The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money)
January 9th, 2008 by Stephen Cronin (2,406 views)Adsense - some love it, some hate it. It doesn’t work for all sites, but there’s no denying that on the right site, it can make a lot of money.
Most beginners don’t understand what type of site it works well on. They slap Adsense on their blog and expect the cash to come rolling in. Of course, it doesn’t. Why? Because Adsense doesn’t work well on their type of site.
In this article, I explain the underlying principle of Adsense and look at the attributes of sites that are successful with Adsense.
- Blogs: because that’s my target audience and what most beginners use.
- Made For Adsense (MFA) niche mini sites: because that’s a common model used by people actually making money from Adsense.
The Underlying Principle Of Adsense
First, we need to understand the underlying principle of Adsense. I’ve seen people skirt around the issue, but I’ve never seen anyone actually come out and say it:
For Adsense to work well, your content should not solve the reader’s problem. If you solve their problem, they won’t need to click the ads.
If you leave the reader needing more information, you increase the chance of them clicking a contextual ad which may solve their needs.
The better your content is, the lower your click through rate (CTR) will be.
So Should I Start Writing Mediocre Content?
No! Not unless it’s for an MFA site. If you start writing mediocre content on a blog, you’ll lose your readers and your blog will start to fail on all fronts.
For a blog, you need great content. This increases readership, encourages other sites to link to you, leading to more traffic, a higher PageRank, etc. Take the great content away and your blog will fail. Blogs can make money from Adsense, but they generally have a low CTR.
For an MFA site, good content is less important. These sites don’t rely on the content to promote the site - they are more likely to use Article Marketing. They typically have mediocre content and, as a result, a high CTR.
Other Factors Affecting Adsense Success
There are many other factors affecting the success of Adsense, including:
1. Target Audience / Ad Awareness
Its well known that experienced Internet users are less likely to click ads than newer / casual Internet users. This appears to be related to visitor awareness of what’s content and what’s an ad. Experienced Internet users can spot ads a mile off and avoid clicking them.
The topic of a site determines the type of visitor it receives. Sites about web development, making money online, etc will attract visitors who are experienced Internet users and mostly Adsense blind. Sites about knitting or pets will attract visitors who are more likely to click ads.
MFA Sites: Once again, depends on the niche, but the niche is carefully selected to attract less technical visitors.
2. Where Do Your Visitors Come From?
Does your site cater for regular visitors or search engine visitors? What about social traffic, such as that from StumbleUpon?
Regular visitors don’t normally click ads. They come to read your content and go away happy, their goal fulfilled.
Search engine visitors do click ads. They arrive at your site seeking to address a specific need. If your content doesn’t solve the need, they’ll keep looking. If they see a related Adsense ad, they are likely to click it.
Social traffic visitors don’t normally click ads. What’s more, a surge of social traffic results in high traffic with few clicks, drastically lowering your CTR, which can result in you being Smart Priced by Google (more on this later).
MFA Sites: Only target search engine visitors, meaning higher CTR.
3. Niche / Value Of Clicks
Having a high CTR is great - but what if most clicks only earn you 6 cents? To make serious money from Adsense you need to target high paying niches.
MFA Sites: The niche is normally carefully selected to result in high paying clicks.
4. Traffic
Even if you have a low CTR, decent money can still be made with high traffic. After all, 1% of 1000 is the same as 25% of 40 (it is: trust me, I checked).
However, you probably need upwards of 10,000 unique visitors a day to make serious money. At that point, you’ll be earning more from other sources, but Adsense can supplement that nicely.
MFA Sites: Typically not high traffic, but this is offset by a high CTR.
5. Adsense Smart Pricing
Not many people have heard about Adsense Smart Pricing and there’s little information about it. It appears that if you have a low CTR (under 1 or 2%), you may be penalised, so you only get about 10% of what clicks are worth.
MFA Sites: Normally have a high CTR, so no danger of smart pricing.
Note: If you have a WordPress blog, it may be worth using the Who Sees Ads plugin so that only search engine traffic see Adsense ads. I haven’t done this on this blog yet as I’m looking into another option at the moment.
Putting It All Together
To gauge how successful a site is likely to be with Adsense, all these factors need to be taken into account. If a site is weak in one area, it can still be successful if its strong in the other areas. That said, lets take a look at the ideal site for Adsense and the ‘Anti-Adsense’ site where it won’t work well.
The Ideal Site For Adsense should have mediocre content, be targeted at search engine traffic and be in a niche which attracts inexperienced web users and high clicks. With all that in place, the higher the traffic the better!
Adsense Won’t Work Well on sites with good content, regular readers and social traffic, especially in niches which attract experienced web users or which have low paying clicks.
Okay, if you haven’t figured it out yet:
MFA sites are very close to the ideal site for Adsense. The only struggle they have is with achieving high traffic, but the traffic they do receive is targeted traffic, resulting in a high CTR, so they make money.
Blogs are much closer to the anti-Adsense site. For a blog to be successful, they have to embrace many of the things that don’t work well with Adsense. For Adsense to work on a blog, you’ll need traffic and LOTS of it - although some niches may be moderately successful with only medium traffic. If you’re in the making money online, blogging or a technical niche, best of luck!
The Adsense Dilemma
If you really want to make money with Adsense, then you have to face up to the fact that you’re unlikely to do so with your blog. You then have a choice:
1. Persist with your blog. Try to build it into a top-of-niche, high-quality blog, with lots of traffic. This will take a long time and you won’t see much money until you’ve ‘made it’.
OR
2. Forget your blog, at least for making money purposes. Instead look into creating MFA sites.
That’s the Adsense dilemma. What will you do?
The Final Word
A lot of this has been repeated in various places around the Internet. I’ve tried to pull it all together. The one thing I haven’t seen written elsewhere, is the theory:
Your content shouldn’t solve people’s problems if you want them to click Adsense ads.
If you disagree with me, tell me why! If you agree - what will you do?
Tags: adsense, blogging, make money online, monetization, traffic
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ah ha ….
This is the best post about AdSense and answer the question to those web site that solve people’s problem.
Very well done!
That’s it!
I have never made enough with Adsense to brag about to anyone, but it is enough to pay the operating cost of the site. Considering how low hassle it is, this makes it all worthwhile in my opinion.
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Hey good article - what would you suggest other than adsense for a blog?
Great article and spot on about CTR on a blog, that said it is still worth while having them on your blog, I have a blog that has a top 10# with google and CTR is only 5% ish but thats still around $20 a day from one blog, visit http://money-makingtruth.blogspot.com/
Excellent article Stephen and thanks for the plugs. The CTR really is niche specific and site specific. There are many factors that go into it. Very well thought out article.
Pete monetization is the hardest thing we do as so many factors have to taken into consideration. Their is no quick answer to that it is very tied to what niche you are working. I have produced 15k in a month with one site with Adsense and at the same time had another niche with Adsense make me 9 dollar that same month change the monetization on that 9 dollar site and end up making the following month 500 from the same site. Pete new folks that come to this business think traffic is the hardest part the fact is traffic is easy and predictable monetization is a bitch.
Stephen thank you for the mention.
To Your Success
Vic
Vic, I’ve had some good results with Text Link Ads - have you tried that at all - if so how do you find it compares to Adsense? Many thanks
I really need to get Threaded Comments happening some time soon…
First, I should point out that in the article above, I talk about blogs versus MFA site - in reality there a lot of sites which fall somewhere between the two (many MFA sites are technically blogs). I was really discussing blogs where the main goal is great content vs income driven sites.
Terence, thanks. This theory was born out of the process of creating that new blog I’ve mentioned to you. I’ve owned a decent domain name for several years and I was trying to work out what to do with it. My first thought was to create an MFA site, then I decided I wanted to turn it into a blog. During this process, I realised that turning into a blog with good content would kill the chances of Adsense working well. In the end I’ve gone with the blog because I think I can monetize it in other ways, but I’ll come back to Adsense with other projects.
Operating Agreement, if you decide to work Adsense, you’ll get better returns, but if you are just trying to cover your costs, then it can be a good low maintainence option.
Timmo, yes it depends on the blog. If it’s working, don’t take it off! On this blog, my CTR is well under 1% because I get a lot of stumbles and my readers are mostly Adsense blind, etc. I’m going to stick with Adsense on this blog, but I’m only going to show Adsense ads to search traffic (more on this in a post in the next couple of days). If that doesn’t bring the CTR up, I’ll take it off completely and just use Adsense for other projects.
Josh, thanks - that means a lot coming from you!
Vic, there will be many more mentions in future - I only discovered your site recently and I’m learning a LOT there. It should be me thanking you!
sometimes I just feel that adsense makes little money - so small that it’s really impossible to make a great living out of it..
you are definitely right when doing niche targetting it definitely helps..
nice article, cheers
Pete, I didn’t forget you, I just had a lot to write…
Vic’s right (as he normally is). Every blog is is different and it’s hard to predict what will work. I notice you’ve written about some of the options on your site.
On the surface TLA, TNX and PayPerPost all seem great for small to medium size blogs, such as ours. You can make easy money with these and it’s often more than you can make with other methods (including Adsense) - but there are two problems with this:
1) Google considers each of these to be a form of selling links and there is a big danger of a Google penalty. You have to weigh up how much Google search traffic is worth to you. For me it’s important - I’ve done two sponsored posts myself, but I’m holding off new ones.
2) From what I can see, there’s a limit to how far you can go with these. It seems once you’ve made it big, you’re more likely to make serious money through other methods (including Adsense, in the right sort of niche).
Some other options:
Direct Advertising - I don’t do this yet, but I’m considering it. Once again, you have to decide whether you’ll sell nofollow links at a lower price or risk a Google penalty for a higher price.
For product related blogs, product reviews with Affiliate links can work. I notice you have some Apple posts - do you use Affiliate links for these? This works best with search traffic, although authority works to an extent (if you can build a following of people who trust you).
In the Internet Marketing niche, Affiliate Marketing is very big - but it seems a bit incestuous. The buyers are mostly Affiliate Marketers who want to resell the product for the commission, or they are AM newbies who are trying to learn how to do it. If you’re at the top of the tree you’ll make good money, but if you’re at the bottom…
But I’m certainly no expert on this. I’d suggest you check out the following sites:
Court’s Internet Marketing | Strategy & Services
Garry Conn at Garry Conn dot Com
Josh Spaulding’s Make Money Blog
Vic’s Blogger Unleashed
These guys really know their stuff.
Stephen, thanks for your reply. It’s always good to hear what others have to say. I think you right when it comes to reaching a limit -I don’t think I’ve reached it yet for my blog. I would not recommend doing sponsored posts especially if you rely on other sources that use page rank.
I’ve also found that visitors from stumble and especially digg are more oblivious to adverts. I was dugg last summer and whilst my hits went through the roof my click through ratio did not increase at the same rate. I think in the long run though its been beneficial, a lot of the visitors saved the page on sites like del.icio.us and have returned since. They have also clicked adverts making the CTR for that page higher.
Hello,
Once more just when I think I got a grasp on something…people like you have to come along and foul that up. Everything is so much more complicated or have some hidden detail. So far my blog has done OK with Adsense (little over 1%) and I generate enough traffic now that I may get a check soon. I just wish it when a little bit quicker. I don’t always think that bloggers know how much time it can take.
Has anyone here looked into widget bucks?
Adsense Dilemma (How To Make Money) | More Than Scratch The Surface…
Many bloggers expect to make money by placing Adsense on their blog, then discover that Adsense doesn’t make much money for them. The reason for this is that while Adsense can make a lot of money, it only works well on certain types of sites. This pos…
Wow, what a good guide. I never read this article earlier. You are right, mate. Many people are teaching us about traffic from social networking sites but actually traffic from those sites are not good for monetization (except you have very good amount of traffic). Search Engine traffic is still the best until now.
Pete, Interesting point about del.icio.us. Not only will the visitors return, but others will find your site through del.icio.us as well. Although I don’t do it often, I have used del.icio.us to search for pages on a topic. I imagine others do this as well. Such visitors will be more likely to click ads as they are searching for answers just as search engine traffic is. The only difference is del.icio.us users are more likely to be experienced web users.
RobG, If it’s working for you, no need to change. That said, if you find it slow, setting up one ot more MFA sites may be the way to go.
LondonBlogger, I’ve signed up with WidgetBucks, but haven’t actually used it yet. I’ll try it out, but not on this blog, as the products shown are unlikely to match my subject topics (from my understanding, which may be flawed).
Amazing post, really userfull, but about the point of the content this is not always as you describe, if you are talking about a product ex: new digital camera features,etc, you need to be clear and says everything about that product, if not, the reader will think that need more information before click over the Ad (usually a buy now “text link”).
Great post!. But as I am newbie on online ads, this can be one of my references, but I still looking forward to decide the best action that should I take regarding this issue. I will try to learn deeper so I can take the best. Thanks for this wonderful post.
Jugar casino, it depends on the site and the type of ads. If you want people to click on an Amazon ad to buy a camera, yes, you should give them as much information as possible. Then they are more likely to go by the camera and earn you $.
But with Adsense, you can’t control which ads are served. They might not be ads to buy that particular camera - there might be an ad for another site which offers information and reviews on cameras. The user won’t click that if you’ve just given them all the information they need. I’m not in the camera niche, so I don’t really know what Adsense will serve up, but in general with Adsense you’ll be better off with less information. Sure the user will need more information before buying anything, but hopefully they’ll do it by clicking on the Adsense ads, making you $
Aif, Thanks very much. There is indeed so much to learn about this - I recommend you read the 4 blogs I mentioned in a comment above. Good luck!
The most important thing to remember while earning money online is to Persist with the blog.We should try to build it into a top-of-niche, high-quality blog, with lots of traffic, which of course takes time but also brings $ in return.
[…] Cronin wrote a great article on "The Adsense Dilemma (Or How To Make Money)" and wrote what others have failed to point out. He lists his references (other great […]
Stephen, good article, but I think it’s a bit simplistic to equate good content = bad CTR as a general principle.
I agree about targetted content though… It all depends on the quality of the individual links ultimately that determine the success of Adsense.
Nebies (or should that be Newbies?), sure - to make decent money from a typical blog, you need to do as you say. But there is an alternative out there (MFA sites) for those who don’t have the patience!
Actually, I know quite a few people who do both simultaneously - slowly build their main blog into an authority blog, while creating MFA sites on the side to make money.
Hi Hari, Thanks. Yes, it is a bit simplistic and there are always exceptions, but I think in general, there’s a lot of truth in it. I was pretty happy to see that Vic (from Blogger Unleashed) said something similar, as he really knows what he talking about. He says it in no uncertain terms:
That’s not to say that you can’t get a decent CTR with good content, but the MFA sites that get 20% to 30% CTR are based on this principle.
[…] with AdSense basics. Finally, out of the blue, Stephen at More Than Scratch the Surface wrote about the AdSense dilemma (or how to make money) and then he explained how to avoid AdSense smart pricing on blogs. If all of those articles […]
So what you’re basically saying is lower quality content performs better with Adsense.
Tech News, sure - because then people will need to keep looking and the hope is that they’d do this through the ads. That’s why MFA sites do so well. Of course, it would be suicide for a blog to purposely include low quality content.
Yes great article. There is one thing that I just don’t figure ! Making an MFA website is simple enough, but how do you get them to rank. You need to put loads of work into them right ?
Married,
You need to put a fair bit of work into them to get them ranked, then just a little bit every so often to maintain their position.
It all comes down to the keywords you’re targeting and how much competition there is. If you go after plumbing, you’ll have a really big job to get ranked. If you go after plumbing toilet leak there’ll probably be less competition and it will be easier. (note these are just examples - I haven’t checked them at all).
The real secret is to find keywords with low competition and enough traffic to be profitable.
I’m certainly not an expert in this. For more information, check out guys like:
Grizzly’s How to Make Money Online for Beginners
Court’s Internet Marketing | Strategy & Services
Josh Spaulding’s Make Money Blog
Vic’s Blogger Unleashed
usually i would target niche sites. those that have not been touch by others
usually advertising on these sites are pretty expensive, and that’s where adsense comes in
AntiVirus,
I agree - I’m only getting started in MFA niche sites, but it seems that’s where the money is - glad to have you back that up!
either you love it or hate it but the biggest money maker is none other than Google
those big earners are wheening!
tonometers, agreed..
A lot of bloggers are anti-Google because of PageRank penalties for sponsored posts and text links etc. I used to be in that camp, but I’ve come to realise that Google is where the real money is…
My big dream is to see an adsense alternative that finally break Google monopoly, which force Google to find a way to make adsense remain appealing for publishers. Tight competition in PPC business is good for both publisher and advertiser.
What we see now is a bad domination in PPC advertising.
I have seen too much honest people who get banned from adsense without clear explanation why they were banned. People could easily sabotage your adsense account by click bombing your sites.
First few click-bombings sessions would be forgiven by Google providing that you quickly notify the adsense support. But long-term click bombing campaign would leave no choice for Google, they would eventually ban you.
It’s easy to prevent this, Google only need to implement a system to eliminate any rapid clicking from a single IP, this way many honest publishers would be saved. But either google is lazy or just doesn’t give a damn about its publishers.
They always strive to protect the publisher but give little effort to protect the publisher.
The bottom line is, adsense should not be your main priority for online income.
My online marketing plan is to make adsense a ‘tertiary’ venue for earning money. So if one day my adsense account is banned.
so be it………
debt advisor, good points. An alternative would of course be welcome. However, at the moment, Adsense is where most of the big money is. I think it’s definitely worth focusing on - although it’s always a good idea to diversify… If you can earn big money from other sources, that would be great!
Great Post Steve.
I have a couple of article sites that I have been running adsense on for afew months now. One of them is getting pretty decent traffic for next to no clicks. I guess this would have to fall in the category of “not for adsense” kind of site. If I do get a click its below 10c.
I wonder if this would harm my account overall due to it driving the CTR down against my other sites.I’ll have to find out whether the smart pricing affects your overall account or just individual domains.
On another site which i didn’t expect much from has a CTR of over 60% on some days but averages well over 20%. Its in the Make Money Online niche.
The clicks pay fairly well and have had some $1+ clicks.I have played with ad placement on that one site more than the others. The only downside for this site is lack of traffic, which I’m slowly working on
Reading your post just made me realize I need to have a closer look at my article sites to try and increase the CTR.
Keep up the great info.
Mike
Hi Mike, Thanks..
From what I’ve heard - from Courtney, Grizzly and Vic (links to their sites above in the comments) - if one site is smart priced, they’re all smart priced. Bear in mind that no-one but Google really knows how smart pricing works, but these guys know their stuff.
It sounds like you’re not smart priced, if you’re getting $1 clicks on the second site (sweet if you can increase that traffic!).
The first site may be putting you at risk. If the $1 clicks on the second site suddenly become 10 cent clicks, remove adsense from the first site and see if that fixes it. As for why the first site is only giving 10 clicks - I guess it may just be a low paying niche…
There’s no easy way to know exactly what’s happening though, so it’s worth experimenting. Good luck!
I’ve been using Adsense for a while and I have heard the number ten thousand tossed around a lot-as in once you have ten thousand pages or ten thousand hits a day, you will start to make some real money.
I am just getting started with more than one blog, and have often found it a challenge to keep quality content on my primary blog-but I like the idea that you don’t need the best content on the sites you are using just to make money.
Thanks for the advise.
Descartes,
I’ve heard the ten thousand theory too, but am not in a position to test it yet.
I’m sure it’s true from what I’ve seen so far.
I think it’s probably worthwhile keeping one or two primary blogs with great content, but supplementing them with other blogs where you don’t worry so much about the content.
I think adsense looks bad on mosts sites like they have blatently setup sites for that purpose
bingo,
There are lots of quality sites that run Adsense - and there are lots of Made For Adsense sites that run Adsense. I’m much better at picking which is which now.
For my own site, I run Adsense, but I only show Adsense to search engine visitors. They’re the only one likely to click the ads anyway.
I have also found that younger users tend to click on ads a lot more. For example the bebo generation are much less “anti adsense” and will click on every ringtone advert they can see. Perhaps this has something to do with their lack of understanding of how adsense works.
Hi Mark,
Yes, that’s a good point - the age of the visitors also plays a part - although I’ve read studies saying that middle aged women click the most. I think you’re probably onto something with the younger generation though. Good Luck!
Are blogs that target keywords called MFA? LIke my blog.
Hi Rome, There are lots of grey areas, but I guess it could be thought of as MFA..