One cannot be a marketer and not use advertising as a means to accomplish marketing success. Yet, there’s nothing I dislike more in marketing then ad prostitution (which seems to be rampant on the Internet).
I do believe that there can be a balance between good content and ways to monetize this content. Lately I’ve been researching different ways to turn blogging into a full time profession.
As I have done my research Google Adsense always seems to be the suggestion for the first thing a blogger should do when monetizing their blogs. It seems that Google Adsense feeds into the the Internet dream of having a website that generates money with little effort.
In my quest to see if Google Adsense really delivers the true Internet dream I stumbled across a great website called Adsensemeter.com. This website shows how much money you would make if you had Google Adsense running on your blog.
I wouldn’t absolutely bank on the predictions of Adsensemeter.com but it does make a compelling argument for Google Adsense. Since my blog is fairly new, I decided to go and look at my fellow Utah bloggers who are not using Google Adsense and see how much potential money they are losing out on :).
(1) I thought I would pick on my business partner first. Janet has some ads on her site but not Google Adsense.
(2) I actually looked at both of Steve’s websites (twelvehorses.com and utahtechspotlight.com). Something I found interesting was that there was currently no Google page rank for the Twelve Horses blog; whereas Utah Tech Spotlight had a page rank of 5. However, between the two sites Adsensemeter shows that Twelve Horses, with no page rank, would be the money maker.
(3) Jason runs Jibberjobber.com “a personal relationship manager that allows you to do everything you need to do to manage a job search and optimize your network relationships - for the duration of your career!” I don’t ever seeing Jason monetizing the JibberJobber blog, but the extra five to six hundred dollars could pay for some great off shoring programing! 
(4) So the below payouts threw me off. At first I thought that Jeff Barson was bringing enough traffic to make ten to thirteen thousand dollars a month. However, if you look at the actual graph it shows that this is an adsense payout for squarespace.com, a site similar to word press and blogger. So I guess you can’t tell how much money you would make off of adsense if you have a sub-domain blog.
(5) With how popular Phil Windley is here in Utah I was expecting his adsense payouts to be more like Janet’s. Of course, I should note that to even make this amount of an adsense payout would be nice.
June 20th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Thanks for the great article. I would have to agree that Ad sense would the be first step to becoming a monetarily successful blogger. Also, there’s a cool conference in Vegas in November called PostieCom where the pros share tips and such about being a successful blogger. And, it’s free.
Thanks again for the post.
aB.
June 20th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Aaron- Thanks for the compliment and the hot tip on the Vegas conference . I’m going to have to get that onto my calendar. ~Paul W.
June 20th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Paul, great post. Interesting analysis. A few thoughts about the adsense program - I used to participate until someone in a foreign country decided to do click-fraud on my page. I e-mailed Google and asked them what I should do and they took my account down. And took all of the money I had earned and gave it back to the advertisers. All of the money. Freaking “do no evil” company - whatever. There is no way to communicate with them on this, either. It was a final decision.
I have monetized my blog in other ways, one of which is to get paid to post an ad at the end of a post (I have a few of these on the front page of my blog), another is to drive users to JibberJobber, where they might subscribe to the premium level. There are more plans, and I feel more comfortable with them than with trusting Google to actually pay me for what I earn.
Jason Alba
CEO - JibberJobber.com
June 20th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Jason- What an unfortunate story! Thanks for sharing it. I recently read an article on how click fraud is still a serious concern with both Google and Yahoo. Sadly such actions by Google creates a catalyst for dishonesty when click fraud occurs. ~Paul W.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Right about now I’m feeling rich, or potentially rich. Adsense could pay my mortgage. I just can’t stand how it looks.
I do have affiliate ads on my blog and frankly I’ve never worked to optimize anything. I’m just trying to get the information out of my head and onto a searchable page.
I do make money from the affiliate ads, but it’s not consistent. I always say the people reading my blog are looking for free info. They have web hosts already.
I do believe in the products I promote though.
Well maybe it’s time to put in MightyAdsense Wordpress plugin again.
This post made my tiring night brighter. Thank you for writing it.
Blog on,
Janet
p.s. I got Paul to blog just this year. He’s already gotten other converts. Just last week he got a vanity plate for his car that says something about blogging…he’s a serious addict. Another great mind shares the contents of his head. I love it.
June 20th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
It’s funny because Janet got me to blog, but I was the one who introduced Janet to Internet marketing three years ago. The circle of life continues forever on! ~Paul W.
P.S. My vanity license plate will be a future blog post. I’m waiting for it to be shipped to me, so that I can take a picture and post it.
June 25th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
Ya know. I think that I sent you information on this back on June 4, 2007. Glad to see that you are using it to your advantage.
June 26th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
I’m a fellow Utah blogger. Janet sent me a link to this information and we were talking about it a bit today so I added adsense to my site. According to the numbers, I could add about $300 a month to my account. We shall see. I’m like Janet, isn’t adsense distracting?
July 11th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
No worries man - thanks again for the article!!