Not getting rich off Google AdSense
My little experiment with Google AdSense is entering the close of its second week. So far it’s been fun and educational, but I’ve made very very little money. Just $0.02 off of site-targeted ad impressions, to be exact.
See, the way Google AdSense works is that the majority of ads (or the majority of ads a small site will see) are “contextual”, meaning that they are determined automatically based on the content on the page. They only pay on a per-click basis, so a million people could see the ad, but if no one clicks on it, you don’t make any money. That’s the problem I’ve been facing.
Site-targetted ads are advertisments that are chosen by advertisers to run on a list of sites. Generally, smaller sites will end up being included in huge robotically-determined lists of hundreds of other sites, and advertisers will choose portions of these lists to run site-targetted ads on. Large sites that run AdSense end up getting targetted individually rather than in a group.
Most of ads displayed here on Cyde Weys Musings end up being contextual ads, because this site is small enough that it doesn’t get included in too many site-targeted advertising campaigns. Which is too bad. I’d like to see some more of the targeted ones. Not only do they actually pay me (a few pennies), but they’re more interesting to read, as they’re generally more related to the site’s material.
See more of my posts on Google AdSense.
Update: Okay, I lied. It’s up to $0.04 now. Apparently Google is actually keeping track of those fractions of a cent and not rounding them down, so even though only two days in my AdSense report are listed at 1 cent, all of the other 0 cent days add up to another 2 cents between them. At this rate, I’ll get rich twice as quickly!
