Why Adsense Is Wrong for Most Blogs

[theeventof]

Originally Posted by bloggerican

Highly subjective. 1% click through rate is common for pay-per-click ads. What most bloggers don't understand is the power of actually creating a relationship with their readers.

This time we are not talking about click through rate but instead conversion rate. If you have a good rapport with your target audience or better still, those in your mailing list, conversion rate can be much higher.

Using your own example of 1,000 visitors to your blog and getting 10% of them to join your mailing list, you would have 100 subscribers. Now, let's say you make an offer for a product you created and you get 10% of them to buy, that would mean 10 sales.

So you see, if you have a mailing list and you have nurtured that list well, 10% conversion is an achievable number. Remember, those on your mailing list are interested in what you have to offer, that's why they sign up to your mailing list.

It is much easier to sell to those who is interested in what you have to offer compared to a visitor who is just browsing your blog.

If you look at the date of my original reply it was July of 2010 (1 month after I started blogging). Yikes, how naive I was....

After many more months of experience I agree with the statement that Affiliate sales can be better for blogs, but like you said you have to put a lot of work into creating a mailing list and building a real relationship with your readers. Watching the metrics of the mailing list and fine tuning to optimize your conversion rate. You are a fool if you think you'll get 10% conversion on a mailing list and a product recommendation without putting in a lot of additional work that adsense doesn't require.

And for that reason...

I disagree with the statement that adsense is bad for blogs, ideally it is a great supplement to an affiliate program, but because a blog is constantly growing you will always have new visitors who may still be just looking for that quick answer. They aren't going to find that in an Affiliate link, but Google may have that answer in the form of an adsense ad.

I think both Affiliate programs and adsense are necessary to maximize your bottom line and by neglecting one or the other you're just cutting your full income stream short.

[VRecipes]

This is all really informative for new bloggers. Thanks to everyone for their input!

[barbrine]

Good advice, I always think whether people can monetize a blog well depends on how they advertise it. Bloggers need to know how to monetize, like those review blogs, visitors know the blog might advertise, but it provides useful information for them, so why not CLICK IN TO CHECK? The key point to monetize a blog is you can provide useful information and can add your topic-related ads in naturally.