Have you ever put your Adsense site to the test?

A sort of reality check?

[explorador]

I'm curious, many around here have decent websites with good traffic, some have terrific scenarios, some not that good. The value of a website is not an easy topic (community, repeated visitors, how much your audience reads your articles, advertising, influence, reputation, trust as a legit information resource, etc). It's been a while since Advertising and "how much per month" became common expressions. In some circles all people talk is "how much adsense per month".

Let's focus for a while on pure Adsense value per month.

So you have Adsense, ads, and X income per month. People paying for advertising on your website might not be the same on the long run, so having X per month doesn't mean a real value. Yes I know this is a complex topic in terms of ROI on advertising, many diff scenarios involved. But... Have you ever tested advertising something on your website... yourself? while removing temporarily every Adsense code on your website? Think about it, really... your site might be over priced, or underrated by you.

Me? I never tried this but I'm tempted. I have a network of sites still making money with Adsense. Having direct advertisers was more common in the past, but yes I put some direct ads on my sites, they paid me better money or equivalent income to Adsense (that's the goal isn't it?). My experience was limited by the number of advertisers, their products, their often ugly websites, their often not so good products or strategies, not the ideal banners, etc. In some cases I posted advertising for my own clients, landing on websites I designed myself and this proved better, we all had better results, we were all happy.

Long story short my whole post here goes around YOU somehow experiencing on your own what your advertisers might see with their ads on your website. How important is this?

- You could learn a thing or two about your websites and strategies
- You might discover your site is overrated
- You might discover is underrated!
- What about discovering a more powerful sales change on your website? for you?

Remember diff ad campaigns and products = diff scenarios so it's difficult to compare. Direct advertising (you placing your ad and code) BEATS any system like Adsense because you can overcome Adblockers.

What would you advertise? it depends on you. Your websites, your services, some products, perhaps your family business, or perhaps you have something similar to what your advertisers sale on your website, hey what about... if you ask to yourself "they sale this on my site, I will become a competitor but with full control over my website and advertising code?".

[martinibuster]

The offline banner/advertising paradigm isn't as profitable online.

Alternative online native approaches have sprung up under the shadow of Google.

Selling links (without advertising disclosures) is popular in the UK. The link, not the advertising, is the commodity.

That kind of commerce is against FTC regulations in the USA, but many companies do it in the USA via link brokers. I have a feeling that the brokers and the publishers are unaware that they may be breaking laws.

The so-called white hats are very creative about selling links. They don't call it link selling. They call it article placement. You have to be careful of white hats because the ones with the largest and whitest hats tend to engage in creative renaming and repackaging of the selling of links.

For example, content marketing and guest posting, as practices by certain white hat SEOs, are white hat euphemisms for link selling. That's a revenue stream for publishers as well. But like I mentioned previously, it could be illegal in the USA. But laws have rarely slowed down a white hat SEO, as they are naively preoccupied with being caught by Google.

I don't know if the publishers are aware that the links in their articles are paid for. They're contracting for a steady stream of content. The so-called white hats are selling links from within that content, without labeling it as paid. Which is illegal in the USA.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:11 pm (utc) on Oct 30, 2018]

[stever]

>> Selling links (without advertising disclosures) is popular in the UK. The link, not the advertising, is the commodity.

It is also illegal in the UK (and probably under EU regulations as well). See:
Open letter from Competition and Markets Authority
[assets.publishing.service.gov.uk...]
and the relevant legislation under the 2008 Consumer Protection Act:
[legislation.gov.uk...]

[martinibuster]

Thanks for those links stever!

I get the feeling that information is not well known in the UK.

[explorador]

Thanks for the info and the links to the direct websites about the laws (on selling links). That info sure is useful, but just to make clear I'm not talking about that I mean no tricks, no selling link spaces, I'm talking if anyone has ever tried experiencing the other side of Adsense on their own websites. The only way to do so if selling something as if you were a publisher but it's yours (your product, your service).

[explorador]

To make it more simple:

You have a website with adsense, you sell ad space, only your advertisers know the real performance and impact (usefulness) of your site regarding THEIR products and their strategies on YOUR website, on YOUR designated ad slots.

Have you ever put something on sale on your own website to get to know the other side? let's say your own services, old laptop, whatever. Something like that, I believe is pretty clear.

[keyplyr]

Not sure if this is what you're asking but on one responsive site I have Adsense on all pages. I also sell custom ad space on all these pages, offering 4 different campaign types (but no text-link ads.)

Prior to adding Adsense, I sold 4xs the custom ads. While business in custom ads has dropped significantly, I'm still getting steady inquiries, just fewer sales.

Like most things, this is likey niche specific.

[nomis5]

I have a website which did OK in its day and I placed my own ads on it for cooking products. The cooking products stuff was effectively a separate business to the website so I did take a critical look at the website to see if it served my needs as an "outside" advertiser.

I only removed Adsense from the pages on which my ads appeared. It served its purpose and sold the cooking products well. I never really did a detailed financial comparison between the value my website gave to my cooking product business compared to the income from Adsense. However my general feeling was that the cooking side brought in far more money compared to Adsense.

I let the cooking products slowly drop out though and never really thought much more about it. I suppose that if I used my main website now to sell my own products the same would apply.

But all that packing and posting and dealing with returns and missing items is a high stress occupation compared to sitting back and letting Adsense do the work. I doubt I will go along that route unless Adsense fails for my website.

[explorador]

@keyplyr, yes sort of what I mean. Not just selling direct adspace (something not exactly easy to everyone) but more like nomis5 explained here.

@nomis5, yes that's exactly what I mean. Good to know you got good returns. I agree Adsense is better on allowing us to sit back and watch money come in, that's absolutely a good thing. I also understand selling stuff means more work regardless if that's your own product or not, but you described exactly a big part of what I mean.

Most people are to their websites and adsense, exactly as many hamburger owners who never taste the burger and just rely on what sales reflect (they don't even ask the customers) in adsense we just can't ask the advertisers on input. So that's what I mean: tasting your own hamburger.