Adsense has changed, but mostly the people and internet culture consuming our information, what they expect, "trends" and such. Adsense became quite boring to me, lower incomes but still part of my monthly thoughts. The idea was "monetize your site", meaning a site you already own but over time it became "hey guys let's create a site about anything, Andsense will cover the expenses", ok if that worked that's fine but if not we had a bunch of lazy people trying to use whatever they can get their hands on (our content) to build something, that ruined everything.
I still remember the "blog" era and G saying would put attention to that, many blogs got indexed fast and positioned well on SEs, also remember the predictions and complains of old school webmaster becoming a reality, can't separate the idea of Adsense going wrong among the same time blogs got steroids attention from G, never was my content so copied, stolen and rebuilt. Enough of complains.
MrSavage: But I would be curious if anyone thinks of Adsense in the past tense like I do. If not, congrats. However, if you're in past tense like me, what has the program meant to you over the years?
In the past it meant extra income for work already done. I built a few website that due to personal view were online for the sake of it, not concerned on online income except from one selling stuff. The income was great but made my biggest effort to avoid thinking Adsense was a permanent income, to me it was a healthy way of seeing things.
It got interesting trying to understand it, seeing pushing here meant this and that,
Adsense was understandable, there were nice discussions around this forum, and even if you didn't understand: reading, researching etc meant understanding a bit later. Lower income became a challenge to overcome, but then it became BORING, impossible to understand, everyone was complaining except from some old school "kinda experts", nicknames you saw on this forum also giving very good advice on positioning and traffic.
Then the experts got hit too, lower income, for them Adsense also became a thing impossible to understand, the challenge was bigger. I went back to "average" no matter what I did. Past efforts meant increasing the income but not anymore, it was impossible and reading those members complaining about the same give birth in general to doubts if the program was legit or if some algo pushed some members to NEVER earn more than the same every day no matter what. Adsense stopped being science anymore. The average low income became a rule even that some of us were having the highest peak of traffic and growing.
One site died, the other ones stayed and one grew to solid, doesn't mean it grew and grew, it just became kinda standard with solid income. Lower income became normal to me and I just lost interest, removed ads, ignored lots of advice specially from Adsense. The sites continue because to me they are not income dependent, Adsense independent. From a business perspective is questionable but from a mental health angle and hobby-mission-like is what kept me from trowing the towel. Lots of members associated with nice advice and income are gone, not to be seen on the forum anymore.
How viable it is or was for many members? I don't know but I can tell you some members let some info slip away and it wasn't a secret any more some were making US$4K but were spending US$3K+ on hosting, writers, etc and their final income was not to be admired compared to people who built something that worked with little expenses. I think some people lost the perspective and dimension despite their posts of 10K pages on content, 20K daily traffic etc. Questionable.
Then the worst era came to light when Adsense became something like "Nonsense", the "doesn't make any sense" chapter and the "you silly I know how to but I won't tell you" posts we see more than often, it's not that it bothers me when people don't share what they do, they don't have to, it's their attitude and non sense, this is the thing that I hate the most around Adsense: reading stuff that doesn't make any sense... like
Mr.Savage: you surely don't know how to make the best out of it
Mr.Savage: Tried updating code slots with inverse colors? can't tell you more details
Mr.Savage: Understanding Adwords + the weather and host time response is the key, can't tell you more
Mr.Savage: Obviously someone didn't do the homework blah blah It's like Adsense gave birth to the blog cloud steroids and then the Adsense nonsense trolls.
It's like a sick fight club with posts that doesn't make sense, we could as well delete them and nobody would miss them.
To me Adsense is still to this day the same thing: residual income and a plan E, the income doesn't fully qualifies to be my plan B, and even that the income itself is not bad, I know for sure giving it an "E" is the best idea because no matter what you do or what you earn, things can change and even vanish overnight, so due to stability it's an plan "E" that still goes on. While the income is nothing to be proud of, helped me to keep expenses and also means something over the years. So, drops over the years can also make a river.
At the end I'm still curious about many webmaster expenses. But also know Adsense it's a personal experience.
