Google Adsense - Can I become rich?
Google AdSense
Cost to join - free
Rob’s Rating: 7/10
What is Google AdSense?
If you’re on the internet then you’ve seen the ads, they are everywhere. You can see them above and beside this article. If you click on them then I make a few pennies. These ads began many years ago as simple text ads but have since become filled with images or videos. And there aren’t just Google ads, several companies produce them, but Google is perhaps the best known. The more popular your site becomes (tens of thousands of hits) then the sooner you will be approached by more companies to display advertising.
How do they work?
Advertising. If you want to sell something then people have to know about it. So advertisers go wherever there’s an audience. It used to be radio, TV, magazines and newspapers, but there’s a new kid in town and that’s the internet.
Google enables any advertiser, big or small, to upload an ad, say exactly how much they’re willing to spend per day, how long the ad should run, and where in the world they want it displayed. Then, voila, the ad will begin to appear on sites that display AdSense ads like mine. As an advertiser you can choose to pay anywhere from a dollar a day to tens of thousands of dollars if you’re a big company. The advertiser only pays money when someone actually clicks on their ad. When someone does click on the ad, the site displaying it gets paid from the advertiser’s money.
So, if you click on any ad on my page the advertiser would be charged the amount they’ve agreed to, say $0.50, and my account would be credited with maybe $0.06. Of course it varies quite a bit and I’ve earned a couple of dollars from a single click, but mostly it’s just a few pennies. I don’t get a lot of traffic, maybe a few hundred people a day, so I make maybe $100 a year. But you do the math, if you were getting a hundred thousand hits a day, or millions of hits everyday like YouTube, the amount that can be made is significant. This explains why so many sites are doing anything they can to get traffic to their pages since it results in advertising dollars.
Of course the real money being made is by Google as the middleman. They get the lion’s share of the money paid by the advertiser with most websites like mine willing to display the ads 24/7 for very little return. Kind of brilliant on their part when you think about it.
Can you become rich?
Unfortunately, advertising is advertising and most people have become adept at blocking it out of their mind. We may see the ads but we rarely look at them, they’re just those slightly annoying things that take up all the space between the articles we’re trying to read!
I did a survey asking people about AdSense ads and the results were interesting. The majority of people don't click on the ads, in fact my experience is that about 1 to 5 per cent of the people visiting will click on them. The main reason for this is people simply ignore them, or they’re also worried the ads might be a scam. The next deciding factor is that the ad may simply not interest them. Google has a complex system of where to put ads. Much of it has to do with the number of keywords on a site. If through the text of this article I were to keep typing, "rich", "millionaire", "money", etc. then Google would start placing ads about money. Since this article is about Google however, more often than not the ads will be about them. It makes sense, if I have a review about a video camera, then any ads that have to do with video cameras have more chance of interesting the reader. So it’s a complex and very interesting system that’s been worked out and that is constantly refined, trying to get you to click on those ads.
There's also a science to where to place ads to get people's attention. Most say if an ad is placed in the upper right hand corner, it will get pressed more often than anywhere else. So if you plan to use AdSense try and capitalize on creating content that will draw ads that people might actually be interested in clicking on. My most succesful page is on this site about nude modelling. Often an ad appears there about learning how to draw and it gets clicked quite often. Of course the ads change so you can't always count on having a good ad on your site.
Scams?
Of course, any person with the slightest bit of the larceny in their heart will start thinking of ways to scam the system. What if I click my own ads? What if I get other people to click my ads?
Needless to say Google spends a huge amount of effort and money to stop this. After all, if all people did was scam the system there would be no point for advertisers to advertise and it would all quickly collapse. You do hear of scams from time to time but they are usually put to a stop. Google knows what computer clicks on an ad so if the same computer keeps clicking then it will be blocked and you will not be credited with the revenue. I also assume how long a person stays on an ad is monitored, so if a particular computer is just quickly clicking through ads, they would also be disallowed. I’m sure Google has methods of tracking scams I can’t even imagine.
Conclusion
I think AdSense has some potential for most people. Even for someone as small as me I can still make a hundred bucks or so a year which is essentially free money and helps cover a few costs.
Will you become rich? Only if you get hundreds of thousands of hits a day on your web site and the truth is that's rare. The majority of websites out there are lucky if they get dozens of hits a day. Strangely, people put up their own ads on Google to popularize their sites to try and generate more AdSense revenue. It's kind of like a perpetual motion machine.
The real key to making money always goes back to the basics, create a brilliant site with excellent content and there's a chance that over time you will build up an audience and start to make some money.
Do these ads hurt the internet? Some sites that go crazy with ads, where they have so many ads it’s hard to find the content, I think these people are making a big mistake. But for those who have a few well placed ads, I think it doesn’t hurt, and for the plainer sites even makes them a little more interesting.
Good luck!
Rob Thompson 02/03/10
