Adsense Experiment: OVAH
12Sep2005 Filed under: LogisticaRemember about a year ago when I added Adsense to Electrolicious? Well, I’ve officially declared the experiment over. I cancelled my account and removed the code. It simply didn’t pay out — Amazon affiliate stuff pays way better and (key issue) I have total control over what I put on my page. I didn’t like the ads Adsense put on my page, and no one clicked them anyway so screw that.
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6 Responses to “Adsense Experiment: OVAH”
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Hey there. I'm Ariel Meadow Stallings, a native Seattleite who's written my way up and down the Left Coast. Electrolicious is where I post daily randomata, but I also write for a living. My first book, Offbeat Bride, was published last year.
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Randy Charles Morin
September 12th, 2005 at 8:20 am
This is a common complaint about Adsense. I have to ask, what did your blog look like with Adsense on it? I put Adsense on my blogs for the longest time and never really made enough money to justify. Then earlier this year, I realized that sticking an Adsense ad halfway down the right sidebar was the root of my problem. I put ads in more convenient places and blended them to the site and my CTR went thru the roof. I’m now a five figure blogger, working on six.
Randy Charles Morin
September 12th, 2005 at 8:22 am
BTW, I have an Adsense/Adwords blog where I discuss these issues.
http://www.kbcafe.com/adwords
dave
September 12th, 2005 at 9:04 am
In order to get a lot out of adsense, you need a very topic-specific site. Personal blogs don’t generally lend themselves to that, because they’re too broad. People who click adsense ads are people who come to a site looking for information on something very specific, and then see ads related to that particular something.
I don’t use it on my personal blogs, but I’ve done quite well with adsense on some other sites that are more narrow in focus. I’ve got one right now that’s paying me about 8 dollars a day.
katherine
September 12th, 2005 at 1:48 pm
. . . yeah . . . I ended up not even joining in . . . unless you’re Dooce and get 20,000 hits a day, it just doesn’t pay
but then I read these guys comments and go, hmmmmmmm. . . maybe I’ll join in and do the amazon referral thing . . .
dave f
September 13th, 2005 at 11:11 am
Traffic isn’t the only factor, though. Even if your site is all about one subject, the amount of money you make is largely determined by what that subject is. Some ads pay dollars per click, some pay 2 or 3 cents per click.
The other thing is that your “regular” visitors don’t keep clicking ads after the first few days you puy them up. In order to make money on adsense, you have to have a steady stream of new visitors. The only real way to accomplish that is to make your site about something that people search for quite regularly. That, too, can be problematic with a personal blog.
Ariel
September 15th, 2005 at 9:56 am
For those who are curious, I’ve added AdSense to hooping.org and it is kicking ass over there, making up to 10x a day what I was making over here. This is a little suprising because traffic is less than half of what Elish gets. This leads me to think that the biggest factors in its success there are: 1. targeted tight-focused content; 2. daily new visitors coming from searches, links, etc.