I Only Earn $5/Day From AdSense
There, I’ve said it! It’s true, on average I only make about $5/day in AdSense earnings… from this blog.
Oops, you thought I was talking about my overall AdSense earnings? Forget it! The only person I (begrudgingly) discuss that with is the taxman.
Are you surprised? You shouldn’t be. Sit down with a bunch of bankers and you’ll discover that they don’t like to spend money, even though they’re flush with it. Sit down with a group of AdSense publishers and you’ll quickly learn that they never click AdSense ads themselves. I get a fair bit of traffic to this site, but it’s the wrong type of traffic to monetize via AdSense. Which is kind of ironic, but not unexpected…
If I pushed things a little, I’m sure I could improve this blog’s earnings. But I’d lose in other ways.
It’s Not Just About The Money…
Just because Make Easy Money With Google And AdSense doesn’t make me much from AdSense doesn’t mean it’s not a worthwhile endeavor:
- It’s fun. I enjoy writing these posts, for the most part. And I hope it shows!
- I get the occasional consulting gig. Yes, I do AdSense consulting, just not a lot of it (don’t have the time to do a lot of it, for one thing). I could probably do speaking engagements and such as well, but I don’t actively search those out.
- It’s a platform. I have regular readers who seem to enjoy what I write about, even if I veer slightly off topic from time to time. It’s nice to have, especially if you’re an introvert by inclination.
- I learn a lot from it. Seriously, I learn so many interesting things both from my own research and from my readers’ feedback. It’s like there’s someone there pushing you to do better.
- It helps others. Alright, so I’m not Florence Nightingale. But it’s very gratifying to hear from readers who’ve found what I’ve written to be useful.
- I have other ways to make money. I can push my book. I can recommend certain products I like. I can indirectly juice up the traffic to other sites I own. I can build my mailing lists.
I’m not sure I can put a price on the value of this blog! (But feel free to offer me big wads of cash…)
So What If Most AdSense Publishers Don’t Earn A Lot?
According to an unscientific AdSense earnings poll being run on the Digital Point AdSense forum, 75% of the poll’s participating AdSense publishers make $25 or less per day, with the majority (almost half) making less than $5/day. Critics say this is proof that webmasters should look elsewhere for monetization options.
My question to you is: how many of those sites would make any money without AdSense?
That’s what the pundits forget. AdSense is the program that monetized the World Wide Web. By automating things to the hilt, Google was able to provide itsy-bitsy webmasters (well, their sites, not the webmasters themselves) with a way to make some money from the dribs and drabs of traffic they got. It’s the long tail of advertising, as I’ve argued before. And it doesn’t require a lot of work to get going.
Something to think about over the long weekend. (Here in Canada.)
Sponsored Link: Learn more about the ins and outs of
AdSense by reading Uncommon AdSense, my latest book about AdSense.
Eric Giguere is the author of Uncommon AdSense and the award-nominated (that just means it lost!) blog Make Easy Money with Google and AdSense.
 |
Enjoyed this post? Get free updates by mail or by RSS! |
Socialize This Post (Please!)
Tags
AdSense, advertising, earnings, Eric Giguere, Google, help, income, monetization, traffic, writing
Comments
5 Responses to “I Only Earn $5/Day From AdSense”
I’m with ya on this, Eric. I haven’t even bothered to place AdSense or anything else on my blog. My primary goal isn’t monetization, anyway. Frankly, it’s not my second or third goal, either. Like you, I have other things in mind. And I’ve found that, when people enjoy what I do or write…they’ll find other ways to support it. And for the time being, the support I really like most is having folks stop by and comment on something I’ve said if they found it helpful. Many blogs are well-designed, but so many are so cluttered with every ad, trinket and poll known to mankind. I’d rather spare my growing audience the overstimulation as much as I can.
We’ve got a pretty long weekend here in the U.S., too (with just one bump in the middle). It started about an hour ago…so Friday night, Saturday, Sunday…err, Monday isn’t anything official (but a lot of people are taking the day off for hot dogs and community fireworks), Tuesday is Chuck’s Birthday and Wednesday is Independence Day. Have a great holiday weekend, eh?
Hi! Nice to read about it. Yeh i also saw at digital point forum that ppl earn avarage $5 - $10 / day. Generally it is good for those countries who has low currency than USD$. They could be gainer.
A very interesting confession. Why aren’t you using other methods of monetization?
I spend my energies on other sites, mostly. Plus since this is a blog about AdSense it makes sense to use AdSense to monetize it. I just don’t put ads in everyone’s face
[...] none of this will help increase the AdSense income for this blog (which is paltry, as I’ve admitted before). But by switching to FeedBurner I’ll be able to capitalize on any feed monetization schemes [...]