Cold hard stats from a regular publisher

Earning $11,000 in October

[Jenstar]

We had a discussion a few months ago about one of the AdSense case studies, for the PetPlace website. [webmasterworld.com]

I finally had time to check out the Jan/Feb issue of eContent magazine (a printed trade publication) and there was an interview with Steve Zucker of PetPlace, as well as Kurt Ambrahamson, Google's director of content media. PetPlace definitely reveals some stats (I would assume they have Google's A-OK to reveal them, since they are a case study).

Some of the more interesting points the article makes, and ones that we don't often see the hard facts on, because it is a TOS violation issue:

"Between August 25 and August 30, it generated over $1,500 in revenue," he says. It got better from there. In September, PetPlace reaped about $8,600, and then $11,000 in October.

"On average we are seeing CTRs between 2.7% and 3.3%," though he warns that high CTRs do not translate into higher revenue.

"For smaller sites, it can be hundreds of dollars a month; for larger ones, it can be hundreds of thousands of dollars," says Kurt Abrahamson, Google's director of content media.

The full article:
Content Goes Googling for Dollars [econtentmag.com]

[figment88]

Macro, I gave two instances that Alexa wouldn't pick-up.

You slam me for one and compliment Chndru on reiterating the second.

[markus007]

Macro trafficranking.com is useless, it says my site with 650,000 pageviews a day get 8,000. Same with other sites i know.

[Macro]

figment88, LOL. Sorry, you were in fact the first to point out that "some of their content might be distributed to partners". It did not register in my non-technical brain as to what that might mean. I only recognised it when Chndru offered an example. My apologies. I still don't think that password protected pages offers a very large percentage of their traffic though. I'm bemused at how Google choose this site as an example, and am impressed by the deviousness of this choice. Any average webmaster would go to this site, look at their PR, perhaps check alexa, trafficrankings, and metricmarket and go away thinking: "That site is not much larger than mine. If they can do $11,000 I should be able to do at least $10,000".

freeflight2 and markus007, nobody said that trafficranking or alexa is infallible. Please read the previous posts. We are aware of how those results can be manipulated and we only consider them as part of a variety of similarly less-than-100%-accurate data that together provide a clearer picture.

<edit reason: to correct the spelling of "clearer">

[edited by: Macro at 11:28 am (utc) on Mar. 12, 2004]

[percentages]

The numbers suggested by this article are almost identical to one of my sites.....Alexa ranking and page views for me is a bit higher. I don't try to manipulate the Alexa rankings, seems pointless to me.

The problem I have is this:

You all seem to doubt the revenue being generated by PetPlace, but the numbers they stated are lower than my affiliate revenue numbers for "similar" traffic.

So what are all you "AdSense" folks telling me? We don't belive the revenue is there in this case study? If so, I ain't going anywhere near AdSense!

[loanuniverse]

You all seem to doubt the revenue being generated by PetPlace,

Nope, I believe it. I also think others are making more.

[Macro]

percentages, I don't know about other "Adsense folk" but I am certainly more than happy with what it's earning me. It's earning me several multiples of what any affiliate program paid me before. It earns me in one day more than all the affiliate programs put together were earning me in a month. It's amazing beauty is that - unlike affiliate programs - I don't need to keep changing creative each time advertisers say "jump", I don't need to manually post ads, track clickthroughs/conversions or anything really. Adsense is very convenient for the lazy webmaster or one who doesn't have time. Post and forget, that suits me.

I am unable to estimate what traffic petplace is getting from their association with Netscape, AOL etc. Metricsmarket et al give me Netscape.com figures rather than the sub domain figures. The earnings figures bandied about in relation to petplace.com may be possible if they are indeed getting the traffic they say. Note though that Google's page describing this case example makes no mention of these figures. The site owners themselves make no direct claims. Any figures talked about are those posted by a third party site without any investment in providing the truth. It may well be the truth but perhaps I've been in business too long to take things at face value, especially when that info isn't coming from the "horse's mouth". Of course Google won't mind figures like those being bandied about - especially if they don't have to admit or deny them.

I can recommend Adsense strongly. Maybe there's some way you can do a trial run to "suck it and see".

Nope, I believe it

Fair enough. I still don't but can't quite put my finger on "why". Maybe it's because I can't access their server logs and Adsense stats :-)

[edited by: Macro at 6:14 pm (utc) on Mar. 12, 2004]

[Jenstar]

Nope, I believe it

Fair enough. I still don't but can't quite put my finger on "why". Maybe it's because I can't access their server logs and Adsense stats :-)

Putting PetPlace aside for the moment, there ARE publishers making this much money and more each month.

[Macro]

there ARE publishers making this much money and more each month

Absolutely!

[freitasm]

percentages, I don't know about other "Adsense folk" but I am certainly more than happy with what it's earning me. It's earning me several multiples of what any affiliate program paid me before.

100% agreed. I like what I give to AdSense and what I receive back :)