With the ever-increasing concerns on the global economic crisis, everyone’s feeling their fair-share of pain. On a personal level; I don’t even get pocket money anymore. That’s both from my parents and Mr. Google.
Ever since the global economic slump, there has been a non-stop stream of complaints that are tainted with earnings plummeting and advertisers zipping up their pockets. In such desperate times, where everyone’s strangled in their own struggles — what hope do us bloggers have?
If you have read Alex’s profound recommendation on the WordPress Plugin OIOPublisher — you might just have an idea where I’m heading with this post too.
As clearly as the post title highlights, I want to dedicate this post to help explain to our readers why Google Adsense is just isn’t as effective as it used to be for us small-time bloggers. Hence, it’ll help you understand why the Private Ad Sales alternative is much more viable for most small-time bloggers.
A quick visit over to the DigitalPoint or V7N Forums or even the Google Webmaster’s forum — you will realize just how seriously the complaints have been going around. Almost every other thread, in the Adsense Categories seem to be about earnings falling.
We can’t just play the blame-game because no-one within the blogoshphere is at fault (unless of course the rampant fools around the world that are in/directly responsible for economical crashes are blogging too). Unfortunately, many uninformed Adsense users have blamed Google, accusing them of taking too much of the share as a middleman. While is may/may not be true, there are much more feasible reasons behind the sudden slump.
9 reasons why ‘Private Ad Sales’ are better than ‘Google Adsense’
- More Revenue — This is one of the most obvious points. Dealing directly with your sponsors, you are effectively cutting out the middle-man and hence eliminating any percentage shared with them and/or dreadful fees.
- You can be Clint Eastwood with the target — One of the biggest let downs in Google Adsense, is the randomness of advertisements appearing next to your content. Sure, you can target your keywords and utilize the “Keyword Filter” but there will always be an ad or two that turn up totally unrelated. With Private Ads, you can hand-pick the ones that appear on your blog.
- You are in control — By selecting the type, size, color and even the behavior of the advertisements — you are in full control of what your readers view. Customizing the limited range of sizes and other visual features on Google ads can be sometimes be unnecessarily time-consuming.
- You decided how much you earn — Theoretically speaking, if you can find the sponsors — then you can earn as much as you like. If you only want a couple of ads, that’s fine but if you’re willing to display more ads you will simply earn more. However, be careful that you don’t spam your own site — because your number one priority is to satisfy your readers’ needs and not your advertisers’ pleads.
- Direct Contact with your sponsors — If you have been following Blogussion lately, you must have realized the emphasis we put on ‘making friends.’ When it comes to blogging — almost everything is social. Fundamentally, you are sharing your opinion with people and therefore creating a community of inquiry. By directly dealing with your sponsors, you are effectively making friends — and this can really help pick up the word-of-mouth viral marketing.
- Contextual Networks literally suck for small-time bloggers — Programs that offer incentives for clicks such as Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher can be an extremely profitable, but that only works if you have a huge daily reach and lot of daily pageviews.
- Sponsor’s Ease of Payment — We all know that Google only offers a direct deposit to your bank account or a check mailed to your address. Offering only these two types of payment methods is a bit of a let down, but with Private Ad Sales you can decided how your advertisers meet their payments. Just like a couple of points earlier, this one too — reinforces the fact “you are your own boss”
- OIOPublisher — Enough said. This is one of the best plugins released for WordPress. If you want a much more detail run through of the plugin and its details — please check out Alex’s recent post on it.
- It’s just consistent -Once you find a handful of loyal sponsors, for a constant monthly price — you are guaranteed an income from your blog. Nothing more, nothing less — this can really help you plan ahead and make decisions on-site without worrying if you will get paid this month to adequately cover the costs. To protect yourself even more, you can perhaps ask your sponsors to sign a minimum contract or provide a month’s notice before cancellation.
In conclusion, Private Ad Sales are better for small-time bloggers and until you reach a significant amount of surfers everyday — constantly — it should be more profitable than any CPC Programs.
Of course, you should experiment everything for yourself because every blog performs differently. Don’t be afraid to play around with the colors, sizes and ad-placements for your Google Adsense ads because if thing’s don’t work out; you can always return back to Private Ad Sales.
22 Discussions
Can’t argue with those reasons. I’ve taken a look at adsense and the idea of relying on google to place ads onto your blog doesn’t make sense to me when other plugins like OIO Publisher are out there. It makes sense to do it the way you want to do it. Great post!
Evan’s last blog post..It’s A Sweet Thing
Thank you for the compliments, Evan
However, Adsense is a great way to reach a diverse range of advertisers without having to chase them around.
Perhaps I should have emphasized this more in the post; that you should really try both Private Ad Sales and Adsense too, because the results can be very different per site.
I’ve heard of far too many people that get banned from AdSense and that’s one thing that will never happen if you use private ads. It really does offer a lot of advantages but let’s not forget that it’s not quite as simple to set and forget like AdSense can be. Still, private advertising is the next step I’ll be taking on my blog for monetisation.
- Dot Com Dud
Blog Income Report’s last blog post..January Traffic Analysis
A lot of the people who get banned from AdSense think it’s the end of the world. I think it’s better they get banned because they will now have opportunities to try out more effective monetization techniques for their blog.
Hey! cool post, really informative, private advertising good because it has a definite price making it reliable source of income, even if your traffic goes down
Nicholas | Pixobyte.com’s last blog post..Valentines Day Giveaway Contest Results
That’s an excellent point Nicholas! I didn’t mention this thoroughly enough, that the fact you are guaranteed a specific income regardless of traffic.
Adsense directly depends on traffic, because more views mean more chance of getting clicks, but what about those gloomy days? Those days, where your site’s just not performing..
I think that adsense is mostly a convenience. I think that the private ad companies can be quite good if you have a busy website. For newer sites I would start out with adsense for the simplicity.
That’s so true, Adsense being such a convenience. I think that’s one of the biggest reasons behind its success.
I agree with you, Adsense really sucks these days. If you have a site with good PR and nice traffic selling Ad spots on your sites can generate a decent revenue for you.
Do you really find PR as something that is important? Some advertisers may prefer to advertise on a blog with PR, but do you think PR is still useful anymore?
That’s so true, I think I’ve mentioned this before – that some of my minor projects that were earning decent revenue from Adsense has all just collapsed, and I didn’t even meet the minimum checkout this month
I’ve converted a couple of them to Private Ads, and found a handful of sponsors. Just a couple of the Private Ads are making more than all my Adsense put-together at the moment.
Such a pity, because Adsense used to be such a good online money-maker… still if you have good traffic and a solid community, either way you can make money
Of course it takes more effort than putting down an adsense ad code which you never have to worry about anymore, but then again it will more than likely earn you much more!
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Exactly, it’s like anything else in life – “You get out-what you put in”
Unless your site earns quite a lot from AdSense, then private advertising is the way to go. If you look at my blog’s earnings statistics, I earn much more from private advertising than AdSense
But with AdSense, it’s like you publish and forget. You’ll get the money without the need to do anything
Michael Aulia’s last blog post..Free Post It Sticky Notes for Windows
Just like to add one more quick thing, isn’t it true that Google doesn’t send you the money you earn from Adsense unless you’ve made at least 100$ for that month? If it is indeed true, which I think I might be right, then I’d get pretty annoyed if I got let’s say around 90$ and I couldn’t receieve it until the month afterwards. However, if I was making around 80$ – 100$ then I’d be pretty satisfied though.
So the main thing I guess is that you can’t rely solely on Adsense if you want to earn advertising revenue from your blog right?
Unfortunately the minimum payout for Google Adsense is USD$100.
It’s actually worse than you’ve thought it to be. Google prepares everyone’s check on a specific date (once a month), and if you are even a cent below a $100 on that time – you have to wait exactly another month to get your check.
This is another reason why Private Ad Sales are better – you are guaranteed a timely income check regardless of external influences such as traffic, website-downtime and/or invalid clicks
Woah, those are some pretty nice stats there Michael!
Congratulations on running a superb blog
How has it been since you first launched your site? It looks very established and maintained, also your earnings + traffic stats are just awesome!
Keep up the good work man, and behalf of the Blogussion Community – We wish you the very best for the future!
Very true but the problem is that new website doesnot get approved easily on private ad program
p@r@noid’s last blog post..How to get an email address with @googlemail.com address
Yeah, especially since Google brought in their new rule “all sites must be 6 months old for account verification”
That really sucks for any new bloggers, that have to wait a half-year just to get approved of..
Thanks for this helpful resources
I think its so difficult to make money with Private Ad Sales on new blogs
Andy’s last blog post..Live account statistics.
Hey I have blog related to stock market, how to i get good affiliate ads which pays good, how and where to search good affiliates related to niche area of our blog ?
Can you please help me in the same ?
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