Value of Google Adsense, others...

[Andilinks]

I think this is the right forum for this.

My website has averaged 401 visitors/sessions per day over the past 2 months.

I am curious what kind of revenue Google Adsense (or other programs) would bring in with this kind of traffic.

Does anyone have enough experience with this to give me a rough idea?

Since Andilinks is more a research project/hobby than a business I really have no need for it to produce revenue and the traffic would have to increase twenty-fold before revenue became an issue. But for some reason I have a burning curiosity about this...

I have seen the Google ads on sites that I'm sure get less traffic than mine does.

I experience a slow but steady increase in traffic and unexpected media coverage can sometimes produce amazing results, so the question will inevitably become more than just academic one day.

Andi

[Andilinks]

I find it curious that something about which so many should have some experience or information to relate goes unanswered.

It may partly be the way I'm asking, my personality does not always set information aflowing.

But no, I think there is more to it than that--I've also approached this question in other venues and gotten chilly silences. Which can only mean that there must be a good story here if I dig for it. My curiosity is aroused. So I will be following it up--before taking the plunge and signing up for Google ads.

I've uncovered some other issues with Google ads as well associated with the way the paid ads are presented with what was formerly "Google search." This will be interesting with visions of IPO millions and billions turning the pivotal Google brains to Jell-o. I'd be very surprised if the behind-the-scenes algo tampering weren't getting very frantic these days.

I've read a few stories about how electrified the atmosphere was at Netscape and other bubble-darlings before their IPOs. This Google thing must go way beyond that.

Andi

[Randall]

It is the weekend, y'know. ;) I've read a few stories about how electrified the atmosphere was at Netscape and other bubble-darlings before their IPOs. This Google thing must go way beyond that. This one was an interesting read: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/google.html?pg=1&topic=&topic_set=

Randall

[Andilinks]

It is the weekend, y'know. Yeah, well I had to answer my own post for Monday morning or the thread would just slip off the chart. But even so you'd think someone would have an opinion on the weekend.

Yes, I read that Wired article it was one I had in mind... thanks.

Andi

[Randall]

Yes, I read that Wired article it was one I had in mind... I figured you had, but posted it anyway for others to benefit.

Randall

[georgeek]

I am curious what kind of revenue Google Adsense (or other programs) would bring in with this kind of traffic.

Does anyone have enough experience with this to give me a rough idea?


Andi I am sorry to say the it is not possible to guess with any degree of accuracy. Revenue is not independently related to the number of visitors.

It is a CPC model so it depends on the number of times that visitors click on an advertisement, the amount that the advertiser is paying Google and the amount that Google pays you. For example the CTR could be 1% or 20% and the RPC could be 1c or $10 and there is no way of knowing before you actual run the scheme what the average of these will be on a particular site.

I guess if several thousand of us pooled our data we could get to an approximate answer but since Google's TOS specifically prohibits public disclosure of statistical information this is unlikely to happen.

My suggestion would be to try it and see, you can turn it off just as quickly as you can turn it on. Give it a couple of weeks to settle down though.

- George

[Andilinks]

since Google's TOS specifically prohibits public disclosure of statistical information In general I like Google, but I have a very bad feeling about this program and this prohibition in particular.

Being contractually barred from reporting results is abhorrent to me, I think I will pass... In fact my recent experiences with the search function have made me very wary of Google now.

Oddly, so many are warning about Gmail, which I think is just fine. It is the search function that appears compromised to me.

Still I am curious about how much it might bring in.

Andi

[Wassercrats]

You'd probably be able to find someone with a simmilar amount of traffic who's tried Adsense or something similar, somewhere, but as georgeek said, there are other factors.

The bad: people come to your site to look for a link, which means they probably don't spend much time there.

The good: people are in need of something that they know they must go out of their way to find when they browse your links, more than when they visit a news website or something for recreation, so they might be more likely to click ads.

There was nothing wrong with your original post, but I'm a little offended that you seem to be mocking a JELL-O® brand instant snack.

Please visit the JELL-O® Gallery (http://www.jellomuseum.com/) the next time you're in LeRoy, NY.

[Juan G]

Originally posted by Andilinks:
(...) I've also approached this question in other venues and gotten chilly silences. (...)
Originally posted by georgeek:
(...) Google's TOS specifically prohibits public disclosure of statistical information (...)
Yes, that's in the Terms and Conditions ("7. Confidentiality"), and naturally people don't want to risk losing their AdSense accounts.

Anyway, in general I think it's a good program. A well-known related forum:

WebmasterWorld: Google AdSense
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/

[georgeek]

Being contractually barred from reporting results is abhorrent to me Andi - personally I am glad it is in the TOS! Not only because I make a lot of money from AdSense but because if there was a widespread pooling of data and subsequent analysis it would perturbate the results for both the publisher and the advertiser and that would not be a good thing for either.

Just one of many possible simple examples, if you were to pool data and predict the click revenue from a particular advertiser and let's say it was very low. Then what would happen is that every publisher would put that company into their filter list. I think this element of the TOS is there to help maintain the integrity of the system for both publishers and advertisers and as such is a very good thing. As you say no one has to use it if they don't want to.

- George

[Andilinks]

a widespread pooling of data and subsequent analysis Well then it should be a pooling and analysis that is prohibited, not a reporting.

I see these ads on so many sites (and I do a LOT of surfing) that I must assume that they are making money. But it does seem that a commercial site would not benefit if the ads that are delivered are keyed to the subject matter of the site. Losing just one customer to a competitor's ad would nullify a lot of revenue.

...you seem to be mocking a JELL-O® brand instant snack. I was not mocking the snack. It is no longer legal to render gelatin from brain material, so my remark is technically inaccurate--something I hadn't considered when I keyed it in. Brain and spinal material was more often used for sausage prior to the ban however and gelatin mostly rendered from bone, hooves and connective tissue. So the image of Google exec's brains turning to JELL-O® was perhaps not appropriate from a technical and educational standpoint, I apologize for any confusion I may have caused. But certainly no mocking was intended.

JELL-O® does have an interesting history though, particularly in the 1920's and 30's. Thank you for pointing out the JELL-O® museum.

Andi

[mromero]

Originally posted by Andilinks:
In general I like Google, but I have a very bad feeling about this program and this prohibition in particular.
Andi

Andy, I am glad that they have this in the TOS. There are many good reasons - one of them has to do with SPAMMERS. Several are trying to freeload off Adsense by putting up worthless sites (no real content) - their accounts are closed down as soon as they are found or reported.

My advice - if you have good, original editorial content it will work for you. Try it. It's free to apply.

Regards

[Jarrod]

To see the sorts of ads that appear on your pages, try the sandbox (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/).

Jarrod

[georgeek]

Well then it should be a pooling and analysis that is prohibited, not a reporting. Andi What they actually say you must not disclose is:

"click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to You by Google".

Simple and effective I think.


But it does seem that a commercial site would not benefit if the ads that are delivered are keyed to the subject matter of the site. Losing just one customer to a competitor's ad would nullify a lot of revenue. Things are not always what they seem. Yes it would be possible to commit commercial suicide this way if someone really wants to. However the holy grail is to keep the customers and have the others exit the site via a click on AdSense.

- George

[Andilinks]

Thanks for the Sandbox link Jarrod, it has produced some interesting results. Mostly it has provided links that I should provide myself as a link site. Useful! :)

I think I will keep my site ad-free for the forseeable future, but I am going to continue investigating these ads.

I find it odd that spammers could benefit from ads on a site without content, Perhaps if the ads are the best content on the site they would receive more clicks than normal. That's an aspect of abuse that hadn't even occurred to me.

But it is so difficult to build good traffic from a good demographic, it seems an inefficient waste to use it to derive pennies from clicks.

I think I'll wait until I have better traffic and then try to run no-risk ads that give me a piece of the action instead of pennies-per-click. I know that's more complicated, but my site is itself still a sandbox.

Andi

[Jarrod]

Google have just made a couple of changes to Ad Sense. Most interesting is called Google WebSearch with Adsense (https://www.google.com/adsense/ws-overview). It means that you can now put a google search box on your site, and receive the revenue stream from any paid clicks on the results page.

If you are currently using Google's Free Web Search, then you probably want to look quite closely at replacing it with this, as you seem to get the same great service and be paid for using it!

Jarrod

[Matt]

Hi Andi,

I'll bite. TOS be da**ed! :P First, you can get advice about AdSense in a number of places (SitePoint (http://www.sitepoint.com) just put up an article for example). Your success with AdSense is going to depend on a number of factors: how intense the competition is, how valuable a visitor/ buyer is, how accurately you can gauge campaign success, and how efficiently you can choose keywords.

From my own experience and client experience, I wouldn't recommend AdSense if you meet any three of the following conditions (and would urge extreme caution if two conditions are met):
1. Competition is very intense (e.g. $15/click for a $9.95 sale)
2. The per-sale profit is low (e.g. $9.95/sale)
3. Inability to correlate a click with a dollar value
4. Poor ability to pick effective keywords (referring to Overture is a minimum requirement)

I think the reason you're not going to get a straight answer is that people who have a successful strategy are going to guard that strategy from the competition, people who have an unsuccessful strategy don't want to help competitors by saying what not to do, and finally, it's hard to get a relevant answer unless a similar business is doing the answering (i.e. a "competitor"). Traditional advertising is the same way. -Matt

[Andilinks]

Thanks for your continued interest Jarrod and Matt. I said in that last posting seven weeks ago that I had decided to wait on advertising and am still of that mind--though curiosity about the potential always remains. :) In the time since that last post I have heard a few other things about results but nothing that would encourage me to try Adsense now.

I'm not selling anything so my potential use of Adsense would entail running Google's ads on my site and being paid for clicks, not the other way around.

I have a very low overhead by comparison to the amount and quality of my traffic, so this could be profitable. But I don't think the volume is high enough yet and I do not need any income from the site just now.

This applies for the Google WebSearch with Adsense too. I think the amount of income that it might produce now probably wouldn't be worth the additional accounting costs.

I think my blanket statement on my home page that I have "...no paid affiliations of any kind" gives what I do more credibility than any possible affiliate income might offset.

Certainly the knowledge, skills, and data that I am collecting and the site traffic that I'm building will pay off one day but I'm not ready to turn this hobby into a business just yet.

Thanks again!

Andi