Is there a maximum amount that a website can make from adsense?

Is there an actual cap on the payout?

[jaxomlotus]

I'm just curious about if there is a cap on earnings discussed in Google's ToS or elsewhere. I can't seem to find any but it doesn't seem possible that they'd be willing to pay out a very high amount to high-traffic sites that generate lots of revenue (i.e. what if a site brings in a few thousand dollars an hour - i don't - that's just a hypothetical).

I know they have a drop-clause which can get them out of paying for any reason at all and I guess that is what raised my eyebrows.

I have been screwed over by other networks in the past. While I love Google and know they are a wonderful company, it'd just make me feel better to know that I won't be hurting my site by leaving their ad up all the time as it's doing very well so far. I'd rather only display it occasionally if there's a revenue cap to stay under.

Any info is appreciated!

[jjohnstn]

I've wondered about this too. There's nothing in there TOS that I can find about a revenue cap, and I doubt they would have a cap since more clicks = more revenue for Google as well as us.

Setting a cap would cause people to either reduce the rotation or leave the program altogether, either of which would be detrimental to Google.

[jaxomlotus]

I certainly agree it wouldn't be good for google to set a cap, but realistically there must be a limit somewhere?

[CPCretirement]

I guess I don't see any real reason for them to cap it. The more you make the more they make.

[IanTurner]

I assume that the limit will be set based on advertisers credit limits, you run the advertisers out of money and I would expect Google to then serve public service ads rather than inappropriate ads.

[Blue_Fin]

it doesn't seem possible that they'd be willing to pay out a very high amount to high-traffic sites that generate lots of revenue

Why not? As previously said, the more you make, the more they make. And if that were the case, you wouldn't be seeing Adsense on sites like the Washington Post that get millions of impressions/day.

[IanTurner]

Long term adsense revenues are going to depend on the quality of the traffic you send to the advertisers. If you can povide the advertisers what they want in terms of ROI then they will continue paying for the ads.

If there is a trend towards advertisers getting a lower ROI then they will pull their ad budgets from adsense.

What we as publishers need is well educated advertisers who undetstand ROI and we have to look at providing the best quality traffic to those advertisers

[Jon_King]

IanTurner,

Lower ROI compared to what? I don't think a direct comparison to anything other than content advertising is meaningful. It's not the same thing as Adwords; the results will not be the same.

If I were to develop a company budget for an 'internet marketing mix' I would include a 'chunk' for content advertising in many cases. The ROI is so good compared to non-internet marketing I think it makes a lot of sense for many types of product or brand promotions.

Jon

[Blue_Fin]

I read it to mean lower than they want for this particular type of ad campaign, which he says in the first paragraph.