AdSense is often seen as the go to advertising program for new bloggers and site owners. It is easy to implement, pays fairly well and accepts just about anyone.
Because of AdSense’s popularity it has become the brunt of spammers and bloggers giving disinformation. Fly-by-nighters and $1-suckers are offering their ‘expertise’ on a subject they have no real experience other than their precious $100 payout after 6-months of usage (if they make it that long before being kicked out).
What really gets my buttons boiling (yeah two different sayings, so what?) is the misconception that “AdSense is for everyone!” Hell no it isn’t! Not every blog can have a 5% CTR and not every site wants to give 25% of their earnings to a $190 billion company.
Google AdSense does offer other ways to earn money other than click-through ads, but that is still their bread and butter. Making much from their CPM ads are hard to come by for newer bloggers/site owners–due to them mainly being site-specific ads. PPA ads completely suck when it comes to Google. Who really wants to advertise a product that might disappear in 24 hours?
AdSense Misconceptions
- Bloggers say to put 2 300×250 ads directly below title and above the content.
- Bloggers say put them by links that look the exact same.
- Bloggers say to put them in areas of mis-clickability.
- AdSense is for every site. (already mentioned above)
- AdSense pays the best.
First off, fuck them. They have no clue what is going on. Secondly, they probably only used AdSense for 2 days before getting kicked from the program.
AdSense Realities
- Definitely, NO. If your sole purpose of your blog is to drive your visitors away, by all means go ahead with this dumb-ass idea. If your sites purpose is to engage your readers and have an ad here or there and still want an ad below the title, try a 468×60 banner. It is cleaner, looks better and will allow your visitors to see the actual content. (As a side note, putting 2 300×250 ads directly below your h1 tag will probably make smart-pricing eat you alive.)
- Once again, smart-pricing! By placing AdSense by links that look exactly the same (such as editing your CSS to be exact font-style and link style) you are relying on mis-clicks. Clicks that probably wouldn’t have happened if they had known they were leaving your site.
- This one relates to the one above. If you are using a service that requires someone to click and you purposely put AdSense so close that if you are off by 1em you hit an ad, your account will officially be in the pit of AdSense as the wanna-be $1 maker.
- AdSense although easy to be approved and blah blah isn’t for everyone, especially new sites. You might be tempted to plaster AdSense ads all over and hope for a few clicks, but it will end in disappointment. Most sites in entertainment are better off with CPM and most technology sites are better off with PPA or direct-sales. That’s just how life is.
- Meh, AdSense doesn’t always pay the best. In some circumstances, of course it may, but in most it does not. AdSense strives on their ease of use, globalization of their program and the fact you can live in freaking Kiribati and still be paid.
Written: Feb 13, 2008
Scott
February 13, 2008 @ 11:33 am
I myself go with two discreet adsense ads in my sidebar along with the 468×60 Banner on top of the newest post. I think its also important not to jam the reader up with ads and have them be able to easily access your content is key. Adsense earnings sure aren’t that good because of it but at least I feel I’m doing the better thing for my readers.
I like the post, we agree on most things about Adsense.
-Scott
Juha Ylitalo
February 14, 2008 @ 2:53 am
One problem on 468×60 banner is that it doesn’t show the url, where it is going to send you.
As a websurfer, I always want to be able to see, where I am going to be send, if I press some link. Either it has to be as a text or I have to be able to see it at the footer of my firefox window.
One thing that I at least missed when I first defined my ad boxes was that if you want to allow yourself option for getting image and text ads, your ad box sizes are much more limited than what they are if you are willing to limit yourself to text links.
As an example, you can go to google adsense settings, select adsense for contact, text and image ads, it will give you following options (but forgets to mention whats on parenthsis):
728×90
468×60
234×60 (image ads are NOT available on this size)
120×600
160×600
120×240 (image ads are NOT available on this size)
336×280
300×250
250×250
200×200
180×150 (image ads are NOT available on this size)
125×125 (image ads are NOT available on tihs size)
This is kind of shame, because I really like 120×240 and 180×150 boxes size.
Gary R. Hess
February 14, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
You are right, it is a shame. Especially with how popular 125×125 image ads are with bloggers ATM and as you said, the 120×240 ads look really good IMO.
» Thing Google Adsense is the answer to all of your money making woes?Eric Odom » Blog Archive
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