Is Google AdSense Worth It?
I often see so many new members asking questions about Google AdSense like, why has Google denied my application or how long does it take to get approved? But the questions you should be asking are, is Google AdSense worth it and do I want to divert people away from my affiliate ads?
ADSENSE VS AFFILIATE ADS
Now I realize that in Certification Course 3, Lesson 7, Kyle explains about Google AdSense and how it "could potentially" benefit your website business. However if your website is not getting a lot of traffic and if it doesn’t have a lot of content, which by the way contributes to more traffic, then your application to AdSense may be denied.
But should you feel bad about not being approved? NOT AT ALL. First off you will not make nearly as much doing AdSense as you would from affiliate ads, especially when first starting out. Another thing to consider is by having AdSense on your website, not only will it be a visual distraction but could make people leave your affiliate offer for something else.
When you are not getting a lot of traffic to begin with, having AdSense will not be financially beneficial. However, once your website is getting about 1,000 daily visitors of organic traffic – not from people here at WA – then perhaps it would be of some monetary benefit. But until that level of traffic materializes, do you want to risk losing possible visitors for less than a dollar payout?
If you had an affiliate ad that would pay you a commission of $7.00 and someone clicked your AdSense ad instead paying you 68 cents, would you be happy with that? I understand the argument that if the visitor is going to leave your website without clicking your affiliate ad, they may want another option to click on.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON GOOGLE ADSENSE?
I personally did sign up for Google AdSense years ago when I started here at WA and was accepted, however I never installed the html code on any of my websites. Why? I didn’t like the way it cheapened the look of a website, plus I didn’t like the ads Google chose to display on the websites I visited that had AdSense.
I know I am not the only one here at WA that does not want to have AdSense on their website. But for the sake of any newbie reading this blog who may be wondering, is Google AdSense worth it, answer the following three questions in the comment section below. Even though the WA training advocates it, does not mean that everyone needs to put it on their website, it is a personal choice in my opinion.
QUESTIONS
Do you have Google AdSense on any of your websites?
If YES, about how much on average do you make per month from AdSense?
If NO, what was your reasons for not wanting to include AdSense on your website?
Recent Comments
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Here's my thoughts on it. You are definitely right about making more with affiliate sales in the long run than you would with revenue from Google AdSense and if you do a lot of reviews on your site that have affiliate links, then I would not have any AdSense ads on those reviews.
I don't do a whole lot of reviews on my site, and so I have AdSense ads on a lot of my posts since I don't have affiliate links competing with them and it is starting to payoff a little bit for me. In my opinion, it is another revenue source for a website, but like what has been said, you do want to build out your site and get a good amount of traffic first before diving in with AdSense.
Another thing though is that if you have multiple websites, I honestly believe you should only have one website, if any at all, with AdSense on it. My first website is going to be the only one with AdSense on it. I have no intention of adding it to my second website where I'm promoting Wealthy Affiliate because I want the traffic to focus more on that.
It is a personal choice for those who want to make money regardless of how it is done. But for me I would prefer to not have AdSense on a website where I make far more from affiliate ads than I could ever make from AdSense.
Perhaps if I had a website that did not have a lot or any affiliate ads and I wouldn't mind having AdSense ads that are a bit irrelevant to my niche, I may consider it. But whichever type of niche a website needs a lot of daily traffic for it to be financially beneficial.
Oh I agree with you, if you're making far more with affiliate ads, then I would definitely stay away from AdSense. Right now though, I'm making more with AdSense than I am with affiliate ads/links/sales so for now, I'll stick with AdSense on that site unless of course affiliate sales start to outstrip AdSense.
I lost both of my Google accounts many years ago, without a reason. that does not necessarily make me mad, it simply means there were things that I did not know or do, back then.
I use other display ad organizations and do NOT have to adhere to Google's placement rules. I also generate maybe less than a pack of cigarettes a month, but I do not have to do much for it!
I do just fine with my affiliate ads, more than AdSense could ever give me per month. But if I really wanted to earn an extra $25+ per month, I would spend about 30 minutes a day of my free time doing ClixSense. This way I could make money by just clicking on ads and watching 20 second video ads. It is not much money but I bet I could make more with it than AdSense if I wanted to.
You might be able to. ( I have made a bit of money on Clicksense) One of the problems for me right now is that they have removed Paypal as a payment option and do not even have Payza, either!
Try Neobux, they have a LOT of .005 ads now! (https://www.neobux.com/)
Mickeyb
Great blog Rob .. a lot of goof thoughts. For me, I do not have Adsense and at this point I have no intention of using it. The reason is as you say .. a distraction from the messages and other primary offers on my website.
Maybe it depends on your websites objectives .. it could be that a website is set up with the primary monetising strategy being Adsense.
Cheers, William.
Thank you William and I too agree with your thoughts on the subject. My approach is to get people to take action on my affiliate links and not to distract them away to other unrelated offers that will make me less money.
Hi Rob
Thanks for sharing your own experience. As a customer (reader) I don't really like pubs on blogs. It distracts me, especially those flashing ...
With AdSense, the blog looks less serious as per my personal criteria. The blog looks more like a "Publicity Catch" ... So I don't use or expect to use Adsense on my blog. I think it doesn't fit my niche, readers needs or marketing strategy. But I do think that it may fit some niche ... I prefer to work harder to bring people by the hand to my CTA.
How does it sound for you Rob?
Best Regards, Jeff
I totally agree with your approach. If making an extra $25 per month was really necessary for me, I would do ClixSense more than I do now. You can easily generate a dollar per day for about 30 minutes of your spare time.
Hmmm good to know for "needy" new subscriber to pay their WA membership.Thanks for sharing. Cheers, Jeff
My application was rejected. They gave me a list of possible reasons, but I wasn't in violation of any of their rules.
I've read posts both for and against, I'd just like to have a chance to see for myself if I like or dislike. I may reapply in a few months.
I would advise you to build up your website with more content, use social media to gain more traffic, and then reapply to AdSense in a few months and see if they accept your application.
I have it on one site. It brings around $20-$25 per month from 500 visitors per day. So not heaps. So, not much. I keep considering taking them down. But I don't find that affiliate ads bring that many clicks either. I find with my sites that affiliate text links within my content bring in 98% of my clicks and banners only a very small amount but this might just be the way my sites are.
I didn't have adsense on any sites for a long time but thought I would do an experiment on this particular site, since it wasn't making much. It didn't seem to decrease the number of affiliate clicks, which is why I have left them up there.
But that particular site doesn't have a particularly good conversion rate in terms of $/click so I don't think it would affect my afffiliate sales that much (still makes more from affiliate sales than adsense though).
But on another site, I would never consider putting up adsense. It has a good $/click and converts very well. I wouldn't risk having adsense up there, bringing in cents and potentially taking people away from affiliate links that make a lot more.
Also to note that I haven't optimized my adsense strategy on the site that I have adsense on - I just have a couple of ads in the sidebar
I feel it comes down to personal choice and how one goes about making money with their website. I know I would not put AdSense on my money making website because why would I want to devalue that income stream?
Now should I make another website that has no affiliate ads, like I might do in the future after completing my cancer cure website, then I may use AdSense. But currently my affiliate ads are doing better and I am happy with what I am making from them.
Have it and will get rid of it in few days once I complete my website redesign. I have only 2K daily visitors and earn as an average 5EUR per day on Adsense. That's 150EUR per month, so not enough to keep it.
Average bid for advertising on my website is still under 20cents, meaning that's a lot of clicks to make the 5EUR average! Besides, competitors are advertising on my website, why feed them my traffic?
The funny thing when I told people that I make 5EUR a day, many said: OMG I need to get it right now. I guess if you are making nothing on your website, 150EUR monthly earnings sounds a lot? However most of these people don't have the traffic for it to pay off at all.
I don't know. Making at the moment 3K-3.5K on product commission, so 150EUR is simply not worth it. Just my take on things.
It is true that when someone is making no money even a little bit of money per month from AdSense is probably worth it to them. But personally for me, I make much more from my affiliate ads than I will ever make with AdSense.
I do not see why I should give more money to advertisers than I will make from that ad, while at the same time drawing people away from my website. If I want to make less money, I would rather make it doing ClixSense, which is something I do when watching TV or during my morning coffee/tea.
Absolutely, same thoughts. I will disable mine and see if my sales go up. Not 100% fair comparrison though, since my new design might also result in more sales.
No Robert, like yourself I don't like the type of adds being used by adsense. I also don't like the idea of not having control of what type of adds are displayed (mostly not relevant)
I choose to use affiliate adds instead and change them as I see fit depending on any promotional offers my merchants have...
I agree with you Paul. Not having more control of what ads are showcased by AdSense was a big NO GO for me. Now that I make more on my affiliate ads, I see no need for AdSense at all.
Thanks Robert. I am one of those newbies that has asked "the question " and you did answer to my question pretty much the same as your blog post here. I am still awating the "approval " but by seing this post I do realize now that it would impede on my website's main purpose so, from here on, I will concentrate on my content and forget about adsense until it is worth it...if ever :)
If a person is not in a rush to make money, then building up their website and marketing it through places like social media, will increase their chances of making more money faster than just through the search engines.
If you want to reapply to AdSense at a later date once your website is getting a lot more traffic, then do it later. But you could decide like me and others have, to not reapply at all. Seeing how I make way more on my affiliate ads, I have no need for AdSense.
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I think it will get your page to look like spam.
I have sometimes seen that they are based ads on keywords like well enough in the article.
But under no circumstance relevant to the content itself. of the article.
It is my opinion on adsense and having advertisements on its side
Regardless of where the ads are placed, I do agree with you that it can make a page look spammy.
I do know that if a person should decide to use AdSense, the types of ads will not be relevant to the niche content if the ads are placed in the sidebar and not within the content.
But if you place the ads within your content so that they can be a bit more relevant, it then reduces the quality of your content and makes it look like spam.