Does Adsense Really suck?
Aaron Wall made an eye-opening post about Adsense titled “Google Adsense as a Terrible Business Model.” If you think you are going to take things nice and steady and still be making money off of Adsense 10 years from now, you should probably read it.
I’ve decided to list a few positive things about Adsense.
1. It works. If you have lots of diverse content its just about impossible to monetizing it with affiliate offers, your own products, etc. Some people have discovered you can make a ton more money from free, openly indexable content than hiding it behind a brick wall and charging a cover fee.
2. Its a pretty sure bet. This is what gave me the idea to write this post. I was just looking through my files and noticed I have enough failed projects to make a grown man cry. These are sites I build that never made a dime. In contrast, nearly every Adsense site I’ve created and bothered to get a couple of links to makes money. Sure, the total revenue isn’t breath-taking, but its there.
3. Its easy. You have content, you add a code to the content, bam you start making money. Some very basic color/placement testing can have a big impact on your earnings.
These pros are also the reason why there are cons. Truth be told, it works, its a sure bet, and its easy when you have the skills a web publisher needs — being able to write, use a computer, do market research, linkbait, etc. Thats something not everyone can do. Had I paid the market rates for people to do all of this work for me, hell yeah, Adsense sucks as a business model.
Well the thing is, no business model is perfect! Whatever business model you employ, you’re always going to have to adapt to change with the times. I doubt there’s any successful business that hasn’t had to adapt to stay abreast of change.
So yeah, AdSense sucks as a business model for those people that are determined to remain static and not work another day. But then in that case, you could say every other conceivable business model “sucks”.
AdSense has its problems as a business model, but I really don’t think you could say it “sucks”.
In a lot of ways I think AdSense will actually IMPROVE as a business model over time.
Aaron Wall mentions the lack of competition from other contextual advertising companies. That is definitely a problem at the moment. But the competition will only grow in the future, which will present more opportunities and hopefully better deals for publishers.
The competition from other publishers will also increase going into the future. But so will advertising spend. And those that are already in the game will have a big head-start over the competition in terms of necessary skills and existing business relationships.
Comment by Chromate — December 14, 2006 @ 6:10 am
I think you are right about this. While the competition certainly will come (its already here), many are going to be tempted to go after the bigger markets in hope for bigger profits, this should leave plenty of niches open.
I always tell people, just take your business seriously. Do the work you need to do and don’t be lazy, and the money will take care of itself.
Comment by Andrew — December 14, 2006 @ 9:55 pm
Who cares if Adsense lives or dies? If it isn’t Adsense it’ll be something else. So long as there is online advertising there will website publishers, and online advertising isn’t going anywhere.
Aaron Wall has only been using the Internet since 2003 or whatever, so he probably doesn’t remember a world without Adsense. There were ways to monetize a content site before Adsense, there will be ways to do it after Adsense.
Comment by Chris Beasley — December 15, 2006 @ 9:22 am
Yep.. Google is THE WORST .. moment you reach 100$ they will disable your account.. So they keep the money advertisers pay and do not pay hte publishers. no wonder their advertise revenues are much higher.
Comment by Prabosh jog — May 1, 2007 @ 3:33 am
Agreed. Their claim of “invalid clicks” is a line of crap. I have since blocked adsense ads from my browsers, removed google desktop, changed the default browser search from Google to Yahoo (downloaded the Yahoo tool bar and chose to make default - then uninstalled), uninstalled Google toolbars and search engines. JOIN THE GOOGLE BOYCOTT!!!!!
Comment by octane_freak — August 5, 2007 @ 9:26 pm
(when I was speaking of changing the default browser search from Google to Yahoo, i was talking about Firefox)
Comment by octane_freak — August 5, 2007 @ 9:28 pm
If they disabled accounts when the amount reaches 100$, don’t you think everyone would be not using it???
Comment by Dave — September 10, 2008 @ 1:49 am