“At Last! You Can Make Money With Google AdSense…Without Having To Write One Word of Content!”
Google's second largest revenue source turned 8 yesterday and despite
its $2.5 billion contribution to the company coffers last year, it
still causes pushback from the online world for click fraud, its
financing of the spamming of the web, and its total lack of
transparency.
I remember well that June eight years ago, when this new method of
monetizing your published content hit the web. The main sources of
income for sites prior were display ads and affilliate marketing, for
those not selling products or services directly. The forums were abuzz
and all sorts of news and commentary were being written, many with the
new code proudly included.
It was the start of the content gold rush and the beginning of the
flooding of web with lots of boringly similar MFAs (Made For AdSense
sites). Basically, Google created the mechanism that clogs its own data
centers and overwhelms its own spam battlers. Content generators and
keyword click number and price counters were created, blog software was a
hot item and niched sites were springing up everywhere.
The problem of this balance between organic search, advertising
revenue and large content providers has been there from the start. As
one of the Search Engine Watch forum members noted in 2004:
"Google has to keep this of value or
'not worth the risk of losing' for publishers or their fraud rates will
go up and AdWords clients will either opt out of the network or lower
their bids to compensate. A fine line exists between maximized
distribution and greed. Greed kills anything it's connected with and
AdSense is no different.
If G turns this program into so much
mush, it's the perfect opportunity for Yahoo to jump on the bandwagon
and announce that they have something different, offer higher returns,
and yank G's ol' carpet out from underneath them."
Well Yahoo lost the plot, but "so much mush" would describe most sites now carrying AdSense code.
The Panda
purges over the last couple of months may have cleaned some of these
sites out of the search results - or buried them deep enough that they
no longer make money from AdSense, and no doubt Google hopes are not
worth continuing paying for hosting.
Applied Semantics, formerly Oingo Inc., was purchased by Google in 2003 and this technology was used to create AdSense, along with work from the AdWords engineers.
There have been attempts to test CPA (cost per acquisition) and this
affiliate type of marketing is now being done separately under the
Google Affiliate Network. While this may be a purer methodology, the
AdSense program is too well established and now represents more than 30
percent of Google's total revenue.
AdSense is an 8-year-old and even in this era of online companies
being worth billions after a few years, the program is hugely successful
and isn't going anywhere.
"For the last eight years, we've relied on your product feedback to
help us improve, your success stories to inspire us, and your content to
enhance the ecosystem of the world wide web. We look forward to growing
older and wiser with all of you for many more years to come!"
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