This week Google’s AdSense program celebrated its 10 year anniversary with a post on their blog and a G+ Hangout.
While they launched AdSense in June of 2003, I first began to experiment with it on 7th October that year.
I had been blogging for around 11 months by that point and had begun to experiment with the Amazon Associates Program as a way to help me cover my costs of hosting, domains and design.
So I signed up as an AdSense publisher and set up my first ad to put on my blog.
I had no idea what I was doing and so put the ads at the top of my right hand sidebar to see how they would perform.
At that time the only way you’d earn anything from AdSense was if someone clicked the ads so I made them bright pink and green to stand out. Boy, were they ugly!
The next morning, I woke up to discover that I’d earned my first $7 USD from AdSense. I was pretty amazed by this as it was significantly more than I was able to make from Amazon. Over the coming days, I watched in amazement as I continued to earn a few dollars here and there.
It turned out that that first days earnings were artificially high as some of my loyal readers thought it was a good idea to click the ads repeatedly to make me money. Things quickly settled down and by the end of the month I’d earned $42 USD.
By no means was it spectacular money but it was enough to give me a little hope.
I began to experiment with placing a few more ads on the page and tweaking the design and colours I used. I discovered that blending ads into the design of the blog was better than making them stand right out. I also discovered that putting ads into the middle of blog posts worked well.
The results of my experiments were that I quickly saw my income from AdSense rising. The next month I made around $90 from AdSense, the following month – December – around $170 USD.
I began to experiment with a new blog in the months that followed – a camera review blog. This really helped things to grow a lot faster and blogging was fast becoming something I saw as a part time job.
- May 2004 saw me hit over $1000 in a month for the first time.
- 7th June saw earnings go over $100 in a single day for the first time.
- By November 2004 AdSense had allowed me to go full time as a blogger with earnings of close to $10,000 for that month alone.
While there were ups and downs in my earnings over the coming months (in January it all took a big dive due to me falling out of Google Search results for 6 weeks) since then I’ve continued to earn a monthly income from AdSense.
The combined total of what AdSense has earned is well in excess of a million dollars! Yes – I’m glad I started using AdSense back in 2003!
In 2005, I posted here that Blogging had bought my family a house, something that a year before was not even in our wildest dreams. The bulk of that came from AdSense.
These days I don’t put as much focus on advertising revenue (Advertising revenue makes up about 25% of my business revenue these days) but the bulk of that revenue still comes from AdSense.
While I know AdSense is at times looked down on by some bloggers and online entrepreneurs – I for one am grateful for it.
Happy birthday AdSense!
Wow, thats really encouraging. I started little late, I was 19 years old in 2006 when I signed up for Adsense, I wasn’t blogging by then. I had a page on a free hosting website and have written all about myself and have put ads there, hoping that I’ll make a lot of money.
I started blogging in July 2007 and that was the time I started taking things seriously. Thanks to Google Adsense I am not a full time blogger.
That was great, Boought a house from Adsense, amazing but for me
Adsense jusr helped me to earn my first incomes,
I was blocked by Adsense but I started mastering the art of Ad optimization,
This helped me grow my profile as a freelancer, Now I am employed 200$ a month on 2 blogs, It is not much but at least I am getting some thing and it has just been a year when I launched my first blog, and I accidently got intorduced to adsese.
I’m happy for adsense, it took me few years before I started earning from them, unfortunately earnings are in cents.
Wow, that’s a pretty cool story. I wish I’d followed in your footsteps. I’ve had computers since I was a child (37 years old now) and was online since it’s public debut in the early 90’s. But literally ALL of it was for entertainment, not business. In 2004 I finally started looking at the internet as a way to make a living, but had no idea where to even begin because I’d simply never paid attention up to that point to those that were already doing it. First look can be a scary one. Lol. So I just kept making money online playing poker. Lol. Obviously, some years later I finally made the plunge and committed fully to it, and better late than never. But hearing your story with Adsense really makes me wish I found what I was looking for the first time around. :) Glad one of us did though! Nice job Darren.
Adsense was my first 100 bucks online, and is still a great source of revenue for me. While it isn’t my main method or even used on my top blog, it is by far the easiest platform to set up and make look reasonably good.
I waited for a few years before installing the code on my principal blog. I had a modest target of $5/day. Most days it is $20+ – on just one of our blogs. While I’m not getting rich on this income, it is a good start. I can’t believe I waited so long…
I just signed up for the AdSense 10 Challenge – a 10 week master course in everything AdSense, starting June 25th. Can’t wait!
Adsense is very interesting, i want to add it to my website, like this one http://www.travideos.com does, but dont know where to start, any recomendations ?
Adsense is the best advertising network, I’ve tried many other alternatives, but nothing pays as much as Adsense in CPC advertising.
My first monetisation is with Adsense too (with my blog), so far never earned enough to cash out and I have been blocked by Adsense for unknown reason too.
Any other seond choices alternative(s) in terms of PPC networks?
Cheers!
Adsense celebrating their existence? Happy birthday adsense. I have to admit that adsense has given many opportunities for bloggers to earn from their hobbies. Wish all the best.
Yep, I agree with you Darren. Although AdSense has its own shortcomings, bit it is still the best when it comes to revenue generation and timely pay-outs.
Very inspiration and informative post Darren. I am also experimenting with adsense but not so successful with it. Hard part for me is conversion as most of the times, i am seeing irrelevant ads from adsense.
Adsense is like a damsel who if shower blessings on you it never make an ending point and if it does not become your darling you just show your so called professionalism by rejecting it as reliable source of money. But the main thing is how you exploit its various options and how manage your traffic stream to take its full benefits. Still many pro bloggers largely depends upon it despite of their expertise to earn through affiliates and other sources of revenue
Very inspiration and informative post Darren. I am also experimenting with adsense but not so successful with it.
Congratulations, hopefully your income from google adsense increasing :)
Btw, I had a few bad experiences associated with google adsense. less than one month, my adsense account got banned and until now I prefer to use other alternatives such as infolinks or chitika
Adsense is the best among the rest in posting ads. I would like to add, you also earn from c.p.i. (cost per impressions), the number of visits that your blog receives and not solely on the clicks that your displayed ads has.
Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. I read your post no doubt your post is very important for all of us. Thank you a lot for giving everyone such a spectacular possibility to read articles and blog posts from this site
Happy birth day ga!
Hope they will stay up for many years because they are feeding a lot of families :)
Before reading this post, I knew next-to-nothing about Adsense. It sounds like something I’d like to learn more about.
Wow I didn’t realize Adsense was that old already. It really has played a big part in shaping the internet over the last decade. There are so so many people making a nice living because of it, or at least supplementing what they make elsewhere. I wonder how things would have turned out without it?
Hi, Darren. thats awesome! i also got my first online income from adsense.. but, this years it seems that the revenue from adsense decrease a alot. it makes me sad. do you have idea?
thanks
Arif
Wow, from $100 to $10,000 in 4-5 months? I guess am going to re-read your old posts now!
Most people love to use adsense to make money but some people, when they make money they just forget about their blog and keep making great quality post.
First, congratulations to Adsense for clocking 10 years.
It is surprising to just find out that people actually earn a whooping $10,000 a month from Adsense, while I have been struggling to hit the $70 a month payment threshold. Well, thumbs up to you and I guess the secret is simply hard work and commitment.
I hope to get to the level of $500 a month soon with my HYIP Review Blog.
Thanks for sharing your experience with Adsense.
Wow time has flown. You are right Darren that Adsense is looked upon about as favorably as those never ending carpet discounter ads on TV by many businesses, but it is still a great way to monetize pages & sites that seemed like a good idea at the time, but never really worked. I am certainly not in your league with income, but my Adsense keeps me in regular nice meals out.
I am also one of the happy customers of Google Adsense.
Adsense is best when it comes to PPC platforms. I guess you have some guides available on your blog that can help me also earn great amount monthly.
Darren, it’s nice to see that you’ve had such success with Google Adsense from the start! I started my blog three months ago and I hope that one day I can achieve such feats. The reason that I won’t give up is due to inspiring articles such as this one. Thanks! :)
Until recently, I ignored Adsense, but ever since I started using it, it’s proved worthwhile. I’m going to implement Adsense across several of my larger sites as a result of my initial experiment.
I think I ignored it because of all the negative press it receives, but I must admit it’s freeing to some degree because I’m more open to writing on topics I wouldn’t have when focusing on the affiliate model. Using Adsense (at least for me) has been liberating and will in the long run result in better content for my readers. This consequence alone is well worth it and a hefty bump in revenue, even better.
That’s nice to hear, Darren! And that’s what I look after joining Adsense :)
Yes thank you so much for contributing that, it is most helpful and explain a lot for me, I will keep you on my read list.
Thanks very much.
There is lot of hype about Adsense 10year; so nice to see an article that really break it down why.. thanks!
Sorry to say that this comment isn’t about the post subject, but I gotta tell ya .. your right side creeping column is really annoying. When I scroll down, it scrolls down .. very distracting. Just sayin’.
Monica.
So this is a completely different take on Adsense then I’ve heard before. I may have to give it some consideration.
Thank you!
Very inspirational story of yours.
How to do Everything
Very instructive ，Thanks for share.