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Adsense - Pros and Cons
Adsense - Pros and Cons
Adsense - Pros and Cons - You have that site on-line for quite a while, its generating a good number of hits every day and you're thinking whether or not to use AdSense advertising on it to make it generate some form of income.
Well this is a description of the pros and cons of this approach to Internet advertising. AdSense has definitely hit the Internet like something from another planet and people are very excited about it everywhere. There are negative aspects to Adsense and alternatives to consider.
Well this is a description of the pros and cons of this approach to Internet advertising. AdSense has definitely hit the Internet like something from another planet and people are very excited about it everywhere. There are negative aspects to Adsense and alternatives to consider.
Adsense - Pros and Cons
AdSense is generally a great tool for webmasters. Whereas, they would use to worry about how to raise enough money to keep their sites profitable, or at least keep them on-line those worries are gone.
AdSense allows webmasters to forget about those worries and concentrate on creating good content for their sites. In fact, the emphasis is now on creating quality content (often associated with the top-paying words) which will bring you many visitors.
AdSense can also very well integrated with your website, it's easily customizable in terms of colors, size and position which means you can experiment with it in any way you like to maximize your income.
AdSense is a very good means of generating a constant revenue on your site. All you need to do is create some quality content and keep it updated constantly and you can literally live off your website. A lot of people are doing just that nowadays with AdSense, so it's become sort of a business in itself.
It's also a great program because you can have the same account advertising on all your pages. This is great for webmasters wit a lot of content because it means they don't have to create many accounts unnecessarily.
But as stated, above, there are some negative aspects to advertising with AdSense and here's a small list of such cons.
Clearly the largest negative impact the AdSense program can have on you is through Google closing your accounts. Most of the time this happens because of so called 'click fraud', which means somebody would be producing artificial clicks on your page.
There's one really nasty side to that. It doesn't have to be you making those artificial clicks. It could very well be your competition doing this in order to shut you down, or the competitor of whoever is advertising on your page, looking to drive their marketing costs up.
The earning AdSense brings you are by no means constant. In fact, they're not even close to that. Anything you do to your site could end up being a big mistake costing you a great deal of money. It's that kind of pressure that has a negative impact on you.
First of all, you constantly need to make sure your site is in the spotlight of search engines when people are searching for whatever it is your site is about.
If you fail to do that you won't have any visitors, and that of course means you won't have any AdSense revenue. In a way this is nothing new, as any form of generating revenue on the Internet with advertising has such a drawback.
And finally, another major problem is that you constantly have to feed your site with better and better content. Now, of course, certain sites are very well geared towards doing this but with some types of content this is rather hard to achieve. This is often why the services of a copywriter are employed to generate more and more content.
When writing original content, the best thing a website owner can do is research a topic thoroughly and then return to writing with lots of information they can out in their own words, and show their own opinion on.
So there are the pros and cons of using the AdSense network for generating profits through advertising. Now the choice of whether or not these work for you is yours.
Pros and Cons of Adsense
Could you comment about the pros and cons of including adsense in our sites? I have seen a great deal of discussion about using adsense to help monetize a site and would appreciate a bit of clarification.
Thanks, Ken
Hey Ken - you bet. Here you go…
Pros of Using Adsense:
It's easy to use - you don't have to select the ads/products, etc. Just paste in the code and Google will figure out which ads to run based on the page content.
You can run ads on multiple websites from one account.
You can customize your ad display and run text, images, the colors you want, etc.
Cons of Using Adsense:
They can shut your account down anytime. If you were making good income, that can disappear overnight. The most common reason is clickfraud and it doesn't have to be you clicking on the ads. A competitor can come and click the same ad on your page 10 times a day and you're the one shut down. Any clickfraud on your account, regardless of who perpetrates it, and you're the one shut down.
You need significant amounts of traffic to make any significant income.
To make income, you have to give up the visitor. Essentially, you only get paid when people click an adsense ad and leave your site.
My opinion;
If you have a popular site with plenty of visitors that return regularly, you can do well with Adsense. For example, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome.com reportedly makes over $10,000/month on Adsense. Of course, he gets about a half million visits every month. (if not more by now)
For average blog owners, I think if you're going to give up the visitor, why not find something that pays better? Clickbank.com now lets you create ads much like adsense, but for clickbank products. And, you can find pay per click and pay per lead programs at CJ.com and many of the other affiliate networks.
Let's play pretend.
Case 1: You have an ad for an affiliate product in the sidebar. It pays $40 commission. You get 500 visitors, and 10 of them click your ad. Of those 10 people, one buys the product. You earn: $40.
Case 2: You have adsense ads in the sidebar. You get 500 visitors, and 10 of them click your ad. If the ad pays you $2, you earn $20. You'd need the ad to pay $4 to match the profit of having sold just one affiliate product at $40 commission.
That's where the "numbers game" part comes into play. If you're running affiliate ads, you can choose what products to advertise. You can target lead generation or affiliate products with good commissions. With Adsense, you don't get to choose which ads run, or how much they pay. Hope that helps!
Could you comment about the pros and cons of including adsense in our sites? I have seen a great deal of discussion about using adsense to help monetize a site and would appreciate a bit of clarification.
Thanks, Ken
Hey Ken - you bet. Here you go…
Pros of Using Adsense:
It's easy to use - you don't have to select the ads/products, etc. Just paste in the code and Google will figure out which ads to run based on the page content.
You can run ads on multiple websites from one account.
You can customize your ad display and run text, images, the colors you want, etc.
Cons of Using Adsense:
They can shut your account down anytime. If you were making good income, that can disappear overnight. The most common reason is clickfraud and it doesn't have to be you clicking on the ads. A competitor can come and click the same ad on your page 10 times a day and you're the one shut down. Any clickfraud on your account, regardless of who perpetrates it, and you're the one shut down.
You need significant amounts of traffic to make any significant income.
To make income, you have to give up the visitor. Essentially, you only get paid when people click an adsense ad and leave your site.
My opinion;
If you have a popular site with plenty of visitors that return regularly, you can do well with Adsense. For example, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome.com reportedly makes over $10,000/month on Adsense. Of course, he gets about a half million visits every month. (if not more by now)
For average blog owners, I think if you're going to give up the visitor, why not find something that pays better? Clickbank.com now lets you create ads much like adsense, but for clickbank products. And, you can find pay per click and pay per lead programs at CJ.com and many of the other affiliate networks.
Let's play pretend.
Case 1: You have an ad for an affiliate product in the sidebar. It pays $40 commission. You get 500 visitors, and 10 of them click your ad. Of those 10 people, one buys the product. You earn: $40.
Case 2: You have adsense ads in the sidebar. You get 500 visitors, and 10 of them click your ad. If the ad pays you $2, you earn $20. You'd need the ad to pay $4 to match the profit of having sold just one affiliate product at $40 commission.
That's where the "numbers game" part comes into play. If you're running affiliate ads, you can choose what products to advertise. You can target lead generation or affiliate products with good commissions. With Adsense, you don't get to choose which ads run, or how much they pay. Hope that helps!
Pros and Cons of Google AdSense
Google AdSense can monetize your website or blog but consider the pros and cons before signing up.
Most webmasters and bloggers put a great deal of hard work and creativity into their website or blog. Earning money through online advertising is an effective way of covering costs for small sites and earning an income from larger or popular sites. If you want to earn revenue from a website or blog, Google AdSense is the largest of several online advertising networks that will pay you each time a site visitor clicks an advertisement on your Web pages. Before signing up to monetize your site, weigh the pros and cons of Google AdSense and the impact of running online advertising on your website or blog.
Revenue
The main advantage of using Google AdSense is that it provides revenue for your website or blog. The level of income you might receive depends on a number of factors, including how much the advertiser is willing to pay for each click and the popularity of your website. Advertisers will pay far more for a click on competitive keywords; likewise, websites with a good track record of turning visitors into clicks tend to attract a premium. Google AdSense pays its website publishers monthly, provided the number of clicks reaches a minimum threshold of $100. One disadvantage of Google AdSense is that the owner of a small website may have to wait some time to reach the payout threshold.
Content
The content of any website or blog is the major element that attracts visitors and determines search engine ranking position. Using Google AdSense or other online advertising networks will reduce the amount of space that you have available for content, and some visitors may not like this. One advantage of using Google AdSense is that it automatically provides contextual advertisements that fit the subject matter of your website. Many webmasters believe this adds value to the site and actually encourages visitors. Google AdSense also serves ads in a range of sizes so you can minimize the impact of lost content space by using only small display ads on your pages.
The content of any website or blog is the major element that attracts visitors and determines search engine ranking position. Using Google AdSense or other online advertising networks will reduce the amount of space that you have available for content, and some visitors may not like this. One advantage of using Google AdSense is that it automatically provides contextual advertisements that fit the subject matter of your website. Many webmasters believe this adds value to the site and actually encourages visitors. Google AdSense also serves ads in a range of sizes so you can minimize the impact of lost content space by using only small display ads on your pages.
Design
The look and feel of a website or blog is also important to visitors, particularly when the design aids easy navigation through the site's content. The disadvantage of using Google AdSense is that the ads can reduce the design appeal of the site. Garish colors and large, unattractive advertisements can put off visitors and reduce website traffic. On the plus side, Google AdSense offers highly customizable ads that can blend or attractively contrast with the design of your site. Users can change the color of advertising text, backgrounds and border as well as text size and the shape of advertising boxes. Skilled webmasters and bloggers can tweak Google AdSense advertisements to complement site design.
The look and feel of a website or blog is also important to visitors, particularly when the design aids easy navigation through the site's content. The disadvantage of using Google AdSense is that the ads can reduce the design appeal of the site. Garish colors and large, unattractive advertisements can put off visitors and reduce website traffic. On the plus side, Google AdSense offers highly customizable ads that can blend or attractively contrast with the design of your site. Users can change the color of advertising text, backgrounds and border as well as text size and the shape of advertising boxes. Skilled webmasters and bloggers can tweak Google AdSense advertisements to complement site design.
One benefit of Google AdSense is that the system provides highly detailed statistics on website visitors and advertising revenues. AdSense publishers can log in to a secure account portal to access a wealth of visitor and revenue statistics including data on ad click numbers, revenue per click and total revenue, page popularity and even the popularity of individual ads. Webmasters can use this information to tweak page layout and boost revenue. The Google AdSense portal also offers security features, such as the ability to block certain advertisers.