Remove Your Adsense Code Before It Eats You Alive
By Bryan Clark on Jan 10, 2008 in Make Money Online
Most new bloggers rely on Adsense to make money online. This is a largely flawed approach, and I’ll show you why. To preface this article, it was written with make money online blogs in mind. However, there are many niche’s in which Adsense simply tanks. Nick, I’m sure you’ll be the first to agree that Sports is a terrible topic to write about when hoping to make money with Adsense.
So for the noobs out there… Adsense sucks. Plain and simple. But it’s not unprofitable on EVERY site. Niche blogs happen to do very well with Adsense (usually), so if you are writing to an un-technical crowd… by all means, use Adsense. Bass Fishing, Sewing, and other things that might bore the crap out of the rest of us, tend to do very well with Adsense. Why? They aren’t writing to an overly technical audience. Technical crowds do NOT click ads. It’s that simple.
Make money online blogs write to crowds that can smell Adsense from a mile away. If you are a make money online blog - remove your Adsense code and run away screaming. AFTER you finish this post. Here is why you don’t want to use Adsense on poorly performing blogs. And by poorly performing, i am strictly referring to Adsense. Not traffic, or other monetization means. But if you aren’t getting AT LEAST 2-3% CTR… take off the Adsense code.
Here’s why… VALUE PRICING. If your Adsense performs poorly, you get thrown into the “value priced” category. That means that advertisers that display ads on your website using Adsense, get clicks for a huge discount. If you are below 2-3% CTR, you risk getting thrown into the “value priced” category. This means that if you were a high performing blog getting 4% CTR, that you might get paid 50 cents everytime someone clicked on “Joe Bob’s Custom Lure” ad on your Bass fishing website. Well, once you become value priced, that same click is only going to net you 10 cents… or less!
This can happen to any blog, but it’s quite rampant amongst make money online bloggers. So my suggestion is not to even use it if you run one of these blogs. You will never get a high enough CTR to not be value priced.
Don’t fret though. You can reverse the value pricing within a week if you just take Adsense off all blogs that are performing badly. Keep them on your fan site devoted to Fergie, and lose them on your tech blog. It’s that simple. You can make more Adsense money by showing less Adsense code.
So Why Does Google Punish Poorly Performing Blogs?
Ummm.. because they can. And for once, this move by Google actually makes sense. Advertisers actually pay more per click when their ad has a low CTR (referring to Adwords users not Adsense here). So if I had an ad that had a 10% CTR and another identical ad that had 1% CTR, I’d be paying more PER CLICK for the lower performing one. Why? Google thinks that it’s not a relevant ad anymore. So you’ll have to pay more if you want to keep targeting that keyword and your ad isn’t relevant. Now, to those of you that aren’t familiar with Adwords, this might not make a lot of sense. But if you know even the slightest bit about how it works (pick a keyword, bid for that keyword, get your ad placed X number of times, whatever…), then you’ll know exactly why Google will punish you with value pricing. It’s not fair to make advertisers pay more for clicks on blogs that aren’t performing. Plain and simple.
Now I’m going to go cancel all of my Adwords Ads before I go broke. Excuse me.
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17 Comment(s)
By The Internet Entrepreneur Diary on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
Bryan:
You have answered some important questions to many MFA (made for AdSense) bloggers. A lot of them might be wondering why their effort are not generating good income.
Great post!
By Joe on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
I don’t use ad sense on my blogs for some reason it seems that no matter where you place them they just make the blog look clunky and too much advertisement looking as well. Now I do some affiliate marketing on my blogs , and there I am very picky about who I decide to affiliate market for. I don’t just go out willy nilly and throw a bunch of affiliate buttons up hoping to get a commision from some one.
Good advice here.
By Missy on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
Im really dismayed and completely pissed at Google, for several reasons.
First, they removed the PR4 from my (Groovy Veg) blog.
Second, they tell me the site is NOT banned, not to worry about PR, and that guys like Chow and Darren are jack-holes, not to listen to them. Yet they let Chow and Darren keep their PR even though they still promote TLA, PPP, etc.
The one thing i like about Adsense, is that the ads match your content. I wish more affiliate marketing companies had something similar. Content matching is a terribly innovative idea.
I just yesterday had my theme tweaked abit to allow for 125×125 ad blocks above the 2 right sidebars, and will now start experimenting with direct ads and aff mktg there.
Feel free to take a look and provide feedback.
By Bryan on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
The only thing I would tweak is the banners below the 125 ad spot on the far right. They look kinda jumbled.
By Cassanova on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
The fact that OMG could make enough money from adsense doesn’t mean that adsense sucks with the niche of “make money online” !
just take a look at this link and you’ll be shocked: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=551220
I’m a “made for AdSense” blogger and I understand the frustration of having a poor income from adsense. It’s just because of the LOW TRAFFIC !!
Decent adsense income form adsense start from 2K unique visitors per day and 20 cliks on ads that makes around 10~12 bucks per day.
I used to have an average of 100 visits per day and my income was ZERO until one article was very successful and I made with it 2276 unique visitors the first day and 689 unique visitors the next one. I made $18,7 in two days through adsense ( around 20 clicks)
And Of course ad placement is very important…
Digital point can really give you some inspiration to keep on working with adsense but the key of success with adsense is TRAFFIC… and I’m here still waiting for Bryan’s percious tarffic building tips !!!
By Bryan on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
However, I disagree with you completely that Adsense is all about traffic. True, more traffic means more clicks (in theory), but more traffic that DOESN’T click your ads means that the clicks you do get, are worth less cash.
Plus your figure of having 2k visitors a day to have a healthy Adsense income is completely flawed. Once again, it’s on a site by site basis. ALL of my sites get more than 2k visitors a day, and only a handful perform well with Adsense. And I’m well versed in blending ads, Ad Placement, and Smart Zones… however, no matter what you do, some sites are just not going to perform well on Adsense. And make money online blogs, are notorious across the board for being poor Adsense performers. Why do you think the biggest blogs in this niche don’t even use Adsense?
Also, I thought it was worth mentioning that you are basing your statistical data off of an Adsense check from 2005. We have all seen Jeremey’s check. And it’s common knowledge that a couple of years ago, sites made much more with Adsense than they do today. That was back before people were wise to it. Nowadays, everyone has seen Adsense ads, and are less likely to click on them. Except (usually) the un-tech savvy crowd. Adsense wasn’t what it used to be.
And I guess I’ll throw you a bone and do a traffic building article. Hope you are subscribed to my Rss feed…
By Cassanova on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
I’m on your RSS feed and please don’t make me beg for Traffic building tips because i’m sick of digging and stumbling !!
I agree that you need a traffic of ad clickers to make money from adsense and Make money online niche readers aren’t ad clickers. But there are some irresistible adsense ads in that niche and people still click on them ( example: ads in the digital forum are attracting many clickers). I understand that some niches don’t have attractive ads such as sport..
suggestion : Are you thinking about making a Forum ?
Forum perform well with adsense : many pageviews, a good ad placement after the first post in a subject, having a stable number of visitors ( loyal members…)
In the other hand; it requires time and effort to moderate, drive many members.. etc
Looking forward for your tips..
By Mike Pedersen Golf on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
Adsense is very effective with the right niche. As I said, “niche”. Most mainstream websites will not do well with it, but I know a lot of people who get a nice google check every month.
Mine almost pays my mortgage (knock on wood). So it is still very effective.
By Bryan on Jan 10, 2008 | Reply
By Steve on Jan 12, 2008 | Reply
I can agree with both above me. It depends heavily on the blogging matter. Some niches are not so good for money blogging, you have to choose a niche where are some products and so advertisers who will bid.
By Mike on Jan 14, 2008 | Reply
wow…I didnt realise that CTR was that important in the value of your clicks. Thanks for the awesome article, it’ll probably help my page buying- a- mobile-phone . com/ stacks.
By Arun on Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
I think the theme also plays in CTR!
My CTR is high with Made for Adsense wordpress themes.. but there is a slight decrease in my CTR with my new theme!
By Mirjam on Feb 13, 2008 | Reply
I am really glad you pointed this out to me, since I was already wondering if something was wrong with one of my niche sites that always makes me good money per click but is now performing very poorly.
I have corrected this now, thanks to you!
By The Internet Entrepreneur Diary on Feb 14, 2008 | Reply
@Mirjam:
Glad to see you here. I did not know you read Bryan’s blog too.
That is why I switch to YPN. By the way, does anyone here using bidvertiser.com?
How is it turn out?
By Mirjam on Feb 14, 2008 | Reply
@Terence
Great to see you around here too 
By Geoserv on Feb 25, 2008 | Reply
This is probably one of the most informative posts I have read in a long time.
STUMBLED!
Added to TopStumbles:
http://www.topstumbles.com/tutorials/remove-your-adsense-code-before-it-eats-you-alive-one-mans-goal/
By Dwayne Charrington on Aug 5, 2008 | Reply
Wow, when I stumbled onto this post I was honestly expecting you to advocate using Adsense. But you seem to really have hit the nail on the head with this one. Technical people do not click ads, because A.) They’re using Firefox, and therefore 90% likely to use the Adblock Plus extension. Or B.) They come to a site for a purpose, and that purpose isn’t to generate advertising income.