What does Adsense mean to you today?

[nomis5]

There are so many negative posts nowadays about Adsense that I've become reluctant to post a positive one for fear of being accused of showing off, or just because I don't feel part of the general consensus of many discussions.

There are still loads of opportunities to earn a living with Adsense as far as I can see and I do hope that others will chime in to say. Yes, I too earn a living from the program and am relatively happy with it. It has its faults of course and G are grabbing too much of this and that. We all gripe.

But the positives need to be understood as well.

[azlinda]

Nothing.

[netmeg]

Yep; I have no plans on dropping it. Pretty sure that whatever downturns I've seen are mostly (but not entirely) due to my own actions, either intentional or unintentional. That said, I'm still going to be looking for diverse ways to monetize, and I'm not planning on quitting my client consultation side of the pie. I started late; have a lot of catching up to do (plus I like to keep busy)

[breeks]

Secondary ad revenue.

No longer a prime ad network too many junky ads along with not having a clue on mobile.


Other than that great :)

[ken_b]

nomis5; Thanks for the thread.

What does Adsense mean to you today?

It means we can travel at will, buy whatever toys we want, do other things we enjoy and not need to worry about how to pay for it all out of our other income.

We've never counted on this as "daily living" money so it's always been good times, toys and extra cash in the bank.

I'm pretty thankful for that, and for all the wisdom shared here that made it all possible for me.
.

[trebuchet]

I just brought up $250k total Adsense earnings (over a few years admittedly) so I'm a happy Adsense publisher. It's allowed me to work full time on my sites for the last 18 months and take them to a level I wouldn't have been able to achieve had I been webmastering/writing part time. It's also increased my profile in the industry, so that if Adsense went belly up tomorrow I could land a job by the end of the week. So I'll be sticking with it, at least for the foreseeable future.

Having said that, the decline in CTR/EPC and the rise of adblocking has caused me enough concern to look at another way of monetising my sites. I'm looking at trialing a pay per view system on one of my sites in 2016, to see how it fares.

[RedBar]

There are still loads of opportunities to earn a living with Adsense as far as I can see

Please enlighten us to what these may be since I honestly cannot see any way forward with AdSense whatsoever.

I sometimes wonder whether not being USA based if I have the wrong mindset for this. Selling my realworld products B2B isn't a problem however finding a subject that gets millions of PVs, therefore most probably lots of clicks, I find extremely frustrating.

[zdgn]

Been with AdSense since the beginning, and it is still the *only* easiest, most dependable, most stable and most predictable monetisation source for my portfolio of diverse sites (so there's no 'outlier' syndrome at play here). There have been downsides and upsides, yes, but all due to conditions which cannot to be blamed on AdSense itself.

Have tried many other programs... do try new ones... as they pop up and and pop out. None has come close.

Also do affiliates and such work-intensive things as time and effort permit, and while they do reward the effort, none of them is as easy, simple, effortless & outright rewarding (for the amount of time/effort required to implement it) as AdSense, which, essentially is still simply paste-and-forget (hence letting you focus on tweaking/working what you do best, not AdSense itself.)

In other words, no one else has provided even a comparable alternative that reflects AdSense's original sales-pitch: Discovering one's wesbites' full revenue potential.

So not planning on dropping AdSense soon... well... hopefully as long as they don't drop me or don't completely go bust on me like with some other folks here or else something truly game-changing appears for my needs... :-D

[jpch]

Financial Freedom and the ability to work for myself. I could do this with other ad networks as well but I have yet to find a single one that consistently outperforms AdSense. Is it perfect, no of course not. Could i live without it, yes, but it would make life more difficult. So I'm happy and have no plans of changing anything anytime soon.

[EditorialGuy]

For our information site, AdSense is a nice supplement to affiliate commissions.

[MrSavage]

To the opening point, I don't read negativity. I think it's called honesty? I think daily Adsense reports aren't fake and if people are doing well or poorly, it gets reported. Are people that sensitve about the subject? I don't see rampant negativity outside of the daily reports thread. To think people are afraid to post positive results? I LOL at that. Netmeg has never feared being the positive Adsense earner. In fact it's inspiring to hear positive results!

Whatever people want to say about Adsense today, the ultimate question is whether you would advise your best friend, a total newbie, to invest time/money into a business model that is Adsense reliant. Sure we've done well in the past, some do well still, but who is starting in the recent past (1 year say) and swearing it's the best idea since sliced bread?

Today, Adsense is a welcome source of income. One of a few now that I'm relying on. Today it's no longer my #1 choice for driving revenue. Today, when it comes to planning a new site, if it's going to be reliant on Adsense to make it worthwhile, I'm not doing it. Today it doesn't pay the bils like it once did and as far as I'm concerned, it's in a decline from which I have ZERO control over.

Don't get me wrong. Today I collect my money from Adsense with a smile (all the while closing down sites or projects because of those dwindling cheques). Is happy sad an emotion?

[avalon37]

AdSense is just bizarre at this point for me. I'll have a $100 day followed by a day where earnings are $0.94. One day ads are as good as ever and my main site showing top brand name advertisers - the next day it's as if my site is penalized because the ads are no name sites unrelated to my content. It's a daily roller coaster of good quality advertisers then crappy ones. Not sure why the advertiser quality is so up and down. AdSense, like many have suggested, has totally changed. At the end of each month, the earnings are basically the same as last year, but the reporting gaps, the high and lows, etc...it's all different now. Trending like a dying creature although I sense AdSense will be continue to be around for a long time.

[explorador]

What it means to me at present time?
it means a constant reminder of "ha ha I beat you"

avalon37: It's a daily roller coaster

Exactly, in my case there are most downs than ups.

I get in and block some silly ads (lots), I get a boost, then it sucks again
Block some urls due to persistent ads, get a boost, then it sucks again
Create an experimental ad unit... get a boost, then it sucks again

Anything I try will work for like 1 day, then everything goes to low earnings. I don't care at the point of hurting, but I surely remember something a forum member posted: low earnings while we give a way tons of daily impressions, doesn't sound good to me.

[tangor]

These days it's just another tool in the tool box, and may not be the best one for all sites. Still has value, but the abuse and poor use, over the years has brought some marginalization into the mix.

That said, putting all one's eggs in one basket is still not a good idea... those old nursery rhymes and grandma's advice STILL hold true.

[netmeg]

Netmeg has never feared being the positive Adsense earner.

I don't *fear* it, but sometimes I have hesitated, because I don't want to appear to be rubbing it in. But my situation isn't like most people's here; I was doing AdWords long before I was doing AdSense (and still am) and I'm pretty sure that gives me something of an edge, because I have a pretty good understanding of what goes in, so I can (mostly) understand what comes out.