Are you struggling to make money with AdSense? You’re not alone. Many new bloggers and website owners believe that simply placing ad codes on their websites will start generating income from the very next day. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Monetising your online content with AdSense requires a lot of hard work and patience. In this post, I will share the top 8 reasons why making money with AdSense is not easy. Understanding these challenges will help you develop a more effective strategy for generating a steady stream of income from Google AdSense on your website.
1. High dependance on organic traffic
Organic traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, is the lifeblood of blogs / websites that rely on AdSense to earn money. This type of traffic is particularly more valuable because it converts very well — i.e., it’s highly likely to result in clicks and sales. Visitors coming through search engines are already searching for something, making them more inclined to click the ads on your website. Additionally, these visitors are often short on time and may either click on your ads or leave your site altogether to find the information they need elsewhere.
Unfortunately, building a consistent stream of organic traffic for your blog is not a cakewalk. It requires a strategic implementation of SEO best practices, as well as patience. Without a good volume of organic traffic, earning a considerable amount of money through AdSense is unlikely.
Therefore, it is essential to focus on optimizing your website for search engines and investing time in creating high-quality content. By doing so, you can increase your chances of generating organic traffic and ultimately, earning more revenue from AdSense. Remember, success with AdSense relies heavily on the quantity and quality of organic traffic to your website.
2. Fluctuating CTR and CPC
The simple AdSense money equation is:
Income = No. of clicks * Cost Per Click
where CPC is Cost Per Click.
The total no. of clicks also affect your Page CTR (Click Through Rate), which is calculated as No. of clicks divided by (/) No. of page views. The CTR depends upon factors like –
- Position and volume of your ad-units
- The relevancy of your ads to the search query
Similarly, the Cost Per Click (CPC) also depends upon a number of factors like –
- Country clicking your ads — clicks coming from countries like US, UK, Australia and several other western countries carry far better CPC as compared to south and east Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Philippines. This may be because of the higher online purchasing power of people from the former group of countries than the latter.
- the quality of your website
- types of ads getting clicked — sometimes text ads yield better CPC and sometimes image ads.
- the type of platform used by people to click your ads — Ads clicked from high-end mobile devices and tablets yield far better CPC than those clicked via desktops.
It’s difficult to control all these factors altogether and thus the nature of AdSense earnings is highly unpredictable! Sometimes you will see spikes and sometimes terrible falls.
3. Ad code optimization
Another challenge of making money with AdSense is knowing how to optimize your Ad units. You have to run your ads through a series of experiments and then stick to the one yielding maximum profit.
You can consider doing experiments like — changing the ad position, type of ad-unit and playing with different color themes until you start getting good results.
This requires a lot of patience and hard work. These days, you can also choose Auto-Ads that takes care of auto-optimization, but at the cost of customization.
4. Content optimization
Creating high quality and useful content is more likely to compel your visitors to stay longer on your site, increasing the chances that they may also click on your ads.
Additionally, creating such optimized content can also impact the relevancy of the ads displayed on your website. Contextual targeting is used by AdSense to display ads that are relevant to the overall content/theme of your website. By creating high-quality and optimized content that is optimized in terms of UX and relevant in terms of the keywords used and the searcher’s intent, you can increase the chances of getting relevant ads to display on your website, thereby increasing the likelihood of clicks and ultimately, the earnings.
5. High payment threshold
Unlike other advertisement programs, AdSense sets a high payout threshold of $100, which is quite difficult to achieve for many new bloggers or website owners. This means that in any month, if your total earnings are $50 or $70 or even $99, you won’t get paid in the subsequent month.
6. Ad-blindness
These days people are so used to seeing advertisements here and there on the web that they are kind of indifferent to the ads being displayed. They either ignore the ads or simply choose not to click them.
Therefore, holding your visitor’s attention to your AdSense ad-units is definitely a challenge.
Here is what you can try to minimize the impact of ad-blindness on your website:
- Display ads at locations where visitors usually don’t expect them, for example – in between comments, in the website footer, etc.
- Try to come up with customized ad-units that look unique and attractive enough to capture the attention of your visitors.
7. Increased use of Ad-blockers
With the heavy nuisances of advertisements here and there, ad-blockers have gradually come into play. An ad-blocker is usually a web-browser extension that effectively blocks ads from showing up on the websites you visit. When visitors won’t see your ads, they obviously won’t be able to click those ads. Needless to say, this has negatively impacted the ad-revenue of AdSense publishers everywhere.
What’s more? These days even the most popular smartphones like the iPhones are empowered to block ads on their web browsers.
8. Strict adherence to AdSense policies
AdSense policies are strict and therefore you must follow them carefully to avoid violating the terms of service. The policy covers a wide range of topics, including guidelines on ad placement, ad behavior, content guidelines, and prohibited content. Google ultimately wants to ensure that its ads are displayed on high-quality websites that offer an awesome user experience.
If you violate these policies, whether directly or indirectly, it can result in suspension or even termination of your AdSense account. Some new bloggers are often motivated to ask their friends or relatives to click on their ads. They also place ads at such locations that confuse the visitors to distinguish between content and advertisements. Unfortunately, this foolishness and non-adherence causes them to lose their account and earnings, altogether.
What has been your experience with Google AdSense?
Do you also monetize your website with AdSense? Please share your experience and learnings in the comments below.
