Do Bloggers Really Make Money From Google AdSense?

Update: Chris Anderson discusses Guy Kawasaki's reported low earnings.

Update: ProBlogger continues the discussion.

Of the 16, 390 blogs crawled in an earlier experiment to measure the correlation between inlinks and feed stats, 3, 687 contained Google ads (as measured by the inclusion of google_ad_client, an element of the javascript used to include the adverts.

But are any of these bloggers really making money?

• John Chow reports that, with 94,697 visitors and 184,640 page views in December, he made $693.36. John currently has FeedBurner stats of 1, 287.
• Entrepreneurs Journey, with FeedBurner stats of 1, 894 claims to make $1, 000 per month.
• m3nghua.com reports, for October 2006, with 3, 048 impressions, $9.55.
• InvestorTrip reports for November 2006, with 2,000 visitors and nearly 4,500 page views $25.55.

Well, there certainly isn't enough data here to really draw any conclusions. Perhaps the most interesting thing is to discover that the stats are out there (searching for them is a little tiresome with current search technology). This post was inspired, in part, by a post from Kevin Burton (I can't find the link at this time) which discussed his blog redesign. At that time Kevin went from a highly AdSense'd blog to one with no ads - Kevin stated that he wasn't making any money from the programme. Kevin's blog - Feedblog - has over 8, 000 RSS subscribers according to FeedBurner, though I don't know his web stats.

Finally, ProBlogger has an amusing post on how to ensure you don't make any money with AdSense.

Comments

[Jim Kukral]

"Do Bloggers Really Make Money From Google AdSense?"

No.

I've done extensive analysis and reporting on this topic for years, and yes, I do have a "competing" market presence against Adsense (disclaimer), however, that doesn't change the fact that this report about Guy's blog is finally starting to get traction and people are starting to believe my conspiracy theories! lol.

Bloggers don't make significant money with Adsense... only a few do, and that's not many.

Try my Adsense blog calculator tool to see how your blog ranks up and see if the numbers match. I bet they do. They were right, and wrong with Guy's blog.

https://www.blogkits.com/adsensetool.html

[Des Traynor]

An Interesting read. I think there are 2 issues to note here

1) Page Views don't correspond to $$$

2) The clickthrough rate depends entirely on your readers.

I imagine technology and Computer related blogs have a low clickthrough rate because their readers recognise and ignore Google Ads. On the other hand I have a friend who writes about beauty products and make 4 times what I make with about 1/3rd of the readership.

For what its worth, my Blog once featured on the frontpage of reddit.com and digg.com and I had over 100,000 visits that day. How much AdSense Revenue did I get? $12.75.

Since then I've peeled all the advertising off cause it Just Ain't Worth It. It's now down to 1 ad per full post, and none on the main page. And even at that I am considering getting rid of the lot, cause nothing uglies up a web site like the phrase "ADS by GOOOOOOOOOGLE"!

[Kevin Burton]

Hey.

A few things...... My Feedburner stats are wrong..... :-/.... It's off by about 8x. Trying to work with them to correct it.

Second.... Ad revenue prediction is WAAAAAAAAY more complicated than most statistics because there are human variables.

1. How likely is the audience to click on ads? The more tech savvy the audience the lower the clickthrough rate (CTR).

This is why sites that focus on Britney Spears and gossip do very well on their CPC ads.

2. What is the average CPC for the terms you're targeting. If you have a legit mortgage block with $25 CPC you can do PRETTY well.

3. How quickly does your audience get ad blindness? In my case none of my readers ever clicked on the ads because they KNEW they were ads. Adsense has HORRIBLE targeting.

This is why it would work well for Craigslist. Decent CPC and fairly non-tech community.

Lots of other variables of course.....

Back in the day Russ Beattie was making $3k per month off putting YPN only on search pages.

Onward!

Kevin

[Bhavika]

I started blogging around 5 months back and haven't made much money on Google AdSense. I think higher revenue is generated when u have a blog on a particular topic or subject, which automaticaly gives you relevant ads and then chances of people clicking on the ads are much higher.

[Henry Brier]

I guess the fundamental problem is not the money. Guy Kawaski can afford not to squeeze every possible advertising cent out his blog. The question is why do you let Google or any other company do decide what should be shown on your pages. Blogs are supposed to be personal. Why do you allow to use your name to sell some stuff you don't even know anything about. Is it fair to your blog readers?

I believe the solution is to use a custom advertising system with selection based on people opinions. This way only good things get advertised. May be you still will not make any money but you will make a difference.

http://www.qbain.org - quality based advertising initiative.

[Dr. Mohamed Taher]

I haven't made any thing worth its salt.
It is less than 30 dollars, in six months--21,098 page impressions; 151 queries; and 0 clicks on products.
Best wishes for the great stats and on the probabilities. I envy your audience who are so creative and interactive.
Best, MT

[Kevin Burton]

Also note that more and more people are getting computer access in 3rd world countries.

The avg thai street vendor around Bangkok makes about $400-700 per month. If he/she were to create an Adsense blog about Thai tourism they could probably make $1500 a month.... that would be AWESOME!

Kevin

[Jack Vinson]

Some bloggers make money, and some do not. This shouldn't be terribly surprising. AdSense is probably the dominant player, but there are many others, including some roll-your-own networks.

For what it's worth, I'm making ~$35 / month from AdSense. My FeedBurner readership is around 800 and webalizer claims ~60K visits / month That's not going to pay the mortgage, but it covers the hosting and some of my coffee habit.

[Kay]

Kevin and Jim are correct, at least in my case: specific-topic blogs allow for more precise ads that get reader attention. I've had Adsense on my site (tax blog) for about a year now and in tax season (Dec-April) I top $100/month. For 2006, I earned (and will owe taxes on, of course!)$800. As my readership grows (entering my second tax season blogging), I'm hoping that revenue grows, too, especially since this year more display vs. text ads are appearing. For nothing more than 6 inches along on side of the blog, it's worth it to me. Amazon is the one that doesn't really work for me, since it requires actual purchases by readers.

[Randy Charles Morin]

There are success stories out there. I've been making a few $k per month as a part-time blogger for about a year.