Chad Randall (b5’s Ad Sales Manager) caused a real stir here at ProBlogger while I was traveling a few weeks back in his guest post about making a blog more attractive to advertisers when he suggested bloggers remove AdSense from their blogs.
Chad wrote more on why he doesn’t like AdSense on his own blog after that post – and today wrote another useful post titled the 7 Levels of Revenue for Your Blog which ranks advertising methods for blogs.
While I think a lot of what Chad says is true my own position on AdSense isn’t quite as extreme. As someone who has some blogs that are highly read by Australian audiences – ad networks like AdSense and Chitika provide a very valuable opportunity to monetize a site as it can be difficult to find alternatives. I also find that my average CPM rate is considerably higher than the $1 Average that Chad talks about.
This type of thing does vary from blog to blog somewhat – how would you rank ad revenue types?
no harm in having some adsense as it provides additional resources to your visitor plus some revenue.
What are some of the less known revenue methods?
I make too much with Adsense to just drop it alltogether. If the stray readers leaves because of it, that’s a shame. But it would be more of a shame to lose a steady income stream.
[…] ProBlogger) This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 and is filed under Google Adsense, Ad Networks, […]
I was doing fairly well with adsense a month or two ago. But I’m not sure why, recently I’m getting very low compared to the $1 clickthrough
Ranking advertising is relative to the blog/blogger, for a newbie I think it’s hard to find an easier way to make money than with google adsense.
I would also be hating adsense if my cpm was $1, but it’s way higher than that, so I don’t buy his premise.
What about ReviewMe?
Adsense and TLA for the win, definitely. CPM of $1 on Adsense means you don’t have the right type of site for Adsense.. I don’t think I’ve ever had any site of mine go that low.. the lowest was probably a few dollars CPM (and I thought that was really awful!). The best, well into double digits CPM.
Would like to use Chitika but I don’t do anything that has related products :( Might be time to start a new blog!
Product Reviews and Text link ads – private and through reviewme and TLA
I feel that in utilizing Adsense, you have to balance revenue potential and the needs of your readers (the operative word being “balance”).
Adsense all the way for me. I publish my earnings each month and some of my readers have followed suit, as it helps everyone see what is working on other sites. Last month my Adsense earnings dominated (last month in brackets):
Google Adsense: $3,648.26 ($3485.34)
Direct Ad Sales: $750.00($3236.00)
Intellitxt: $555.05 ($625.30)
Text-Link-Ads: $535.43 ($351.94)
Tribal Fusion: $437.10($214.46)
Feedburner FAN: $350.24 ($
533.17$446.39 – number got adjusted after I published)Blogads: $0 ($149.37)
Vizu Polls: $110.72 ($180.65)
ReviewMe : $0.00($50.00)
Chitika : $31.79 ($31)
Robert Sherman $0.00 ($50)
Advolcano $0.00 ($6)
Grand Total: $6,418.35 ($8,913.49)
Darren – please can we have a subcribe to comments option! Not having one is killing discussion, and your traffic as users won’t come back to continue discussions.
The best thing is to test out alternatives and see which makes the most money or the highest eCPM.
I wrote about my experiences of setting up an ad server on my blog and this allows me to run different types of ads in the same slots, and also to split test different colors in AdSense. Then I have measurable results so I can know exactly what form of monetization makes the most in an ad slot.
TLA and Adsense for me…
[…] Blog Advertising Methods Ranked – A nice roundup from Darren Rowse at ProBlogger on advertising methods and why they should be considered carefully. I’m ramping up for a redesign of 1FPS and have just begun considering some of this stuff, and I’m glad I came across Darren’s post. Good advice. […]
You can add buying blog posts for sale as a option.
I’m going to go read Chad’s latest post, Darren, thanks for bringing it to our attention. However, I am still biased by the simplistic way he hammered AdSense in that guest post.
That CPM figure is way, way low for a blog with of a technical nature. It’s possible Chad has no experience in this area. Chitika, by contrast produces absolutely nothing on such blogs … I’ve been a Chitika publisher for over a year and have probaly earned a dollar … I don’t even run their ads any longer because it is all about the real difference between them and Google … inventory.
Google has such a diversity of ad buyers that they can find something to provide on a blog about GPS technicalities or a blog about technical legal issues in a divorce or even living in the Philippines … Chitika usually provides some lame cell phone or digital camera offering. Cell phones and digital cams are great, but only on blogs where that is what the audience is looking for.
Also, as mentioned, Google is the only one who realizes the earth is round. YPN for example not only won’t let a non-US publisher in, they don’t even show their ads to a person coming to a blog with a non-US IP address … sitting here with my credit card in hand, looking to buy and Yahoo can’t figure out that people outside the US also spend money … weird.
So for those who don’t care for AdSense, fine, but don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Very satisfied AdSense publisher.