make money with AdSense, you want an ugly site as possible with the AdSense ads as big as possible so as soon as they come to your site they’re gone.
Even though they don’t publish the revshare data, I think it’s competive. I have a feeling they don’t publish the data so they can move it up or down depending if they are going to meet their earning estimates.
Wow, good point. It never occurred to me that Google would actually raise or lower the rate, but maybe that is the reason for not disclosing?? scary thought.
I don’t get why this scares people so much, they’re obviously doing something right, and are making a lot of people with sites a whole lot of money.
This isn’t an industry that hasn’t had people attempt to make successful solutions, on the contrary, this industry has been overloaded with companies. Google is #1 because it plain works. What possible reason could they have for making their revenue share transparent? It benefits us or them how?
Would you go into business with someone if they didn’t want to tell you what % share they were going to give you? When you are earning revenue for another company (Google) off your website you are essentially partners.
I have to agree that this is indeed a well thought out post. But, this is only dealing with one side of the fence. I have a feeling that Chad hadn’t spent real time on the other side, or perhaps had failed in a past attempt at it.
The reason I am assuming this is because I have also read some similarly well thought out articles by some other writers who have actually plunged themselves deep in the adsense business and made good in it. And it is not always true that only bad content sites gets adsense-clicked. A lot of people who are doing good actually advice to put in good content that will actually satisfy people who are seeking for information or solution on some particular topic.
I am presently learning the ropes about this adsense thingy and I find it good to see both sides of the equation being discussed thoroughly.
Hey James, thanks for the comment, I have actually spent years using AdSense and have done for well over $100,000 in revenue. But that is pale in comparison to millions I’ve sold with display advertising. Great systems you shouldn’t have to ‘figure them out’ and learn to game them to make money using them.
I’m sorry Chad for my mistake of assuming that you haven’t enough experience with Adsense.
‘Display Advertising‘… now that’s something that should take me to another direction of research. Thanks.
The only advertising programs I have on my site is google adsense, lomadee (affiliate program) and commissions of submarino for the books I write reviews.
The adsense is the better program in my case. I don’t know if that’s because I haven’t tried too much different ads programs, but with 9k visitor/month (very low traffic) I got $40/month. I usualy write only 1-2 posts per week, so I don’t think I’d have a higher revenue with other kind of programs.
But I agree with most of the reasons listed here.
Cheers!
So finally in which side you are Matheus …
In favour of Adsense
OR
Against Adsense
As I still didn’t find another good ads program to my site, I’m in favour of adsense. And I think it’s a not bad profit for a traffic of 9k per month.
Am I wrong?
It is not about wrong or true i think. It is about what you like to do as your making money tools.
How could anyone be against Adsense. No, it’s not right for every site, but if you aren’t at least making something from Adsense, you are missing a world of opportunity.
adsense makes it very easy to get lazy. For years I was making between $1k to $2k with it. The problem is that it was so easy that I was not working on other ways to monetize. One day google decided to remove me from their program without any explanation. They also kept the $1k+ that I had sitting in my account from the previous month. Initially I was upset, but it turned out for the better since it forced me to stop being lazy.
And I bet you are making more money now than you ever have? nice.
I disagree. Adsense pays more than any other Publisher as the others suck. I make good money off it so I have no complaints.
That notion that weak, keyword rich spam blogs attract more adsense clicks really sticks in my craw. I have adsense accounts, but I’m not really using it right now.
Thanks for this post. I agree with you completely! I hate Adsense and after reading this I hate it even more!
And we like your blog … Really neat and clean.
So which one is your maximum revenue earning program.
I agree with every one of your statements. It’s high time something was done about the utter disgrace that is Adsense.
lol…This post is full of hype, assumptions and paranoia. CPM over $50? Easy. I have all kinds of sites that do double that. The ads only look like crap because some picky designer said they do. Most visitors don’t care what they look like. Inverse relationship to revenue? How about an average of 7 pageviews per visitor and still making thousands a month off AdSense? PSAs are easy to get rid of, so if they’re a problem, you’re lazy. As far as being a crutch, how about a good filler? If you use it right, it can easily compliment other offerings. I’ve tested with/without AdSense in many situations with tons of offerings and AdSense normally works out to pay off better than anything else. I suppose I could be a unique case, but to come out and say AdSense sucks, I have to laugh because it’s probably user error more than AdSense being a problem
I couldn’t agree more with BrianL. If you aren’t getting at least some of your sites in at a CPM of over $50, you aren’t doing Adsense right. Maybe your blog or sites just really suck.
@Brian
“CPM over $50? Easy. I have all kinds of sites that do double that”
Maybe, but only if the site has super low traffic that is totally loaded with keywords. But is that CPM sustainable if you were to say have 1 million impressions? Never.
1 million impressions over what space of time? And yes, I have sites that have done that over at least a year’s period of time.
Interesting post, and for the most part I agree with your take…the lack of transparency is the major flaw within the armor
I believe google will pay you a balance less than $100 if you close your account and notify them you are taking this process, but they do get to sit on a lot of revnue dollars every month and earn interest on this..
Very interesting article about Google Adsense, honestly tell you that Google Adsense sucks when you promote through your own website until it properly SEO optimised
I like everyone should write for google ads than they should go for hub pages, tipdrop and so on. And in that case they don’t need to worry about seo stuffs just write good quality content than with that content he/she will at least go for the payout money..
Thanks for sharing this wonderful article….
Alam
If you think just anyone is approved you are mistaken. I recently had a friend that wasn’t approved because his site was confusing according to the elves at Adsense.
well.. i think this people with small earning will agree with this , but you and shoemoney that made huge number with google have different idea , right ?
i made $2000 last month and i love google .
Jeadsen, you’ve had good earning from Google Adsense, awaiting for your next month income report. I’m interested to know your October Adsense earning.
Shoemoney ‘used to’ have adsense on his site, but see if you can find any now.
I’m not sure I believe that you made $2000 in one month with only 185 readers to your site? which dollars?
He used to make $2000 in one month from his 3 blogs. I believe that 185 readers is for his main blog, traffic for another 2 blogs is unknown.
@chad
when you know how to deal with google then you don’t even need to put any feedburner count on your blog or have any subscriber at all.. all you need is quality visitor . please tell me if you have a good click from your subscriber…lol
thanks lee… i know you believe in me. for some people that failed with adsense , they can’t easily to believe in people . i wonder chad know if shoe have more than one blog. lol
No problem jeandsen, I know you can do it. 3 niche blogs to get this earning is reasonable, but I believe that the niche must be very profitable and you have tons of articles that rank very well on Google.com.
Anyway, all the best in your October Adsense earning, don’t forgot to share.
i did the same thing with earningstep dot com , earningstep dot com age is about eight month now and rank one on several important keyword like making money program , money program , making money tips ,etc. this is all about SEO.
Hey Jeandsen … no post from you these days.
How much your earningstep is earning from Adsense ?
If you like to share with us.
And i learn from you jeandsen. Hope my account approve soon so i can do what i already learn from you.
I love google for sending me traffic
and I don’t pay attention too much in adsense maybe because I have small income from this program . At the moment I just enjoy to see keyword that people use to visit my blog.
You know Google Adsense works for people and sometimes it doesn’t. You should pick what works for you and go with that. It is good to see your points. Greg Ellison
100% agree with you greg… i know google adsense is working for john…lol
I strongly agree with you, it depends on how people works on it, some people has good experience with Adsense but some people not. And perhaps some people does well with Adsense, and some people does well with Affiliate program.
A lot depends on how good the alternatives are.
I have some sites optimised with adsense and affiliates. The adsenses gives much the better return per click (or cpm, whatever way you look at it).
In fact I think affiliate ads only really work well if you write your content geared towards the sell (which is not appropriate for many websites and blogs).
This leaves the options of Google, Chitika, Kontera etc. To me Google is the winner by a country mile.
Next you have the approach the advertiser way; yeah you get better returns, but there are many niches without that many advertisers, and given the economy it is not as easy to find a direct advertiser nowadays.
If there are folks paying through adwords, then there are advertisers in those niches. In fact, I don’t think you will ever find a niche that someone isn’t looking to advertise in?
Well yes and no.
If your site is dedicated to one niche then yes. But many websites will have diverse adwords advertisers with each page having slightly different advertisers (probably as diverse as the long tail keywords that got them there in the first place).
So a site may have 10,000 different advertisers on it, but most of them would not be niche specific but keyword specific so would be unlikely to want to advertise on the site as a whole.
And say you find someone who wants to advertise on sections of the site, when you are dealing with many advertisers it is going to be a pain keeping up with everything!
Also many adwords campaigns are directed at a specific country, there fore if only 1000 of every 10000 visitors is from the UK for example then an advertiser may see you as being an expensive investment, even if the cpm is half that of what google charges.
Anyway I feel to say that google adsense sucks is a bit unfair, I still feel that it is the best program out there, especially for sites that are difficult to moneterise by other methods.
hey Adsense is other form to make money just do a good job
I totally disagree with this post. This guy is just trying to promote his new service. Google Adsense is perhaps the best way to generate income via ads on your site. I’ve tried many others and Google Adsense is number 1. Over the years my earnings have increased nicely to over $1K per month. I have tried other ad networks and they never do as well as Google Adsense.
I’ve been making about $100 per month from Google Adsense, it’s too less.
Between, if you don’t recommend Google Adsense, what other way we can monetize our blog instead of using Google Adsense?
I used to make money selling banner ads, web hosting affiliate program and some services. Any other that you recommend?
yeah, it may less lee but that can use to pay your online expenses while you do others thing to make money.
The key i think is do not use google adsense alone.
Yea, I didn’t use Google Adsense as my main income, I do have other money making opportunity to make money from my blog. Anyway, Google Adsense earning is more than enough for me to pay my hosting and all my domains.
lee.. i believe you will find your own way… you have the skill.
Thanks Jeandsen for your support, I’ll work harder on my blog to figure a way to make passive income every month.
As you know, I’m just a part time blogger, so I’ll have limited time online everyday. Anyway, I’ll try my best.
Yeah, google may suck but there are stil lot of money in there. So, do not drop google yet as money making online.
A little bit of a revamp of the adsense system would actually really benefit Google, but hey, at least there are viable alternatives. Thank goodness!
If you say Google Adsense sucks, I say your post sucks!
Look at Problogger Darren Rowse and see what he is getting from Google Adsense. You need to respect what Google gives you. What would you have been if you hadn’t placed Google ads on your site? Who would know John Chow? Who would know your ebook? Who would know Dot Com Pho? And would your TTZ Media be possible? I scorn people who are ungrateful
With all due respect, he just gave his opinion. Anyone can say something sucks or not. You can agree or disagree, but you can’t just say he CAN’T say Adsense sucks.
You can post 7 reasons why Google Adsense rocks
VC, take a look at the Problogger site, one thing you won’t find on that site anymore is AdSense…
You won’t find them on this site anymore either. AdSense WAS a great way to earn revenue off your site, but affiliate sales and direct advertising is far more lucrative now.
Umm, you say no more adsense on Problogger right?? Have you had a look at the page source by any chance?? The ad next to the proglogger logo is a google ad!! (unless http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net is run by another company)
Gizzer – it’s not an adsense ad – its an ad served by Google’s ad server.
I don’t run AdSense on ProBlogger and have not done so for a couple of years. I do however run them on my photography blog as they do convert pretty well there.
Gizzer, ads in Problogger is not Adsense Ad, he uses Google’s ad server to sell his ad space.
If you notice, there is no 125×125 image ads for Adsense ads, so ads in Problogger is not Adsense ads.
How’s this work, you can use Google to sell ads for you? Anyone have a link where I can read more on this.
“Gizzer – it’s not an adsense ad – its an ad served by Google’s ad server.”
It’s called Google Ad Manager, click this link and read more about this :
https://www.google.com/admanager/login/en_US/index.html
I didn’t say “look at the Problogger site”, what i said was “look at Problogger Darren Rowse”.
I must say I agree on the #2. Ads by Google, apart from making them “ugly”, reduces the clicking rate.
I’m sure that removing them will dramaticly increase the clicks rate. People just act this way. If clicking means you get money, I prefer not to click.
Excellent John!
I dont think anyone is approved in Adsense.. Thats the case 3-4 years ago but now they have become more selective in terms of approving or not..
I agree with PSA ads. Most of the time, its just the one showing and of course everyone knows no one gets paid for it..
You can just sign up with one URL and use it on any other one you want, they don’t check beyond the first one.
I’m still sticking with Adsense because it still provide me good monthly income…
Hello John,
I only use adsense in my rss feed
and I use their searce engine on my
Blog..That way you don`t even know
they are there..
Gary,
Well, some of your thoughts are right after all.But not entirely.Adsense had help people a lot on improving people blog and website revenues.That’s include me.Perhaps we should just put adsense, and also include other ads so that we can benefit all of it.
What about Integrity?
Personally I see this sort of thing as the very same thing as wearing a sign at a N.Y. street corner asking people passing by for handouts.
Worst case example, a site bathed in ads that leaches from us –> http://www.dotnetcurry.com/
Then what we should use if we don’t use Google Adsense to monetize our blog?
You should still use google adsense but do not forget to use others such as affiliate or direct paid ads.
You call most adsensers sploggers, yet what would you call someone who writes a pure linkbait post such as this one to promote their product? A linkbaiter?
No I’m not calling everyone using Adsense a splogger. I’m calling folks who create tonnes of keyword rich sites for the pure intent of getting search traffic so someone clicks on an adsense ad, a sploggers.
Yes, I would call someone who writes a linkbait post such as this one a linkbaiter.
But my main intention for this post is show small site owners that they are selling themselves short if they are only using adsense to monetize and with the way Google does business and treats their ‘partners’ they should be angry.
Well, I hope affiliate marketers are smarter than to think that Adsense is the only way to make money with their blogs.
One big advantage which author forget to write is now maximum people knows about adsense and they knows how it works. So less and less people are clicking.
For sure. That’s what I wrote above. If people can avoid you make money, they will. Sponsored ads and affiliate programs are the future (and present).
Great points about Google AdSense, John.
The bad things about AdSense are, in a strange way, what makes it so good. The fact that anyone can drop ads into their site bring mass appeal to those who have no idea how to begin monetizing their site. Even for experienced bloggers, AdSense often remains a mainstay as one of multiple revenue streams.
I totally agree with the lazy point though. If AdSense is your only income source, then you’re missing out on bigger pieces of the pie and may not even realize it.
Yeah, we surely have another income source instead only use google adsense.
Indeed. AdSense is a great way to help you earn revenue from your site/blog, but it isn’t the only way. If you truly want to maximize such revenue, it’ll be good to explore your other options… provided it doesn’t go against Google’s TOA.
Once you figure out the way on how to make money with Adsense, and you’re able to make a passive income to the maximum, then you should look for other money making opportunity. We should always try new ways to make money, don’t you?
Oh definitely. Any avenue or any way possible. I think it’s great that there’s a lot of ways you can do that online. Google and Adsense certainly paved the way for that. If it doesn’t work for you, there’s still other ways. Anything’s possible online.
I’ll add another to that list. Their ability to serve relevant ads on some sites is crap. I have an article database with a around 1000s of daily impressions with few clicks because the ads mostly served up are irrelevant to the article pages. Google do have a ‘hint’ tag to make the ads more relevant but good luck on getting permission to use that. Seems to be only invitation based. I do see Ezinearticles.com uses the hint tag, by searching their source code.
1) This article may not have been written by JC, but its on his website so it, affectively, is advocated by JC
2) According to a recent video release by JC (Zero To $40k – available on this website) approx one third of his income comes from adsense, does this article now mean JC has given up on that model?
3) Google, through Adsense, provides a mechanism for Joe Blogs to “make money online” through a website, a concept that the likes of JC make a great deal of money from.
4) The simple truth is that you could either show adsense (or the like) ads, or screw over your visitors with “black hat” backend tactics selling them regurgitated information packed into an ebook, which they could easily get (for free) from splogger sites.
5) There is very litte “unique” content on this site which cannot be found on other websites/blogs/whatever you want to call them. Just because a concept / topic is rewritten into ones own words or put into a list form does not make unique, or is this comment the bit that makes this article unique?
As the saying goes, one should not sh!t on ones own doorstep!!
Good hunting to all…
Hi,
I would like to suggest John and fellow readers to checkout AdCapacity.com. We are not an Ad network or an affiliate, we simply help advertisers connect with media property owners…for free. Simply list your website’s profile for advertisers to find you and start doing direct ad sales.
Best Regards,
John
This message is very helpful information. Very helpful to those whom are beginners and want to know how to grow better financially, it is a guiding tip for users in trying to make some money or should have good advertising site that really does the job.
Yeah you’re right John, but what can I use for Spanish? What else can I use?
I have $80 on my Adsense account.
Google should have net transfer in all countries with payout as $10 like Chitika.
Hmmm, $100 CPM is alive and well with adsense, I can assure you. It’s all about the niche.
i have lost so much money on Google. A waste of money.
This post is about Google Adsense, how can you lose money by using Adsense?
It’s taken me six months to get to $60! they pay out at $100 right?not long to go now.How will I spend all that money?
Keep hanging in there Andrew. It took me around the same time to get my first adsense cheque. As your site ages and you add even more content you will find that the next hundred will probably take half the time, and before you know it you will be getting a payment every month
I have been noticing a lot of PSA ads around ALL networks now. I wonder if the government is paying these companies…
-Mike
All ad companies don’t work if you just put ads on your site. Simple as that.
I have been pursuing a business plan that would generate 33% of my income from adsense and reading your article makes me want to reconsider. I’ll probably still give it a try but my expectations are now lower.
I think adsense can still give you a good result as long as you do it right.
If you find a good niche and write relevant content which you keep up to date (not the same as updated continuously!) Google Adsense beats any other method to monetize such a small niche web site, that is the number one reason Google Adsense doesn’t “suck” for me, I make good money with it. BTW, if you build splogs your site / blog gets very fast smart priced and you make only cents, if anything at all. There is a lot of false information in this article, one reason could be that the writer is the owner / founder of an adsense competitor, the other, more likely one is, that because he didn’t make a good income from adsense, he assumes that that is adsenses’ fault, not his. SY
Yeah, i agree with you that is why i said “adsense stiil good if you do it in right way.”
I agree, Adsense sucks, Glad I got banned and moved away from it.
1) You page crashes Google Chrome with all of this sales crap. What happened to your quick-and-fast page from early 2008? You’re losing dedicated readers by overselling.
2) You didn’t list any AdSense alternatives. Shame! No action item! I came to this post looking for possible alternatives (from my RSS reader, I might add that I’m a subscriber…) and couldn’t find any. Fix this!
Ballsy!!!!! This is a great post. Publishers definitely get the short end of the stick when it comes to Adsense. Most often they ban someone just as they are about to meet the payout threshold. LOL:)
And usually because they use illegal way to get that earn.
One thing I don’t understand. Don’t websites who copy other contents have very low “quality score”. These kind of website usually get ads that only pay couple cents.
Lol, this subject gets really some discussion going, what about a follow up blog post “Why Google Adsense doesn’t suck always” ? SY
Hey John,
This is one post that I think really based on the facts. Many IMs love the google ad sense and they promote it very well on their blogs.
And this is all because they make some good money from it. But after reading this post I am sure that they will give a second thought to their Adsense accounts.
Thanks for this eye opening post John.
BTW, i think google adsense is really suck in account accepting.
Debate on adsense is endless because this one used by from newbie to professional blogger (like Darren)
But yes if you have niche which can give you more money than adsense than you should use that form.
Very interesting post. But how come adsense is so successful if it sucks os much? They probably doing something right, right ? Also, I would be happy to see recommended alternatives. Otherwise this post has little value.
yeah i think the worst thing is Ads By Google that really make the layout worse . . .
moreover, they also add the Ads By Google on rich media format just few days ago
I agree i spend thousands on adwords,and even lose some money..well done John..
Adsense has the poorest support team – they never reply back even if there is mistake from their side.
I think they should receive tons of emails everyday, so it’s expected if they didn’t reply you.
Btw, Arpit what kind of mistaken that you’ve figured out from their side?
I once sent them an email and I got a reply, though it took a while. As Lee said, they get a lot of email everyday, and though they have people to handle this kind of business, it isn’t impossible that the miss out on a few messages. Try sending it again.
Hi
I think this may be a good information for us because it is a great problem for those whose are work on PPC.
I wonder why such crap articles are posted in here.
Oh i know. The writer is trying to promote his own services which is to sell ads. Now we know why adsense is bad.
Thanks for the insight Chad.
It is free blogosphere indeed. You can write what you think freely.
If you had such great content on your own sites, you would link to it instead of leaving the URL blank.
Yep he is right. I have been making a full time living online for over 10 years. Adsense sucks. So please don’t do careful kw research to find niches with high value and low competition. Don’t write valid SEO optimized copy for your readers, and don’t give them good info on what they are searching for. Don’t build links. And of course, don’t cash those Google checks. Leave them for me.
Yeah I agree. Adsense indeed sucks. Please go build authority blogs with super beautiful content as a form of link bait. Pass me all your kw research and I will burn it off for you.
There again lies the root of the problem, you are writing your content FOR adsense. If you take a look at the best blogs out there, they are written with a passion for the topic and actually provide help and useful information. You guys search for keywords and then write content around it.
Another controversial post by John Chow. I agree on many points, but I can’t understand your reason on some points. Btw, I’m the part of small publishers with small earning. Very small I think.:D
Yeah, and the controversy is work in term of traffic and discussion.
Adsense realy sucks. But where is the competitor for adsense? MSN and Yahoo and other ad networks are lagging behind Adsense.
I believe that Adsense is the best pay per click network so far, Adsense has more advertiser and could serve publisher relevant ads.
That’s what I think and that’s the reason I still stick with Adsense.
Yeah, google is still the best. But yeah, account accepting process really suck for me.
try showing this post to Tim carter of AskTheBuilder.com
Plese also share what they said about it.
Lively comment section! I agree Adsense isn’t the best long-term solution for most (not all) successful sites; however, it’s a great monetization placeholder while a site ages and/or other monetization strategies are pursued.
OK. If I agree to your points that there is a problem, give me some solution then?
By the way, John Chow, I’m experiencing problems with your website. If I open it in IE8, my browser becomes unresponsive and then a dialog box comes whether to stop the executing script or to keep it running.
You make very good points in this article my only criticism is that you do not name any alternative to Adsense, I have tried other advertising networks and they pay even less than them, even if theit ad tools are far superior.
Adsense sucks… and alternatives?
For sites that don’t do well in affiliate programs what are the alternatives?
Besides, adsense provides ads in several languages, that is a HUGE plus… In my language they really are the best alternative (portuguese).
People seem to hate adsense ads too. I know I get turned off a website when I see loads of adsense..