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

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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!

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Recent Comments

5

Hi Bianca - I think the training is a little optimistic in suggesting you get Adsense so early on :-) I think it works best for certain sites and topics

Many WA members don't use it for many of the same reasons as you, while others use it so they don't 'leave any money on the table.

I installed it and did Autoads coz it was easy to set up and they really made a mess of the pages. As you say, it's probably not worth while for the disruption. You will make more if you get the same number of clicks on an aff ad, especially if they are relevant with Adsense isn't always.

I do think some carefully-placed ads might be worth doing although, again, not untilo you have a few hundred or thousand visitors.

Ian

Hi Ian,

Thanks for sharing your experience with Adsense!

I couldn't agree more. Maybe some people keep Adsense on their site due to fear of missing out. But that's not good enough a reason to me.

I'm not saying I'll never use Adsense, it could be great. But I'll wait until my tiny baby website grows up to be a feisty teen or even a well established adult ;-)

Best,

Bianca

Good thinking!

Once you start getting a run of visitors you can decide how best to monetise them :-)

Ian

Great information - very useful!

Thanks so much for sharing!

Bob

You provided a lot of useful information. Thanks a lot.
Joe

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