Sunday, November 16, 2008

Google AdSense Only Adds Up to Cents

Google AdSense is the most popular form of advertisement on the internet. People can now distinguish them from other adverts and choose to ignore them without even paying them a second thought. This topic is regularly being discussed by Bloggers and other website owners. Adverts being ignored won't be clicked on, therefore no money can be made by the Bloggers. Google is being blamed for this because of their tactic to include text that says "ads by Google" beneath the adverts.

In order for Google AdSense to generate any income you can't have a website getting only 30 to 40 visitors a day. This small number of visitors will likely only make you about one dollar or less a day, not really worth the trouble or the hassle. Also Google AdSense doesn't really make your blog or website look good. It is typical to only get a 1.5% to 5% click through rate. Getting only $0.10 per click you can see that you would be making very little money. Although you can't blame Google for this. YOU must drive targeted traffic to your blog or website.

But you can blame Google for the look of the adverts. But they have been using them for so long and so effectively that you probably won't see a major overhaul anytime soon. Although, they have started to make much better looking ads for the bigger brands. But if your niche blog or website doesn't fall in that category you are left with the unattractive adverts.

Click fraud is when someone sets up a website and through a system or scheme automatically clicks on the Google AdSense ads and tries to get paid. Google is always on the lookout for click thru fraud and it has been reported that as much as 15% of click through contents are from fraudulent sources. This has meant the advertisers paying Google have either lowered the amount they would pay or moved away, driving down the price per click for the blog owner.

With less competition comes smaller revenues. Website owners who had previously gotten the majority of their income from Google AdSense are now having to find other revenue streams or rework their website content to match the adverts.

Google AdSense is going to have to address the new trend in advertising, graphically relevant adverts. They have yet to build a database of graphic adverts which other smaller companies are doing. Most likely Google will buy up their competition but as of now they are beginning to fall behind in this area. Many advertisers realize that they get a higher click through rate with a graphic and are moving in that direction. So the blog or website owner might start looking into carrying other advertisers for higher click through rates.

Last but not least is the complaint that the AdSense ads are the same every time a repeat visitor comes back, thus being even more of a reason not to click. The solution to that is to rotate ads but the problem is that the best adverts won't be showing all of the time, thus dropping the click through rate for the blog owner. Fortunately, this is not a perfect science so proving that you are losing money on rotating adverts is very difficult.

Although there are many issues with Google AdSense they are still the dominant player in this market. If you can get your traffic up to your site it is still possible to make a decent income from Google. Hopefully this will be the case for the next few years.

Bob Perry is a freelance writer specializing in the affiliate marketing. He has experience with monetizing websites and Pay Per Click AdWords campaigns. Check out his blog at DollarCreater.com for more informative articles and tips on making money.

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