My Experiences with AdSense
posted by Stephan Brumme
Overview
In March 2008 I started including AdSense on my homepage. Since then, I counted about 600000 visitors and about 50% of them (to be exactly: 285236 as of September 28, 2011) were exposed to AdSense advertisements.It took a little bit more than 3 years until I received my first check/cheque from Google (70 Euros, ca. 100 US-$).
In the meantime, my web hoster charged me about 400 Euros (ca. 500$).
Clicks
AdSense pays per click and not per view. My click-through rate is only 0.19% (551 clicks) and I got on average 0.14 Euros per click.My best month so far was December 2008 (4.51 Euros), my worst August 2010 (0.36 Euros). There is no significant increase nor decline.
I am using only two banner sizes: 468x60 and 728x90. The smaller banners actually have a better click-through rate.
In 2010, when I had the most visitors, the click-through rate was the lowest.
My overall impression is that the click-through rate is inverse proportional to the number of visitors.
Web Sites
About half of my AdSense money comes via moon.stephan-brumme.com and sunshine.stephan-brumme.com.My most popular web site oz.stephan-brumme.com is responsible for the majority of visits (about 60%) but suffers from a very low click-through rate of only 0.06%. However, the money paid per click (CPC 0.27 Euros) is better than most my other web sites. In the end, oz.stephan-brumme.com generates about 40% of my AdSense revenue.
The very technical web site bits.stephan-brumme.com has the highest CPC (0.32 Euros).
Wrap-Up: Does AdSense make sense ?
Google has very good online tutorials and you will find tons of material on the web on how to add AdSense to your web site. The programming effort is very low - and the revenue, too. These 70 Euros I received after three years are just enough to "pay" for my spare time used to learn about and implement AdSense.I don't have to rely on income from my web site (in fact it doesn't even pay the server bills) and don't intend to become a web worker in the near future.
Therefore I will keep AdSense running and enjoy a paid-for extra visit to a nice restaurant once every three years ;-)
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