Why I gave up Adsense within days. But should I have?

Like many of you probably did, I installed Adsense on my website. Turned on the automated adverts, checked all the boxes of categories I didn't want on my site and watched the ads appear. Some were good: they looked sharp and professional and even had a connection to my niche. Most were awful: cheap looking ads that had nothing to do with anything on my website and some even went completely against my message. How counterproductive.

Let's just say, I wasn't an immediate fan of Adsense.

Little traffic

So I started reading a bit more about the payments and how much you could earn with Adsense. On average, a beginner blogger is lucky to have a 1% clickthrough rate. That means that 1 out of every 100 visitors will click on an ad. If you make 25 cents per click, you need 400 visitors per day to make $1.

My website is much too tiny to get that much traffic. On a good day, I have 7 visitors, usually after I published a new post and put it on my social media accounts. Adsense doesn't seem to make any sense to me, until my site grows bigger and attracts more visitors. Until then, it's just making my site look bad, it's annoying my visitors and it doesn't pay me a dime.

Affiliate ads

In the mean time, I've been accepted by a few merchants in my niche. And they provide a variety of ads, banners and links that I can use to my liking. Those look so much better on my website. And most important: they are in line with my message, they appeal to my visitors, they are a service to my readers.

I've installed AdInserter, a plugin that makes it easy to put ads on specific places on your website. I'm trying out all kinds of places to put ads, finding out if and when it's too many. And I'm happy with it so far. Because people engage with these ads! Even with the small number of daily visitors, the banners are clicked on. I know I don't get payed for these clicks. But the link cookies last for days or even weeks. Even 1 sale would make up for the 25 cents per 100 visitors that Adsense would have made me (if people actually had started clicking those ads).

No earnings

Fair is fair: I haven't made a sale yet. But it looks like my affiliate ads are a better fit with my audience than Adsense is. Once my traffic is through the roof, I might unpause Adsense. For now, it just doesn't seem worth it.

What's your experience with Adsense? Does it work for you? Does it give you quality adverts on you site? Does it bring in cash for you? And with what number of traffic did you start earning with Adsense? Should I reconsider and give it another try? Am I missing the essence of Adsense and therefor miss an income opportunity? I'd love to know your thoughts about it!