Forum Moderators: martinibuster
$1 is $1, but besides the fact that someone else thinks your visitor is worth $2, imagine if the 95% who didn't click on the Adsense ad are also worth $2? You potentially have $40 worth of traffic on your website and you're settling for a mere $1.
The way to get rich is not through Adsense, but by selling the same product or service that the advertisers are selling.
W.
There are a million reasons people don't want to become a retailer - lower stress being a major one among them, not to mention inventory costs, staff, overheads, etc.
At the end of the day it's not necessarily all about the money.
The way to get rich is not through Adsense, but by selling the same product or service that the advertisers are selling.
But then you have customer service, complaints, you have to ship things, you need a merchant account etc.
And the most important part - running that one business will prevent you from running many others. With adsense, you can run hundreds of sites. In general, once sites are self sustaining they never stop producing income whether you work on them or not.
I agree that if you want to make hundreds of millions a year or something that adsense isn't the way to go. But most people are happy with a little less than that.
I've decided to sell Cisco routers rather than just advertise for them. In fact, it's really inefficient to have to pay a middleman and Cisco to get these routers, so I've decided to make them as well. So I've hired a bunch of engineers and created factories. It seemed silly that someone was making the microchips for the routers, so I decided to go into the chip fabrication business.
Sure, I'm out about $50 billion, but I think it's worth it to cut out the waste.
And some people traffic here doesn't convert. You have to take that risk if you go off of adsense. I had the same problem with affiliate traffic. Should I open up my own comany and do the same thing. I never did and never would want to. I don't want the extra employees and extra hassle. As an affiliate - or adsense publisher - it is possible to have net profit margins of 90+% before taxes. This is true for almost no other business out there.
I was convinced by Small Website Guy.
Sure, I'm out about $50 billion, but I think it's worth it to cut out the waste.
You summed up my witty reply better than I ever could, so I won't. :)
Plus with some sites getting such an enormous range of ads it would also be impossible to directly sell many of the products advertised.
Sure, I'm out about $50 billion, but I think it's worth it to cut out the waste.
If we want to get technical, any money you spent on PP&E (propery plant equipment) would all be assets on the balance sheet, so you are really not "out" anything at all. They are investments, not expenses. You would not expense all the depreciation at once.
The way to get rich is not through Adsense, but by selling the same product or service that the advertisers are selling.
Somehow I can't see The New York Times or the Washington Post selling widgets, impotence drugs, or hotel bookings. :-)
How to get rich with Adsense? - That would be writing/selling the ebook "How to Get Rich with Adsense"
The sequel could be the book "Get rich by losing money on every sale, but make it up in volume"
And then you need to consider all of the above (customer services, mailing, merchant account etc...) but you also need to quit your day job and do it full-time. Running an ecommerce site is not generally a couple of hours on an evening job. AdSense can be a couple of hours on an evening plus your day job.
And with AdSense, you don't ship out $4000 worth of goods and then get a chargeback one week later. You take little of the risk, give little of the investment and can probably do less work running an AdSense site. But then you are probably correct: you earn less money.
many of us choose to create 40 more affiliate sites to reach that big money
But can you really feel GOOD about yourself making your money this way? You're just gaming the system and not contributing to society.
And I dont think it was so easy to get to having one site that makes $500 a month. (And it's really aggravating because it could make so much more if it moved up in the SERPs, but I just don't have what it takes to spend hours a day trolling for links.)
5% of your visitors click on Adsense, and you get paid $1/click. So you make $1/40 visitors.
Check your math. $1 per 20 visitors.
imagine if the 95% who didn't click on the Adsense ad are also worth $2?
I can imagine it and it makes me warm and fuzzy, but it seems totally unreasonable. The merchant is most likely willing to pay $2 per lead at least partially based on an expected/historical conversion rate for leads from content publishers. Assuming I begin selling the product or service myself on my site *and* traffic continues to come from the same channels, why would I have any reason to think my conversion rate would be significantly different than that of the merchant I was promoting? Am I missing something?
You potentially have $40 worth of traffic on your website and you're settling for a mere $1.
"Potentially" is a very flexible word. ;-)
I feel just fine about it.
I am not "gaming" any system. I own content-rich sites and I am using the adsense program (among others) to monetize my traffic.
If someone comes from the search engines using the term "antique apple polishers" and I have a page on antique apple polishers - the visitor is happy - and if they happen to click on an adsense advert for "apple polishing supplies" - hey - everyone is happy - right?
But can you really feel GOOD about yourself making your money this way? You're just gaming the system and not contributing to society.
What about Google itself? Why don't they just sell the products instead of taking ads for those products? I suppose they are really gaming the system.
Who can guarantee that your account is not going to be cancelled tomorrow? If you are a retailer you have bunch of places to advertise and you have a stayable business and on top of that you have a peace of mind.
But if you are a publisher you will get anxiety to get your disabled account email anytime since there are many reasons for google to cancel your account.
Soo, I am not happy with Adsense? I believe that I am happier than many people in here. However, living with anxiety is not good at all. Therefore, I am creating my own services to not have a heard attack with a disabled account email..
Therefore, I am creating my own services to not have a heard attack with a disabled account email..
Yeah, we do that here. It's been so freaking hot working out here where I work, and there's so much to do, I haven't taken the time yet to roll thru 500 junk messages looking for that one disabled account message.
On the other hand, I created a site late last year that is just hopping, and I'm using it to learn how to monetize it. AdSense, affiliates, whatever it takes! The couple of hours in the cool evening air I've spent so far are showing good results.
But if you are a publisher you will get anxiety to get your disabled account email anytime since there are many reasons for google to cancel your account.
Not if you have multiple revenue streams. On my own editorial site, for example, I earn revenues from more than half a dozen affiliate programs that are related to my topic. If one revenue stream dries up, the other ones are likely to be intact--and new ones are likely to come along.
There are other benefits to publishing an information or editorial site with evergreen (as opposed to time-sensitive) content:
1) The pages earn money day after day, month after month, and even year after year if they're kept up to date.
2) Each new page represents incremental traffic and income.
Still, in the final analysis, what you're best at is what works best. If you come from an editorial and publishing background, you're probably going to be most successful with a content site. If your skills are on the retail or SEO side, an e-commerce or affiliate site is likely to be more rewarding financially and otherwise.
Sorry for misunderstanding, I meant Adsense publisher as publisher. Of course a succesful publisher with "up to date" and "quality" content would always make money.
I have no advertising on my site at all, just 130 pages of well researched UFO maps and the like. My main (index) page sees 400-600 hits a day. I'm usually on page 2 or 3 of Google serps for my one-word keyword, low on page one for a two word KW.
Questions:
Must I put Adsense on the index page, or can I stick it on 2nd level pages?
How much revenue could I possibly expect from Adsense, given these smallish numbers? If its $37 per month, its just not worth it.
- Larry
What about Google itself? Why don't they just sell the products instead of taking ads for those products? I suppose they are really gaming the system.
Now that GOOG is a public company that has to show Wall Street that they are worth their sky high PE ratio, don't be surprised when they try to find more and more ways to make money.
Yahoo! has not had a problem with using its brand name to sell services like web hosting, online personals, etc.
When you go to Google one day to search for "web hosting" and find a huge prominent link to hosting.google.com, I am going to post a big "I told you so" message here.
Hello all: May I jump in with an Adsense question?
I'll answer, but you really should have started a new thread instead of changing the topic in this thread.
Must I put Adsense on the index page, or can I stick it on 2nd level pages?
You don't need to put it on your main page; you can chose which pages to put it on.
How much revenue could I possibly expect from Adsense, given these smallish numbers? If its $37 per month, its just not worth it.
Somewhere between $36 and $38 most likely. ;-) There are too many variables to answer your question. I don't know what type of supply of ads there are for your content or what they pay, but if you want to know, why not test it on a few pages and then extrapolate to estimate?
Yes, a new thread would be better. However, I tried that several times in the past, and they never appear.
As for likely income, I meant in very general terms. With a popular non-commercial "UFO" site, say 500 unique visitors a day, adsense on the entry page, are we talking ones, tens or hundreds of dollars per month?
Most UFO-related retailers (tapes, CDs, knick-knacks) have their own sites and do not pay for advertising.
Just what does Google pay per click? Are there any benchmarks, norms or averages at all?
- Larry
If google cuts me off today? Their loss. It'll take me one afternoon to plonk some nice aff links in the space and make up the income. AdSense isn't terribly efficient, but it sure is quick and easy to set up. Personally, I'm a big fan of pay for performance (sales!) as it's the guaranteed value-for-money, win-win deal!
SN
Personally, I'm a big fan of pay for performance (sales!) as it's the guaranteed value-for-money, win-win deal!
I'm a big fan of covering my bets by profiting from AdSense and affiliate sales. :-)
In any case, affiliate sales aren't going to work on every page--at least not on an editorially diverse content site. AdSense can "fill in the gaps" by monetizing pages that are valuable to users but don't relate to a site's affiliate programs.
Example: I have a travel-planning site, and I occasionally write in-depth reviews of cruises within the geographic area that I cover. Until AdSense came along, such articles were loss leaders, because most cruisers book through travel agencies and have no use for the hotels, car rentals, rail passes, etc. that are offered through affiliate links on my site. With AdSense, I can earn revenue from those articles, because the pages carry pay-per-click ads that, when matching works correctly, relate directly to the page content.
Bottom line: AdSense represents incremental income or "icing on the cake" for an editorially diverse site like mine.
