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Is Adsense dead?

Is Adsense dead?

Darren Rowse asked the other day Is AdSense Dead? And I think that answer is a resounding No!.

But there are other options that I’ve found to be more profitable…

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AdSense is a great tool. Sure, it’s one that is overused by many bloggers, but AdSense has been and continues to be a reliable source of income for us here at BlogMedia.

But AdSense is really just the tip of the iceburg, as Darren hints in his blog.

AdSense has been a part of our advertising strategy at The Blog Herald from the very beginning. We’ve used AdSense in a variety of formats here at The Blog Herald – including horizontal banners and skyscapers, vertical banners and skyscrapers, and the medium rectangle. All with varying degrees of success. It has provided a steady income but not nearly as much as other sources of income for us.

Text Link Ads has also grown to be a strong source of income for us. On a high traffic / high pagerank blog like The Blog Herald, these have outgrown Google AdSense in terms of an income provider. It’s the single largest earner across our network other than private ad sales, which I’ll talk about a bit later on in this article.

BlogAds still accounts for an occasional sale, but doesn’t really provide too much income for us overall.

Feedburner has done well for us in terms of both site & feed ad sales. I can’t complain about their ad team who continue to drive strong CPM earners onto our sites and feeds. And our earnings from this program continue to increase month over month.

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Amazon Associates has also become a strong earner for us. Granted, their payouts are relatively small – but they add up quickly over time. Highly recommended for gadget sites and related topics where potential purchases are high.

The real winner though continues to be private ad sales. Even though we lack a fulltime head of sales at BlogMedia, our single largest point of income (other than consulting) is private ad sales. Sales to groups like BetUS dwarf our earnings from AdSense or other tools. And, our buyers keep coming back month over month – so it’s clear that this is a value proposition that works and works well.

So, is AdSense dead? Absolutely not!

But there are other options…

Photo courtesy of inju (flickr)

View Comments (6)
  • Matt,
    I agree with you and daren. Adsense isn’t dead just the earning droped. I think due to their adword rate changes.

    And about the alternative you mention that’s just a fraction. There are amny more. Some of them even paying better than adsense in some cases. I was doing a servey to make a list of those chances, and stuble upon some that realy surprised me.

    But still i got to admit, overall adsense still rank 1. Considering number of advertiser they have in their pocket. Blogger won’t get paid if someone don’t click, and how they will click if its ran out of advertising. I never experiance google adsense out of ads.

    Burst media is doing good too, but thats for big shot like you guys.

  • I think it’s important to note at this stage what the author of the “adsense is dead” ebook was getting at, particularly given it was lost on Darren as well. What the guy was saying (and he probably articulated it better in his follow up book life after adsense) is that Adsense is dead online as a way for bloggers/ web users to make piles of money (ie to get rich), not that it was dead altogether. We all still use Adsense, but for example at b5 it’s now only about 10% of our advertising revenue. There is still money in Adsense, but we aren’t going to see more new Marcus Friends or Jason Calacains’ (or Joel Comms for that matter) because the market is now too saturated and the returns are as good as they use to be.

  • I don’t think Adsense is dead, but I am nervous about it in the long term. I do believe that it will provide a steady flow of cash for some time, but I don’t know how easy it will be to live off of like before. A combination of things like affiliates and the things mentioned above are what will drive continued income.

  • I agree with you duncan, market is saturated. in last few months how many blog business model get up? You know that better than me. May be hundreds. Sadly some blog network became too comercial too(too much).

    Comercial purpose of blogging is rising, but market have limited resources (especially the revenue stream didn’t grow compare to blog business model).

    Yes we won’t see another Jason :P

  • Adsense IS dead IF, you’re a scam artist setting up sleazy black hat adsense landing page type garbage. Adsense is a scam artist killer. Google is making 10 billion a year on advertising and some moron publishes a piece of crap ebook trying to convince the world that adsense is dead. HAHAHAHAHA what a joke. But man what a buzz and a great piece of viral marketing. Funny so many bought into it though !!!

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