It’s done, it’s finally done, AdSense is no more on this blog and I couldn’t be happier. If you’re a regular reader you’ll remember a while back I wrote a post clearly stating why I started to remove AdSense from this blog, you can revert back to it if you missed it.
Today is the day that I’m officially AdSense free, and I feel great. If you’ve recently had your AdSense account banned then I do feel for you, whilst I’ve not been banned from AdSense, I’m going to try my hardest to not place a single AdSense ad unit on this blog for at least the next 12 months... And if you are a banned AdSense victim, I hope you will look at this post and realize that getting banned was probably the best thing to happen to you, you just don’t know it yet. If you’re a blogger currently running AdSense on your site, here’s why I think AdSense will stop you from reaching your blog’s true income potential.
Bye-bye readers…
Let’s start with the readers you’re currently flushing down the toilet… You work hard to create the very best content you possibly can for your blog, and then you go and add a massive AdSense unit bang in the center, and at the start of every post… Why?
The whole purpose of building a blog is to also build a loyal community, so why would you want to send away readers before they’ve even begun reading your content?
I’ve noticed over the last month or so as I’ve been removing AdSense units from posts, that my bounce rate has also begun to steadily decrease, the last 3 weeks in fact bounce rate has gone from around 76% daily to 72% daily. Not a big improvement for most, but for me it is. This could have nothing to do with me removing AdSense but it’s too coincidental. Time on site has also increased over the last month to 6 weeks. My point is that people are spending more time on the blog rather than clicking away on a silly AdSense ad.
…Losing readers to AdSense is like flushing traffic and money down the toilet…
Each visitor you lose to AdSense is potentially a lost sale
If you’re looking to increase your AdSense CTR think about this very carefully, if your aim is to build a community, increase readership and subscribers with your blog then increasing AdSense CTR is probably the worst idea in the history of blogging ideas.
Each time a visitor clicks on one of your AdSense ads, they’re gone and you’ve lost them. Not only have you lost that reader, but potentially you may well have also lost a sale.
The best blog monetization alternative to AdSense and always will be is affiliate marketing and promoting the right affiliate products to your readers. Even if you manage 2 or 3 sales per month, some affiliate programs offer anything from 20 to 70% commission referral rates; so the revenue generated would be much higher than what you would ever earn with AdSense in six months.
Each visitor you lose to AdSense is potentially a lost email subscriber
My last reason why I believe that AdSense will stop you reaching your blog’s true income potential is probably the most valid reason ever. Each visitor or reader that clicks on one of your AdSense ads is potentially a lost subscriber, and that my friends is tragic stuff! A lost subscriber is someone that will probably never visit your blog again…
The most profitable way to make money blogging is by building a list, I’ve said this a gazillion times I know, and I’m sure you’ve read it elsewhere too, because it’s no secret, the money really is in the damn list. Why do you think the top bloggers have ridiculous amounts of subscribers to their list?
List building and email marketing is a slow and boring process however, and at first, or for a long old while in fact, you probably won’t make that much money from doing this, but it does pay off. If you had a list of let us say 10,000 email subscribers, you could pretty much do anything you want to profit from that list, in an ethical way of course. Here are some examples –
- Promote affiliate products your subscribers will find useful to generate income
- Get instant and free traffic back to your blog posts, website or any other web page you want to promote, such as a sales landing page to your new eBook, a blog contest etc
- Offer exclusive promotional offers and discounts on products your subscribers will most likely want to purchase straight away
These are just some suggestions.
So it’s fair to say that AdSense shouldn’t be your stop point. The long term solution to building a profitable blogging business is by attracting loyal readers, promoting the right affiliate products and of course by building an email list. And just for the record, you can’t lose your subscribers all at once, unless something tragic happens and your email service provider server goes down or something… but you can lose your AdSense account at any given time.
Read: 20 Email List Building Tips for Beginners
Read: Bloggers, How to Grow your Email List Like Never Before
So just to recap the 3 reasons why AdSense will stop you from reaching your blog’s true income potential –
- You put AdSense before content, therefore run the risk of losing readers as they click on an ad that will make you 2 cents…
- Each visitor you lose through AdSense is a lost affiliate sale
- Each visitor you lose through AdSense is a lost subscriber
Your thoughts please
I’m sure I haven’t listed half the reasons why AdSense is not the best way to make money from blogging, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Perhaps you’re a die hard AdSense junkie who’s making a killing with AdSense, perhaps you’re not. Leave me a comment below as always.
