Adsense vs Other Businesses
By: John Elder posted in Adsense
Hello good people!
Just a quick note before I get into today’s article…yesterday I had 2 amazon sales worth $288 in total, for a $20 commission. So the Amazon.com affiliate drought is over…even though 2 sales stinks, luckily they were high priced items! I’ll keep monitoring the situation though and let you know how it’s going.
Today I want to talk about something a little bit different that what I usually talk about, but something that I feel is pretty relevant and important for anyone trying to decide whether to take the plunge into Adsense full time.
Adsense is a fickle beast…it’s not really like any other business, in a few very important ways.
As you know, I’ve spent the last 15 odd years building successful Internet businesses of all types, from advertising networks, to software companies; service related companies, to publishing companies.
But all of those businesses have the same few things in common; you create a product or service, then try to spend less money on overhead and advertising & marketing to acquire new customers than you make in income. The difference between income and various costs is your profit.
Pretty easy, pretty straight forward…
Adsense is completely different. For one thing, you don’t have a product to sell. Also, your costs are much lower than with a traditional business. And you also don’t have any marketing or advertising costs because it’s against Google’s terms of service to use advertising to drive people to a website with adsense on it.
They had to implement that policy way back when people were buying adwords PPC advertising to funnel to Adsense sites and profiting from the Arbitrage.
But those aren’t the reasons why I wanted to write this article. There’s another reason why Adsense is unlike a regular business, and it’s an important reason. What’s that reason?
You have no control…
In a regular business, you have control over nearly everything. Want more customers? Buy more or better advertising! Want more profit, lower your costs somehow. Tweak this, fix that. Hire this new employee, fire that old one. Etc etc.
With Adsense, you are totally at the mercy of Google. Period. If they decide they don’t like your websites, they’ll ban them and there’s nothing you can do.
If they decide to change their algorithm (like they just did with the Panda update) and their new algo penalizes your site, there’s not much you can do.
If they decide you’re in some sort of violation of their terms and conditions, they will eject you from the Adsense program and keep all the money they haven’t yet paid you for the last months earnings. And they won’t even tell you how you’ve violated their terms!
Again, there’s nothing you can do.
You can make an incredible amount of money with Adsense, but in exchange, you give up virtually all control. The only thing you have control over is how many sites you can build, and how you design those sites. Unless Google decides you have too many sites or they don’t like your designs.
It may sound like I’m whining and complaining, but I’m not…just pointing out reality. Everyone should know this going in, so that when something bad happens you’ll be prepared.
Google Adsense pays out more money than any other advertising network, and has more advertisers. So they can dictate how the game is played. Until and unless some other player comes along, they’re the only game in town.
Understand that going in, and manage your expectations, and you can do well.
Dust yourself off after Google slaps you around, and start over again. Or don’t start to begin with…. but go in with your eyes open.
And in the mean time, I’ll keep on building!
-John
The Marketing Fool!
