To AdSense or not to AdSense?
There is a history of debate in the internet marketing world about whether placing AdSense on your blogs and websites is a yay or nay approach to making money online. Some say that you will not make nearly half as much money with Adsense on your blogs compared to affiliate links. They are of course referring to blogs and websites that either have one or the other; but what about blogs and sites that have both?
The common argument is that if you place Adsense on a page or site that is also selling affiliate products the Adsense will lure the visitor away from clicking on your affiliate link, with a potential for some serious loss of revenue. However, I have been hearing different of late. When I first started setting up adsense sites when I first started internet marketing (2004) the revenue was mediocre to say the least. I have never bothered with it since.
AdSense and its development has come a long long way since then and the technology exists now to hyper-target your ads to every visitor to your site. This is particularly useful for sitemasters who are targeting an audience in a specific country. You will inevitably get visitors from countries where the product you are selling is not applicable or available in that country; the AdSense ads however target your ads to reflect similar offers to that visitors country or region, and even something completely different if that visitor has a browsing history.
The upside? That visitor from the non-targeted country was going to click out of your site anyway (the product was not relevant or available to the country they live in) so why not give them another avenue to leave your site? – the AdSense ad that is targeted specifically for that visitor. Visitor happy, you earn revenue.
The Downside? Sitemasters who decide to display AdSense ads must place a privacy policy on their sites. This is no biggie, there are plenty of templates out there, but it’s one more thing that is likely to put people, especially newbies off. Another potential problem is that the revenue earned will be negligable compared to the affliate commissions earned. This is likely to happen if the ads are placed in a postition on the site where people are likely to click them over the affiliate links in the post (such as the middle of the post). It is here that careful consideration must be given to the placement of the ads.
I have decided to conduct a little experiment. I am going to place AdSense ads on all my sites (bar this one) that also run affiliate links. If things don’t work they can be taken down at a click of a button. It just gives me a little more chance of some revenue. Unfortunately I will not be able to give precise amounts of revenue earned through AdSense (it is against their Terms of Service), but I will give a rough indication of whether things are working the way I want.
AdSense Goals:
- 3 Sites – aiming for an average of £0.25 per site per day. (Yep, I know its low, but I can always change it). If this goal is met then I would be earning in the region of £22 per month.
- This figure will be reviewed every month.
- As stated above, I will not publish exact AdSense revenue but I will state if the figure has been exceeded or not.
Right, I am now off to place some privacy policies and set up some AdSense.
i’ll keep you posted.
