I started dumping AdSense at the end of last year, but I still lurk here and from what I have read recently it seems that my decision was vindicated. Throughout 2014 my AS income went from a useful, growing amount to almost nothing and instead of showing ads that might be useful to my readers the ads were so off-topic they were embarrassing and completely useless. I have never considered it my task to constantly micromanage 'contextual' advertising, I don't have the time, and even when I tried it was futile. In the end there was only one course of action and my income ended up being so low that it wasn't missed.
Over several months I have been converting the various sections of my site to responsive while, at the same time, removing AS and adding affiliate code. There are just a few AS ads left on pages that get very few PVs. Most of the ads have now gone. My first few attempts with affiliates weren't successful (including Amazon, which never worked for me personally), but I found one that works quite well for my subject matter. The products are 100% perfect for my readership instead of being entirely inappropriate like AdSense.
It's still not perfect, but in my first full month my affiliate earnings smashed my previous AdSense record (from December 2012) and even a bad affiliate day is about 10 times as good as a good AdSense day these days. I didn't receive a great many $80 clicks with AdSense, but I have achieved that with just one affiliate referral already. Even in my last year of AS I don't think I had any clicks worth more than a dollar. Just for laughs I put AdSense back on recently and after earning pennies (RPM about 10 cents) for a week I took it off again. It's not going back on. Of course, I have bad affiliate days too, but it's still a LOT better than Adsense over the course of the month.
I'm wondering how long my affiliate ride will last now that my AdSense ride is over. Recently, I've been doing quite a lot of reading up on affiliates and it is already way past its best. A few years ago my affiliate was dishing out 365 day cookies, but now - so I am told - they are just 24 hours, if that. The cookie duration makes a huge difference and, of course, the companies running affiliate programmes can change the terms and conditions how and when they like.
I have also read about affiliate IDs suddenly disappearing at the checkout stage and also of companies that offer mobile users an App which, if the user downloads, doesn't forward the affiliate ID. In another forum here at WebmasterWorld, Incredibill talks about the problems with cookie washers. These things are quite immoral, but we - the little people - can do nothing, as usual.
I saw that Netmeg was making plans to do some direct advertising and I think that eventually the only way to make a decent amount of money from a website is if you can stop being the middle man or woman. As an affiliate or advertiser for someone else's products it is so easy for the big guys to reduce the amount they pay out to people who help them get business. I have started thinking about products of my own that I can possibly sell, such as e-books.
In one of the WebmasterWorld threads recently I saw another statement along the lines that if AS publishers are suffering then Google must be suffering as well. I've never quite been able to figure out this logic. Google takes money from Adwords advertisers and pays some of that money back to AdSense publishers. If they pay back less, how is that a bad thing for Google? Maybe it's me that is wrong, but this has always confused me a little.
The other lesson is not to have too many eggs in one basket as the on-line world can, and does, change very, very quickly. I will continue to keep an eye on this forum to see what is happening in the AdSense world. If I suddenly see everyone reporting a huge upturn in earnings I may reinstate AS, but somehow I can't see that happening. Good luck to those still trying. I realise how much work it takes and how frustrating (and stressful) it is when huge plunges in income occur after putting in all the work.
I'm happy that I dumped AdSense and went along the affiliate path, but I am under no illusions and fully expect the same thing to happen to my new income stream. Sooner or later it will come screeching to a halt and then I will be looking for something else, or giving up completely. Nothing lasts forever and in today's on-line world nothing seems to last for more than a few years.
