Many people who want to earn money with the blogs and websites are wondering, “Is Google Adsense any good?” or “Is Google Adsense worth it?”
Today I’m going to give you an answer to those questions and tell what one online millionaire talks about the subject.
How Does Google Adsense Work?
1.You have a website
2.You put the Google Ads on your website
3.You get paid some pennies/cents when the visitor clicks the ad on your website.
(4.The visitor ends up to the advertiser’s website)
So the process is quite simple. Notice that you don’t get paid for everyone who sees the ads but for everyone who clicks the ad.
Then you can see your revenue and statistic from Google Adsense.
Is Google Adsense Easy Money?
No. In the beginning of my online marketing career, I thought that it would be easy to earn some little cash just to put some Google ads on my site. I was wrong.
I had a blog with about 1,000/monthly visitors (which is not very much but still something). I activated Google ads on my site just to see how well it works. Google ads were on my site for almost two months and guess how much I earned.
Nothing. $0!
The moral of the story is that if you are looking for a quick cash, Google Adsense is not the best. You will need a lot of traffic to your website before you can start earning any decent money with Google Adsense.
#1 Google Adsense Tip!
Do you know Pat Flynn? He is a very successful online entrepreneur and he is a real expert in online marketing. His #1 Google Adsense Tip is, “Don’t use Google Adsense!”
You may think, “Why not to use it? Would it be a great way to earn little extra income?”
Look at the image below (click the image to make it large).
As we learned before you get paid when someone clicks on the ad and ends up on the advertiser’s website.
But the problem is that Google is taking some money in between. Let’s say that the advertiser pays $0,20 every time when someone clicks the ad. $0,10 goes to Google and $0,10 goes to you. But what if you could get the whole $0,20? (numbers are just for the example)
What if you could contact the advertiser and say that he can place his ad to your website without Google?
You could easily boost your income because you don’t have the pay Google anymore! The advertiser and you are happy. Win-win.
Don’t be afraid to contact the advertiser straight because he will very probably be happy if someone is willing to advertise his products.
Do People Like Random Ads?
The reality is that we have become quite “immune” to the ads on the Internet. People don’t click them too much.
Google ads can work sometimes but actually more targeted ads are better. When you activate Google ads on your website, you can’t fully control what people see. But when you contact the advertiser straight you can decide what kind of ads you want to show.
My suggestion for you is to put ads that are very relevant to your niche. If your niche is “women’s kettlebell training” put the kettlebell ads.
If your niche is about “how to play piano”, put ads of the piano courses.
A Better Way – Affiliate Marketing
With Google ads, you can only earn pennies per ad but with affiliate marketing, you can earn $100, $200 or $1,400 with one single ad.
In affiliate marketing, you get the certain commission of the products that people end up buying.
It’s very powerful way to earn money. Compare earning $0,05 per Google ad vs. $100 of promoting the product you can honestly recommend and you even use yourself.
Thousands of companies have affiliate programs that you can join. Most of the time you just need to fill out the form and to become an affiliate marketer. You don’t even need to think how to market your website for the “advertiser” but you become accepted almost automatically.
Conclusion – Is Google Adsense any good?
Is Google Adsense worth it?
You can earn some money with it. I know people who have earned hundreds of dollars with Google Adsense.
But in my opinion, there are better and more profitable ways to earn money online like affiliate marketing.
In Youtube, Google Adsense is a great resource to earn money but in your own website, you don’t need it.
Just contact the advertiser and you will earn bigger commissions ($1,4000/sale).
Here is Pat Flynn’s video Passive Income Streams 101 where he explains his #1 Google Adsense Tip (starts at 4:14).
If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask!
Do you have experiences with Google Adsense? What do you think about it?
I read someone’s comments on getting his account banned on adsense, the question is why do such things happen? There should be a defined reason why some people’s account should be be banned on adsense, possibly when they infringe on any rules because if users accounts gets banned without any justification, it’s definitely discouraging people to use adsense.
My friend Jerry Huang wrote recently on his blog post on Wealthy Affiliate why his account wasn’t approved on Google AdSense.
One reason why somebody is getting banned is that they’ve been clicking their own ads = cheating to earn money.
Wow, I just read the article your friend wrote about his experience with Google Adsense and he really went through hell trying to getting his account approved. There are so many reasons he pointed out why most people’s accounts are not approved, such as ;
Your site being new
Your site looking immature.
Issue of traffic generation.
Most of the youtuber’s got their fortune because of Google Adsense and based on that I can say that google ad sense is still more better when it comes to paying ads. The reason on how can I say this it’s maybe because most of the people that I know who got ads in their sites, videos, etc it is from the google adsense.
Yes, YouTubers earn some money with AdSense but usually that’s not the main income source. Most successful YouTubers use other ways to monetize their videos because AdSense doesn’t pay so much. You earn $1-4 per 1,000 views. If you promote some products, you could make even $100-500 for 1,000 views. The potential is way bigger with promotions than with AdSense in general.
Ow thank you for that information. I got it. Now I know why most of them promotes a product and its company in some of their videos. And yeah promoting something and influencing that product or company to your viewers will cost the company to pay you because you promoted them. So the more you become famous is equals to more company that will choose you to promote them.
I know this was written a few years ago but I just wanted to chime in on Google Adsense: It is what you make it. The biggest hurdles a blog/ site owner deals with is increasing authentic traffic and finding the right formula to optimize adspace on their pages. Google is consistently changing their algorthithum so it becomes a gamble when you try to stick to outdated practices. Marketing ( social, standard, or commercial ) can be tiresome but you can generate a bit of income with Google by paying attention to the following:
– Spacing – Where have you situatated the banner/ ad spaces on your pages? Have you tested them to ensure they are user friendly, adhering to Google’s regulation and appealing to the eye? This may be the reason your residual income from Google is dwindling.
– Supplemental Marketing – Have you signed up for additional advertisement agencies? How would signing up for these agencies help your conversion? Consider reading through the FAQs or contacting the owners of the advertisement agencies to make sure you can couple their ads with Google’s ( and vice versa). The last thing you want to do is load your page up with prevelant advertisments only to find that one or all of the companies paying you feel that you’ve violated their terms and conditions.
Great points my friend. Yeah, this post was quite old and I would need to update it.
However, I am not still using Google AdSense because I see that affiliate marketing or ad optimization networks like Mediavine pay better.
I think Google Adsense is only useful for absolutely large blogs where they get millions of visitors per month because the chances of people clicking on ads that they like are increased massively. That’s the problem. 1000 visitors may seem like a lot to you but when you consider how many may actually want to click on an ad, it’s quite a low number, 0 in your case. The problem though is that they do pay very little so you need a lot of clicks to make a decent amount. Personally, it’s just better to sell ads on your site manually.
I noticed that I’ve written this post already 1,5 years ago. I have learned quite a lot of new things after that. There are services like Ezoic, Mediavine and others that optimize ads for you on your website. That can increase your earnings quite significantly.
For 1,000 sessions, you can earn $20 or even $30 with that kind of services. So, if you have, for example, 100,000 sessions per month, you can already earn $2,000-3,000/month just for ads. That’s why I am planning to try these services in the near future.
By the way, there was a video by Pat Flynn on this post. I realized how much he has changed in 8 years because one month ago I met Pat personally in Lisbon.
Well Adsense is definitely ‘good’ but there are numerous drawbacks to it. When I first started out in internet marketing several years ago it took me no longer than about 3 weeks to get banned from Adsense – why? I still have no idea? I’m back in there now because I manged to fly under the radar for a bit but who knows how long that will last for? They are notorious for closing accounts and killing off online business everywhere – they pay well though! !!! 🙂
Thank you Chris for sharing your experiences. It’s strange that they are willing to close accounts for almost any reason. I hope that this time it will work longer and they won’t close your account! 🙂
Hello Roope, thanks for your article about Google Adsense. I have heard a few pros and cons before and I am always on the lookout to gather more information.
I think you are right; you are better off in becoming an affiliate marketer so you can determine what ads show up on your website. And yes, the chances are much higher to earn money through affiliate links. I like the idea of being in control of the ads on my site.
Your post is very helpful in making a decision pro or against Google Adsense.
All the best from Anke
Thank you for the comment Anke.
I’m very glad that you found the article helpful. My aim is always to provide valuable and good information for the readers.
The reality is that many visitors don’t even like Adsense. In my opinion, it’s important to concentrate on providing the best user experience for the website visitors and if people don’t like Google’s random ads I prefer to remove them.