I have been using Adsense for monetizing my blog content, ever since I started this blog. Even though I’m not making a BIG money out of it, for every 3 or 4 months, I’m hitting the threshold amount set by Adsense. So, I feel it’s kinda OK for a small blog like mine.
In this post, I just wanted to share some of my observations on using Adsense. Please note that my experience with Adsense is just 1 year. So, my observations are limited to the past one year time period only.
Adsense and the readability of a Blog:
Some of my readers (at least the folks from whom I got feedback) feel that placing Adsense ads inside the post might reduce the readability of the blog – but I beg to differ with them. Because one or two ads may not have much impact on the readability of the post. I have seen several popular bloggers are using Adsense inside the posts (for example, Coding Horror, Smashing Magazine). But placing too many advertisements inside the post is strictly a bad thing and it should be avoided at any cost. Too many ads turns your blog into a race car!
Targeting the developer / tech community:
I have already told that my blog is not making big money out of Adsenes even though it gets a good traffic. One reason I can think of is the readership community to which your are targeting your blog. Most of my blog readers are either developers or tech bloggers. They know very well about Adsense. So, they may not click on them accidentally unless there is a valid ad which is getting their attention. So, less click-through-rate. This is the case of my blog, but I’m not sure how other developer blogs are performing. If you run one, kindly share your view.
Blog Traffic and Adsense earnings are directly proportional?
I would say NO. Because it is not only depend on the traffic, but the source of the traffic. From where your readers are coming – search engines, developer forums or social networking sites – is mostly affect the click through rates of Adsense. In my experience, traffic coming from search engines has high click through rate than the traffic coming from a developer forum.
Got High Traffic from Search Engine but very low ad clicks?
Yes. It might happen. Because the user will click on the ad only if the ad is useful to him/her. Users wont click on the ads just like that. So, to get a better click through rate, you need to have Good Content + Good Traffic + and Good Ads too. You get good (i.e. high paying) ads only if your blog has a better page rank.
If you are reader of my blog or a fellow blogger, please feel free to share your view on Adsense usage.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Veera you got a detailed view of using adsense on tech/dev blogs. Almost all points, I would like to agree on. Following are my opinions on it.
Why ads are necessary:
Continue blogging with having a regular software engineering job is a challenge. But developers who had made this thing their hobby cant live without it. They made a good readership on their blogs and I think its also necessary that they should get $ome thing for their efforts. So advertisement is the only option. And I think ads are sponsoring a developer to keep motivating him to write more good for his readers. So they are necessary.
Click luck and developers:
You are right in this context
According to my observation, technology bloggers who are writing on Windows HOWTOs and free software like stuff are getting more earning through ads. Because the community they are targeting, do click ads. But developers also could be lucky if Google shows very relevant ads to the post. I tell you a story. When JavaOne conference was going on. I noticed on most of the website they were getting advertisement by Sun about JavaOne. But on my blog I didnt get even a single alike ad to JavaOne. (Whether it was my bad luck or Google ad system or Sun, who didnt wanted to advertise through Adsense). Just an example.
I am also in the long line of those candidates who are using Google Adsense with a normal blog traffic but very low click rate. So what I derived from all this is, ads cant work well to pay good to medium level developer blogs. I think a developer can even earn well while doing freelance project rather relying on ads of his blog. But if he think blogging as a hobby so there is no price any one can pay
Comments are welcomed.
+1 on your points Tahir.
I have faced the second scenario when I started off. But these days, Google mostly delivers ads that are some way related to developer community.
Hi Veera,
Check my response to this post on my blog.
And, what happened to the bug for inactive bloggers on your internal tool?
Hi JB,
I saw your response. I have few thoughts too which I’ll share soon.
regarding the bug, I’m still working on that. Will notify once I fixed that bug.
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