Is Anyone Really Making Money With Google Adsense?
By Anna Johnson on January 18th, 2010I recently came across this question on an Internet marketing forum, ‘Is Anyone Really Making Money With Google Adsense?’ I was shocked that anyone would ask such a question.
Aside from our own experience and that of other Internet marketers we know, the fact is that some of most popular blogs and publishing sites online – those getting millions of uniques per month – are doing very well from Google Adsense ads.
Consider content behemoth Demand Media, which runs eHow and other ‘how to’ sites. Pros like Demand Media would not be running Google Adsense if it didn’t generate significant revenues. For more information on Demand Media, check out ‘Anatomy of Demand Media – The $1 Billion Information Marketing Company‘.
Of course, the person asking the question was probably coming from a somewhat different point of view – possibly the point of view of someone who thinks ‘making money with Google Adsense’ is about quickly throwing together a site offering little in the way of valuable content, and a lot in the way of Adsense ads. But, the truth is, that some savvy Internet marketers are making a pretty good return on investment (ROI) even on sites like that.
Now, none of this is to suggest that monetizing a website via Google Adsense is easy. Take Demand Media, which largely does on a huge scale what niche marketers do on a niche scale. For every visitor it attracts to, say, eHow, both it’s Google Adsense click-through rate and earnings per click are likely to be extremely low, but based on the enormous volume of visitors it gets (an estimated 23.7 million uniques in December 2009 according to Compete data) it adds up to a lot.
Therein, of course, lies the rub for many niche marketers: a business model based on Google Adsense – like ANY advertising based business model – relies on TRAFFIC. Whether you get a lot of visitors to one site, or a few visitors to a lot of sites: you need lots of traffic for the ad revenues to add up to anything substantial.
Dedicating yourself to getting that traffic (however you seek to do so) is, however, worth it if you end up with a good ROI.
So, yes, people are making money with Google Adsense. Those who say it can’t be done just or who have ‘tried’ and failed, have their heads stuck in the sand. When some of the biggest online companies are running Google Adsense ads, you can bet they’re on to something.
January 19th, 2010 at 5:04 am
Traffic is definitely one of the factors to success with Adsense. I think approaching it with the right mindset is important too. You got to approach it like a business. It requires a lot of planning and execution. It is real hard work!