I can already hear the cheers and see some scouls from the readers. Adsense is Googles product for monetizing a website and blog by adding targeted advertising to a site. I bought in to this initialy after seeing how some people were making a decent amount of change with it. I also read the sob stories about people who had lost a lot of money because Google shut down their account and never paid the enormous balanace. I decided that Adsense was the best option starting out since I already had a Google account and I know they have the funds to pay out. I figured my sites would never be the subject of some Google conspiracy but it looks like somehow I have been flagged by the demons at the big G.

Initially I was happy, people reading the site saw a link they were interested in and clicked the link and I saw a few cents from it. But that all changed drastically. Since Sept 22 I have had 68,816 Adsense impressions and  248 clicks registered and I have $0 to show for it. Prior to that from Jan to Sept 22 I had 34,226 and 187 clicks and racked up $37.00. (OK, don’t laugh…I dont have John Chow’s readership)

I wonder what the point is to have Adsense on your site when you see nothing for it. I have not been able to find the mystery formula that explains how to expect any revenue and I welcome anyone to send me a link to it.

I have emailed the Adsense support to ask what’s going on to see if I may have violated some TOS or something but multiple emails have never been returned. So I guess the lack of support is a good indication that I should look for alternatives.

Not that making money from my site is the primary goal. My new readers have always seen the advertising but my veteran readers know that I have been blogging free for a long time. I think that adding some advertising to a site is good for a few different reasons. You can promote your favorite products that you use personally and support friends companies that need the additional traffic. Of course, Adsense is based around monetization as most advertising is and the revenue most bloggers make from this is minimal at best. I was excited when my blogs started supporting themselves financially and I no longer had to pull personal funds for hosting fees.

I will be looking for a new theme soon and with that I am going to search for a new alternative to Adsense.

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