“AdSense Or Bust” Is Not A Good Monetization Strategy

Many webmasters start off monetizing their site with Google AdSense. I have nothing against AdSense. It’s easy to implement. Also, if you have some traffic already, you can see earnings quickly.

However, I believe that because AdSense is so easy to use, many webmasters don’t look into other monetization models. AdSense can make us lazy in our monetization efforts. This is unfortunate because other models make more money than AdSense. Here are some more reasons to explore non-AdSense monetization methods.

Google is a dictator.
Google is in total control of your earnings. You can lose all your AdSense accounts and earnings even though you do nothing wrong. Henry and Wilson are extreme examples of this. They were banned from AdSense and lost $200,000 in Adsense earnings!

AdSense earnings are unpredictable.
On my sites, I get clicks ranging from $.07 to $1.50. It’s hard to plan your cash flow with such big differences in click values.

Ad blindness can set in as internet users get smarter.
This is already happening in my niches. Good luck trying to monetize your graphic design blog with AdSense. Don’t even think of using AdSense on your social media blog. Certain internet users go out of their way not to click on AdSense ads. This group of people will only grow in number as the general public’s online knowledge and experience increases.

Google takes a cut.
In this podcast, Darren Rowse of Problogger found that some advertisers did not want to advertise directly with him. He realized they were already advertising on his site through AdSense. Darren removed AdSense from his site so he could get all the advertising money instead of splitting with Google.

You’ll be tempted to check your AdSense earnings every 30 minutes.
Maybe I’m the only one with this problem :) Some days AdSense is worse than email in lowering my productivity.

Further Reading

Google AdSense as a Terrible Business Model
In this blog post, Aaron Wall gives reasons why AdSense is not a good long-term business model for most small publishers.