[This is part of the Blogger's Guide to Earning More with Google Adsense.]
One of the things that you probably know quite naturally is not to put all your “eggs in one basket,” so to speak.
Adsense can be a significant source of income but as history has shown a blogger’s earnings can fluctuate from month to month and without much warning – sometimes the drop (or increase) can be substantial.
The lesson and key takeaway from this is obvious: Diversification is one of your most important strategies!
Just like any good financial investor who doesn’t bank on just one channel or stock or investment relying completely and 100% on any monetization strategy or channel of income is dangerous, especially if you’re a Problogger and need your income from your blog to pay your mortgage (and more)!
Beyond just the ups and downs of earnings you could face a ban from Adsense, even if it’s not your fault. Although you might be able to get your account back it’ll take time and you might lose significant amounts of capital as you work through the process.
Now, if Adsense is your number one channel right now in terms of income you’ll want to bring that down to at least closer to 60% or 70%. In fact, if you could work toward 50% I think that’s pretty safe but you could go as high as 80% if you want.
It’s ultimately up to you – and you may have many other channels as well. Diversify and stay safe! Adsense can give you some great earnings but it could be gone tomorrow so plan for it, even if it never happens!
[This is part of the Blogger's Guide to Earning More with Google Adsense.]
I have never jumped on to adsense ads. Your series though is very insightful. I’m not sure when I’ll make the chose to monetize my blog. I keep going through the options.
awesome! glad you’re considering it though!
in my humble opinion, if some one want to be rich from Google Adsense i hope he can develop a good website or blog, it’s mean all of your contents, links, and traffic should support it all.
that’s true. you should just be a darn good blog… always!
Adsense is a great way to monetising your blog but you also have amazon and others…
amazon has not be a very good channel for me, to be honest.
Can you still even use Amazon in your state? They cut off all of us Illinois affiliates in May and I know they have done so with a number of other states as well.
ah. you can but not as a money maker where you are. that stinks!
John,
thanks for the series, I’ve enjoyed it. I was trying to find the adsense ads on your blog and only find them really small at the end of the post. Are they bigger on other blogs? I have not read every post closely so maybe I missed that. Although, maybe you are not allowed to mention them if it breaks the rules you mentioned. Regardless, maybe you can at least state whether the ones I mentioned above are it or whether you are using them differently on other blogs. Also, is there a way to use the Standard ad spaces for google adsense ads?
thanks,
Duke
duke,
i have three placements… take a look around and see if you can find them.
i’ve been trying and testing new spots regularly so size and positioning changes.
Good post, John. Having experienced the difficulties with AdSense that you talked about, I can fully agree that it may not be wise for someone to pin all their hopes on AdSense only. For the past few years, I have diversified quite a bit to where I can atleast pay some of the bills, so to speak, even if something were to happen to my AdSense inflow.
-Jean
jean,
i get the feeling like you’re doing quite well with online monetization?
Love this series, thanks. I have diversified in the sense that I use Adsense as well as various in post affiliate links, Amazon, sponsored posts, advertising etc. What I have not done is diversified with any type of competing ads with Adsense (mostly as I was not clear if Adsense would frown on this) ie Clicksor or lijit. I typically will switch them in an out, to test but not run ads concurrently when I have adsense ads on the page. Do you have any thoughts on running them on a blog at the same time. Do you find they compete with each other, or provide extra revenue, and do you know if this would create risk for adsense account? Thanks for any insights you might have!
The problem with adsense from google that you can only run one per account, My experience told me that It’s difficult to have related info and that when you are contacting them, they never respond. Btw great article.