Alright, let's pretend for a moment that The Death of AdSense is right that AdSense is dead. Or at least that it's in a coma. I've been thinking about this on and off over the weekend and the question that comes to my mind is — who's to blame? Is it really Google's fault, as the report states? Or are other reasons?
The answer, of course, is that it's we (the AdSense publishers) who are ultimately to blame for putting AdSense on life support. We (in the general sense) are the ones who built “made for AdSense” (MFA) sites that polluted the Web with duplicated junky content. We put out books and blogs (ahem) about making more money with AdSense. We referred everyone we knew to AdSense, giving us all smaller pieces of the overall pie.
But you know what, this is no different than what happens with any new way to make money, online or offline. There's always a great deal of money to be made at first by the smart operators who learn how to work the system. Then there's the second wave of money to be made by teaching others those techniques (which either won't work anymore or are much less effective). Then there's the third phase of stability where people make money but work much harder to make it.
You see, AdSense is entering the third phase. This is the Internet we're talking about, after all, and so things happen on Internet time.
It's hard to make significant money with junky sites now. So now you have to work at it with a longer term goal in mind. And ultimately it comes down to two things: quality content and decent traffic. Work on those and you'll make money with AdSense, even after the “gurus” of AdSense have moved on to promote other things — looks like the hot topic these days is how to build lists.
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. If you like this posting, why not link to his blog or bookmark it as one of your favorites?