I just read that John Chow is ditching Adsense or at least shelving it for the summer, and he has sold the space that he used for his Adsense Ads for a whopping $1,000 a month. Guess what, before his next post could be published, the space has been taken. John has reported that his Adense makes him about $700 per month and by selling and actually getting people to buy that space is shrewd, but he has always been the shrewd and evil one.
Darren Rowse too has taken off Adsense from his new Template or maybe he is still tweaking it and has not inserted it yet. I do remember him saying that there will still be one Adsense block in his new theme though.
Having seeing the two big brothers of the Blogosphere doing away with the “Best Money Making Method” I was curious and decided to check if other high ranking blogs carries Adsense. Not much research done though. Just went browsing through Technorati’s top 100 blogs. The list below shows the 20 top ranking blogs that does not serve Adsense Ads.
2. BoingBoing (pr7) - Has Contextual Ads of their own.
3. Gizmodo (PR7) - No Adsense
5. The Huffington Post (PR7) - No Adsense
6. LifeHacker (PR7)- No Adsense
7. Ars Technica (PR7) - No Adsense
9. PostSecret (PR7) - No Adsense
10. TMZ.com (PR7) - No Adsense
12. Beppe Grillo’s Blog (PR6) - No Adsense
13. Seth’s Blog (PR7) - No Adsense
15. Official Google Blog (PR8) - No Adsense.
16. Michelle Malkin (PR6) - No Adsense
18. Treehugger (PR7) - Serves Adbrite Ads.
19. Think Progress (PR7) - No Adsense
20. Kotaku, the Gamer’s Guide (PR6) - No Adsense
Surprising isn’t it? Out of the top 20 ranking blogs, only 6 of them are placing Adsense in their blogs. Most would have thought blogs with these status should all be serving Adsense. To be fair, most of these top ranking blogs are serious blogs which I don’t think was created with making money in mind. However most do have sponsors and other form of advertisements. I think these came in after they have made a name for themselves.
And oh, I think think the Official Google Blog can be disregarded.
If you can demand more than what you get from Adsense a month, then obviously selling advertising space would be more profitable.
if you can get the traffic, it is definitely better to sell directly as publisher will earn more and buyer will pay less. Because there is no more middleman
Fantastic revealation, Costa. If you have tried Adwords, you will know what crap Adsense is. I am only paying peanuts, no wonder, I also earn peanuts. Do take yr BlueHost $30 offer for Adwords and try. It is valid till Dec only.
I don’t know. Personal blogs and niche blogs operate on a different level. Personally, I don’t think personal blogs can benefit much from Adsense or any kind of advertisement of the side bar.
OK, there are exceptions, but generally speaking, I don’t think so. I even want to do away with Advertlets. It looks cool initially, now it looks tacky…