I want to show you a couple of screenshots. The first on the left is from one of my ClickBank accounts. The sales it shows relate to 1 product that I’ve been promoting recently from 1 page on 1 of my websites. The image to the right of it shows the statistics for that page from Google analytics.
On the left hand side we have over $67 in income, on the right hand side we have only 10 unique visitors to that page and despite having no less than 3 Adsense blocks on it a total earnings of $0.01 with Adsense! This is why I regret ever using Adsense!
Let me explain in a little more detail about that page.
1. It only ranks for 1 long tail, not very popular search phrase (hence the lack of traffic)
2. It contains about 400 words, is not a product/service review and is nothing more than some opinion about general nerdy stuff.
3. The Adsense takes up about 30% of the screen on loading.
4. The only affiliate links are 2 plain text links within the body of the page content, neither are disguised in anyway nor in bold etc
Yet with all that Adsense my affiliate links have made 10X more income in 1 month than what Adsense has made from that page in 2 years! It’s a pattern I see over and over. Every single time I take the time and effort to source a good fitting affiliate product for a page I see returns that smash Adsense. If somebody offered to pause time and allow me to work on 1 thing until completion without disruptions or distractions the 1 thing I would choose to do would be to go back through every webpage I’ve ever published and remove the Adsense and add 1 or 2 affiliate links for RELEVANT products. I’m positive that if I did this I would never have to worry about money again.
Adsense always has been a numbers game, you need a lot of targeted traffic to see good returns. It’s very quick to implement and because it targets itself to your content it does perform better than any other PPC service I’ve ever used. But, and it’s a big but, no matter how much money you are making with Adsense there is always the likelihood that if you took the time to source your own “adverts” (affiliate links) for your content that you could be making much more. Even as I type this now I’m trying to thing back and remember if I have any pages where the Adsense out earns my affiliate offers, you know what, I can’t think of a single one!
11 Responses to “Why I Regret Ever Using Adsense”
Paul B
June 1, 2009
When I’m doing affiliate marketing within as part of normal page content I try and stay away from the CPA networks as far as possible. The trouble is that they tend to drop offers all the time, tere’s no way you’d ever be able to keep up and would spend half your life swapping offers out.
My first port of call is always to to do a search in Google based on my page content + “affiliate”. I then go through them and highlight anything that I think I WOULD BUY. If nothing turns up or I’m not convinced that they’ll pay up (that can be a big problem with companies running their own affiliate systems) then I resort back to ClickBank. If ClickBank fails then it’s Amazon, although with their crappy percentage and short cookie time Amazon are the last resort.
|Patrick
June 6, 2009
I think affiliate links and adsense are two different beasts. They both serve their purpose when used the right way. It depends on your niche and website.
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|templar56
June 11, 2009
You certainly have a good point. Adsense does make money slowly, or sometimes not at all…
templar56’s last blog post..Are Work At Home Businesses And The Internet Encouraging Social Seclusion?
|Wisata SEO Sadau
June 11, 2009
wow nice screenshot,when i can like you
Wisata SEO Sadau’s last blog post..Kontes SEO Aristia Wida Rukmi
|Carlos
November 5, 2009
I think affiliate links and adsense perform both good depending on the niche
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