Is it still possible to profit from AdSense?

Building up a successful web destination is no small feat.

If you’ve achieved it in the past, it doesn’t mean you’ll pull it off as easily in the future. It just means that you know one successful way to “get there”, among many others — which is better than nothing.

But hordes of newbies, from all over the world, are taking the web by storm and firing up new forums, blogs, wikis and sites with diverse offerings which they deem worthy of carrying the wildly popular Google AdSense revenue-generating pay-per-click advertising service.

Some publishers expect very little revenue (while dreaming of a break in the big leagues, at one point or another) and others, usually more experienced publishers, are aiming at nothing less than being able to live solely off these Google-spun revenues.

Is it still possible to get to that point where you can basically quit your day job and blog on all sorts of themes that you care about (for real)? Perhaps it is… but don’t get your hopes too high.

You see, Google AdSense is merely an aggregator of ads which are bought (and paid for) by advertisers of all sizes.

As such, some fields like the insurances, debt reduction and medical care in the US might yield a lot more money than, say, poverty reduction in Mozambique. The later theme is a crucial one, there’s no question about it —but— are there any advertisers looking to pay big bucks to associate with that particular content? Your road to riches, using AdSense, has to start with a theme you happen to like (otherwise, it’ll just make you unhappy) but it should also be a magnet of sorts, for rich advertisers.

You need to choose the right theme and if it’s possible, aim the content at a rich geographic location meaning that blogging about skiing in Argentina will likely score less money in your pockets than if you focus on Aspen, CO.

But that’s not all…

If you’re to emerge as a credible source of information for your visitors —and— the mighty search engines, you’ll need to find a way to stay on top of your competition. One way to do this is to post unique content people are looking for and then, once you master that art of “answering all the right questions”, you need to do it as often (and as regularly) as possible.

You see, lots of marketers are selling the dream of “passive revenues” related to the Web 2.0 and 3.0 publishers but the truth of the matter is, to be successful for a long time, a publisher has to sweat. A lot, actually. Getting a web site right doesn’t usually happen the first time around. It takes a serious toll in time, effort and sometimes, money.

The good news is that lots of other publishers will turn their attention to other things, along the way so that’ll be that much less competition for you, assuming you go the distance.

But again with the main question, is it possible to profit from AdSense?

Depending on the type of content you publish and how it’s delivered to your visitors, AdSense could prove to be a solid (and surprisingly stable) source of recurring revenue but don’t expect —even for one moment— that it’ll be as easy as what the marketers would have you believe.

As a general rule of thumb, if you’re successful offline, you may also have what it takes to make it big online too but hey, you’ll have to give it a try to learn from experience how you fare in the face of infinite competition in an always-on world.

The AdSense revenue generation lifestyle isn’t for everybody and especially not for the faint at heart but if you really intend to work up your place as a “useful and popular web destination”, the payoff is very real if (and when) you get there.

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Do lower AdSense revenues make you blue?

Small and not-so-small webmasters alike are currently feeling the financial crises pinch all the way down into their daily AdSense earnings with lower than average eCPM numbers making it next-to-impossible to bring in a decent monthly pay even when tens of thousands of (hopefully valid) clicks being registered.

In fact, some bloggers believe it’s Google’s fault and that they’re keeping a larger share of the money that, in their view, usually goes to publishers but that explanation doesn’t add up. It could be (nobody knows for sure) but it just doesn’t feel right.

The more logical explanation has to do with basic supply and demand.

The supply of advertising space, namely in blogs like this one, have been growing steadily over the last months. That means advertisers are presented with more choices than ever before, within AdWords. So the supply side, meaning the countless AdSense Publishers, is busting at the seams.

On the other hand, advertisers are likely to hold back on frivolous spending, such as AdSense, resorting to local TV and radio spots or going back to specialty publications… offline. Even if these advertisers stick with AdSense, they’re likely to ease on the PPC budget they allow Google to manage so that, in turn, makes for lower revenues downstream… towards publishers.

So what can publishers do to push up their AdSense revenues in these times of financial crisis?

A lot of things, surely but here are a few…

Display your ads as close to the top of your page as possible — it appears Google, through some secret wizardry nobody can be quite sure about, awards more revenue to publishers putting their ads at the top, where all visitors can clearly see them;
Have less ad zones — this will filter out the less lucrative ads and only display those that pay the most. It might be risky since less visitors might see the ads but perhaps it’s worth a shot;
Go for colors that work for you — lots of AdSense ads still display using the “generic” Google-blue. Keep in mind that “ad blindness” is more likely to happen with this configuration even if you feel “visitors will be comfortable with colors they know”, you also risk that they won’t see them, at all;
Redesign your page layout — how your site looks makes a significant difference in the number of clicks you’ll get so make sure to put a lot of time to make your AdSense-bearing site as appealing as possible;
Link to other nice folks — especially if you operate a blog, linking with other blogger buddies will do wonders for your visitor count… and theirs.

Being blue because of lower AdSense revenues just doesn’t fix the basic problem: a much lower monthly check.

To cure these (probably temporary) blues, you must take action.

Google provides you with limited metrics about what’s really going on, clickwise but savvy publishers have a sixth sense to juice as many details as they can from those numbers by using channels and testing various advertising scenarios. This improves their knowledge of how AdSense rewards certain types of scenarios instead of others.

The financial crises Wall Street has basically engineered (from way back) and for which we feel a painful pinch now might take a few months (or even years) to wane away but as long as it hangs over our heads, publishers need to become even more creative in finding ways to stabilize and hopefully increase their revenues.

Good luck to all the good publishers out there who feel bad about getting less money for their hard work. Hang in there, there seems to be lots of light at the end of this tunnel.

Tags: adsense, google adsense, adwords, google adwords, publishers, advertisers, pay-per-click, ppc, daily adsense revenues, monthly adsense check, publishing content, adsense blues, revenue blues

Duplicate content isn’t good for your AdSense earnings

If you visit online marketplaces (like ebay) or web advertising communities, you’re likely to come across downloadable packs of ready-made, Google AdSense-optimized, context-specific templates which are packed with thousands of articles on a wide range of subjects.

For AdSense newbies who balk at all the hard work necessary to build up a fine web destination, such an opportunity to “get rich quick” is too tempting to ignore — so they download, tweak and install these packages, filled with articles ranging from acne to sports cars, waiting for the “passive money” to come in.

And since whoever was selling (or giving out) these template probably lured their “public” with (usually) fake daily revenue “proofs”, the hope for these AdSense newbies can be quite high, sometimes ranging as high as over US$1,000 a day… for basically just waiting for the money to arrive by mail, once a month.

But even though this entire fairy tale sounds exciting and somewhat “possible”, it’s not.

In fact, trying to rise up in the online world using this pre-made content is nothing short of impossible — unless you completely change its nature and mix and match it in such a way that it’s unrecognizable from its original form and provides much more value than the initial offering. But hey, this is “real life” we’re talking about and that means roughly 99% of webmasters won’t bother going through so much trouble so, at the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of them will just upload everything up on their server, using FTP and wait for the clicks to happen.

Several problems may arise, at this point. Let’s go over some of them, briefly…

Natural traffic to your “new web resources” will likely be anemic or non-existent, which means no revenue;
Major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN will probably link to you in sandbox mode but will likely tag you,within a matter of hours or days, as “duplicate content” which guarantees you won’t list in the top 10… ever, maybe not even the top 1,000, or worse;
Eventually, your worse nightmare will happen: a Google “search quality agent” —a real human being— will visit your site and award you a good or not-so-good score that, in some instances, may threaten your AdSense membership;
Smaller directories, forums and bloggers will not be interested in linking to your web site because they too will see it’s duplicate content available eslewhere (way before you came around).

And because of this impossibility to properly (and organically) market your new treasure chest of information, you won’t be part of those who enjoy several hundreds of dollars per day, in Google AdSense PPC advertising.

You probably wanted to read that “it works” for some people (and maybe it does) but judgeing from what hundreds of frustrated webmasters have posted in various forums, this “strategy” doesn’t deliver on its promises.

But there’s an upside to all of this.

Looking at these templates and the mountains of content they convey might fire up your imagination. If that’s the case, anything is possible. You might decide to embark on the long-term, self-made and highly targeted road to riches, after all. That would be the sensible thing to do as the value of your work is therefore likely to stay pretty steady over time or, depending on what kind of content you produce, even increase (sometimes, significantly).

Newbie AdSense Publishers should aim to generate more realistic amounts of money, on a daily basis than “$1,000 per day, in less than a month”. Perhaps $10, $20 or even $50 would be a nice start. And within a year, how about $100 a day. That sounds feasible enough.

Simply pick a topic you genuinely like and fire up a blog. Post unique content on a regular basis and that’ll take you one step closer to becoming a valuable publishing-ally for Google (or any other advertising services provider, for that matter).

It’s possible to make a living off Google AdSense (this blog helps me do just that) but the winning approach is the one you know “in your heart” is the right one. It’s also the path less traveled and not too surprisingly, the hardest one.

But hey, as long as you know it’s possible, that should be enough to keep you going.

Tags: adsense, google adsense revenues, ppc revenues, online advertising, pre-made templates, adsense templates, passive adsense money, google checks, thousands of dollars per day, search quality, search engines, adsense publishers