Forum Moderators: martinibuster
[google.com...]
Not sure if this should be in Google News or adwords. I guess this forum should really be the one for AdSense questions as it's about advertising.
Also, it seems that the site hangs in IE. Mozilla ( as usual ) works perfectly so use that.
Unlike the exising content targed ads you do not need 20 million visitors to put these ads on your site.
very good point europe. We will turn them on again in a few weeks to see if things have changed.
Weve been cautiously optimisitic on a revival for online advertising for niche content/info sites like ours for several months.
Google may well have given this a massive push.
Why? Because like adwords, they give smaller players an "in". Because traditional online ad networks still use "old advertising models" of volume (e.g. high minimum impression cut offs, sliding scales to give higher volume publishers more return per impression or click), they caused many irrelevant ads to appear in major sites, and people just stopped clicking during the dot com bust.
Now what Google has done with Adsense could well be a move as significant as when they first introduced fast, simple-interface, uncluttered and non-commercially influenced SERPS several years ago and wiped the opposition. Basically they are exploiting the nature of the web - (a vehicle for niching content) and letting small specialist web publishers/sites get in on the action, similar to the opportunity OV and Adwords gave to smaller advertisers to advertise even with very small advertising budgets.
I guess that only google though, with their massive reach of advertisers and publishers could do this, along with their continuing strategy to work with small publishers rther than build the massive exclusive monopolies and oligarchies that their competitors copied from the "old media" before online published started transforming the industry (Harry Potter excepted!)
The signs are there, albeit at an early stage, that Google may do to the on-line advertising industry what they did to the search industry - offer a killer "obvious" solution which changed the way other companies started using search.
Its also great to see all the content/info guys on WebmasterWorld posting away again, and that a lot of our work may start paying off.
And in any case, you should be selling that cruise for 25% commission - not 25 cents a click!
Look up the equivalent per click earnings you get from affiliate programs. Then compare that to how much the same merchant is prepared to pay per click at Google or Overture.
It is not uncommon to find merchants paying $1 a click at PPCSEs, yet affiliates find it hard to get more than a few cents per click from that merchant's affiliate program.
In such cases, AdSense makes more sense.
And it's one of the reasons why AdSense may spell bad news for all the ripoff aff progs out there.
I have a long history with affiliate programs. During the crazy dotcom boom, I was making as much as $11,000 each month in revenue from affiliate programs, largely by -- yes, I'm evil -- buying up terms on Overture. Back then, it was easy to buy popular terms for 1-10 cents, and quickly get 12-50 cents per click on average from affiliate programs.
The trick (formerly and currently)? Pick "rich" genres (dating, credit card, and -- though I didn't venture into this area -- porn, for instance). Measure ROI carefully and frequently. And create landing pages that offer impatient surfers a quick gateway to the 'real' programs BUT also more curious/skeptical surfers some actual content (e.g., reviews, tips) so that your page ends up providing some value.
Nowadays, of course, it's all different. Gone are the days of being able to buy most terms for popular programs at anything remotely near succesful 3rd party affiliate ROIs. And while I understandably miss the goofy fun income I enjoyed previously, I must say that I do think the change -- brought about by market forces, really -- is for the better.
Despite my joking about being "evil" earlier in this note, though, I don't think I was really a bad guy. I bought up terms like, 'apply for credit card' and actually created a landing page comparing various cards, their benefits, their terms, and so on... enabling people to make some informed choices that they couldn't get just by jumping straight to a single credit card company's site.
But anyway, while things HAVE settled down now, there are still many instances in which "honest" affiliate programs (and their affiliates) still make sense. I plan on creating a content-rich section of detailed online music service reviews. In that case, I'm probably going to make more from pressplay / rhapsody affiliate income than I would from AdWords while still providing an honest service to my visitors.
The dating pages on my site also still continue to bring in more click-thrus and per-click profits than AdWords for me.
But, boy, I can tell you... I'm this close to dumping Amazon.com. My income from that company has consistently been under 5 cents per click. I'd probably get more money by replacing all those links and banners with "Please donate $1 to my site". Or if I could just put AdWords on both the left AND right panels of my pages... :D
So, in a (long) nutshell:
some affiliate programs < AdSense < other affiliate programs
One of the coolest aspects of AdSense, though? I agree with Max^3: this is really going to put some pressure on less-reputable affiliate programs :)
assumptions:
results:
for me this doesn't look like an attractive business case.
do the calculation with lower assumptions and it looks even worse.
ps. in case this was said before - sorry! didn't read through all pages, could'nt find anything through site search though.
for the moment its probably mostly meant for covering hosting costs - unless you deal with some niche areas.
You can argue your numbers - for example Overture numbers in this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
are $0.35 to $0.36, yet Google may still be lagging behind on average.
but even then its no home-run.
(long time no hear by the way ;))
>>average CPC: estimated 0.1 $ (high estimation, isn't it?)<<
>>average click rate: 1% (taking an extremly high estimation as google says adwords perform better than banners due to their contextual relevance)<<
are not applying in our case. Lets just say they are under-estimations.
I DO think that Google has a quite high minimum cut-off for CPC for ads to appear on Adsense content sites.
[edited by: chiyo at 1:03 pm (utc) on June 23, 2003]
Reality so far (as reported by others in this thread and observed by myself) appears to be less pessimistic than you are:
* An average CPC of 0.1$ is a low estimation.
* A click rate of 1% is a low estimation.
* A revenue share of 50% may be a realistic or again a low estimation.
I have very little data as of yet, but I'm guessing that I may get to the payout limit with 100'000 page views or less.
@ chiyo & bird:
do your examples fall into the above category?
but what about an average mom&pop website? eg. a website or discussion board not focused on anything commercial, a site commercially unspecific? any reports?
I see the design and philosophy of Adwords being highly targeted to niche sites and pages with plenty of static content and/or authority. I cant really see it working as well with say "commercial" sites (too many competitive issues) or for sites which attract lower income groups.
I dont think i would bother having Adsense on very broadly focused pages, on pages with lots of links, or pages that don't attract people with a good disposable income or are not thinking about buying anything at all (like some discussion boards or blogs or maybe news pages)
Choosing the pages on which to display Adsense i think Makessense.
