28 March 2008 170 views 2 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

It’s no news that half the websites you’ll visit in the course of a day’s web browsing will have Google AdSense on them. There’s plenty of people who seem to be making a nice chunk of change from Google’s ad service. Heck, there’s plenty of websites that pay contributers in percentages of AdSense revenue.

I’m always on the lookout for ways to bring in a little extra income without expending time, so I looked into AdSense. It’s easy to set up and takes minimal management, but after talking to a wide variety of people, I don’t think that AdSense is such a great income stream. Everyone knows that they won’t make fortunes — in many circles, $30 in a month is impressive. But there’s a general impression that it’s $30 that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

That seems to be the reason that I’ve seen Google’s advertising on any number of business websites — you know, the kind of site meant to advertise services and bring in customers. Personally, the logic behind that doesn’t really seem to make sense: “I want to make a little cash from my website so I’ll offer advertising that relates to my keywords. Sure, Google will put up ads for my competitors on my website and I might lose business to those other businesses, but, hey! I’ve got $30 out of it.”

Depending on your website, you might even be able to get advertisers willing to pay significantly more to advertise to your readers — although I’m of the opinion that if your site is expressly for marketing your services, it shouldn’t be promoting anyone else’s.

In a whole slew of situations, Google AdSense really isn’t worth it. It simply isn’t the cure all for making money online. Even worse, the number of web surfers who click through on Google AdSense ads are actually decreasing! That translates pretty clearly to the fact that the potential income from AdSense is dropping! There are, though, a few opportunities where it makes sense, of course — if you have a domain with little content, or something that you simply don’t have the time to cultivate advertisers for. Before you start relying on AdSense for a side income, though, look into other possibilities. Ad clicks aren’t exactly a reliable income source, and I’m willing to be that the downward trend that Google is seeing is going to keep on going. And unlike housing prices, I doubt AdSense will recover.

Thumbnail image by Somewhat Frank