If you are a Web Publisher, in other words, if you have a blog or a website, Google AdSense can be a major part of your income from your work. Or, it can be a minor part of your income, but the odds are that AdSense makes up part of your income if you are publishing on the Web.
A number of years ago, AdSense was my major income source on my various websites. Currently, AdSense still earns me money, but it is now a relatively minor part of my online income. It’s not that my income from Google AdSense has gone down, rather my income from other sources has gone up a lot since those days a number of years ago. Now, I am selling products of my own, I have partnerships with other websites that earn me money, and generally, I just have other sources that bring in a lot more money than AdSense ever has.
Still, even though AdSense is not a huge part of my overall income, I still want to do what I can to maximize what I earn from Google! I mean, if I am going to take the time to put AdSense on my sites, I want to earn the most I can from them, right?
So, like most other web publishers, I play around with Ad Placement, the number of ads on pages, writing content that I feel will bring good paying ads, and such. There are so many legitimate little tricks that you can do to bring your earnings from AdSense up. There are some bad, illegitimate things you can do too, but I don’t get involved in that. I try to always follow Google’s guidelines and rules for the AdSense program. If I find that I am doing something that I should not do, I change it to fit back into the guidelines.
But, have you noticed how much AdSense earnings vary? I mean, you keep doing the same thing, and one day you earn $20, the next day you earn $3 and the following week you earn $50 in one day. Nothing has changed. Your number of ad views is roughly the same. Number clicks on ads are about the same. It’s the cost per click that varies a lot, and Google controls that. Personally, I wish that Google would give a choice where you could set a lower limit of how much you will accept for a click, and then only serve ads that pay at least that amount. I mean, if a company is going to pay only a penny for a click, why would I even want to give them space on my page?
Really, my advice for you would be that if you are dependent on AdSense, or any other single income source from your web publishing efforts, you really should expand out into other income generators. My best advice is to come up with your own products and services you can sell, because that is where you will earn the real money, and the amount you earn will be more consistent because you are the person who will set the price. No more publishing ads and not even knowing what they will pay you!
Oh, I still publish Google Ads on my sites, but it is only an “add-on” income, and not even a major source of income from my efforts on the web!
That is so true Bob! So many people starts of using adsense or some sort of ads, and then when they are trusted and branded, they turn to selling solutions (be it their own, or someone else’s product that they are trying to promote). Ultimately the adsense becomes a smaller make up of their revenue streams.
Hi JC – I believe that AdSense is great for getting started, but as your site grows and gains in popularity, a lot of other doors will open for you!