Have all the big players abandoned adsense?

[intimastery]

I'm looking around at various high ranked sites and the vast majority don't use adsense anymore. Even Joel Comm, the guy who wrote the book about adsense optimization, doesn't use it - and neither do any of the sites he used as test cases of "good use" in his book.

What happened/changed?

And, does this mean there is no point in exploring adsense as a monetization option anymore?

[Maraun]

Adsense is a great fallback if you don't have any other ways to monetize a site yet. Or if you are inexperienced.

If you are successful at IM you will have enough resources and experience to create your own successful products on a regular basis and selling your own stuff will make you more money than referring your visitors to products of other people.

The more you know about IM, the better your chance of making and selling profitable products. On the other hand, when you are new you don't know enough to properly sell your own stuff, you just slap on Adsense and monetize that way.

[Fernando Veloso]

Adsense is turning into Adcent for lot's of folks, maybe thats why they ditch it?

[yukon]

Adsense is still working just fine.

Don't base your IM career on what others are doing.

[bfas]

Adsense has gotten 'harder' in that you can't be 'fast & loose' anymore without jeopardizing your account.

That said, it's a terrific business model if done properly.

Michael

[OO]

No just many times, highly ranked sites can profit more off of CPA or Affiliate rather than AdSense.

[caseycase]

It definitely still works. Don't write it off if you are looking for ways to monetize.

[kkchoon]

Originally Posted by yukon

Adsense is still working just fine.

Don't base your IM career on what others are doing.

I see you have few big Adsense sites, and your income mostly from Adsense?

How fast do you think you can scale your business model?

I really don't want to build my business on something that is hard to scale, or may overnight get killed without a solid reason, and worst you can't appeal...

If the scaling is easy and killing can be avoided, I think Adsense is one of the best and easiest way to start earning money.

[packerfan]

Here's some good general advice. When everyone is doing the same thing, do the opposite.

There are a million ways to monetize websites. Adsense works great for some sites, but there are far more lucrative ways as well.

Considering Google is earning Billions of dollars, and 99% of it comes from ad revenue, I don't think adsense is going anywhere. Granted, a lot of that comes from organic search for them. But they want their publishers to succeed. Just play by the rules and you'll be fine.

[kochtgr]

Adsense is still a great way to monetize your site but when a site becomes big enough and gets a lot of traffic, it's much more profitable to sell ad space direct to advertisers without google as the midle man, Of course to do that you should build your site as an authority one and then advertisers will come to you without searching them yourself...

[StoneWilson]

Many people moved to other affiliate networks or money making models for higher ROI, many people quit on Adsense for gradually raising competition, but more people entering into Adsense and making big cash, they didn't write a book doesn't mean they haven't made any money.

[intimastery]

Ok, let me try to latch on to a few specific topics here, perhaps I'll understand better:

1. I see several people complaining of lower payouts per click ("adcents") - is it consistently the case in all markets, or just is it just the IM/SEO niche? Google claims to pay publishers 68% of the advertiser's cost per click, and when checking click prices on adwords I don't really see a downward trend, so how is this possible?

2. How does more competition hurt a publisher? If you have enough traffic as a publisher, competition among publishers clearly hasn't hurt you. If there is more competition among advertisers, it's a good thing as it should push click prices up, no?

Thanks again to anyone who answered

[BigNorm]

Adsense is working fine for me as well, in fact since I started to target Adsense over the last 3 months my earnings have more than doubled. I think what you'll find with alot of "big players" that income diversity is the key to being successful online. I myself use CPA and Adsense and have been doing quite well. Others use product creations, email lists and affiliate sales to generate differing streams of income.

It comes down to what works for you. I see lots of people in this forum complain that Adsense makes no money yet I've been able to boast my earnings from $0 - to $400 this month and next month is tracking to double again.

[phans]

Originally Posted by kkchoon

I see you have few big Adsense sites, and your income mostly from Adsense?

How fast do you think you can scale your business model?

I really don't want to build my business on something that is hard to scale, or may overnight get killed without a solid reason, and worst you can't appeal...

If the scaling is easy and killing can be avoided, I think Adsense is one of the best and easiest way to start earning money.

if you play by the rules chances are you won't lose your account and even if you do if you are making a killing you can create new adsense accounts via llc...
you can also use mutiple accounts to reduce you risk even more!
so if you are serious about it adsense can def be used to start earning big and the adsense model is imo one if not the easiest method to scale

[bfas]

Originally Posted by intimastery

Ok, let me try to latch on to a few specific topics here, perhaps I'll understand better:

1. I see several people complaining of lower payouts per click ("adcents") - is it consistently the case in all markets, or just is it just the IM/SEO niche? Google claims to pay publishers 68% of the advertiser's cost per click, and when checking click prices on adwords I don't really see a downward trend, so how is this possible?

...

You'll hear plenty of things that may not be so, often personal experience attributed incorrectly.

The payout percentage is static and hasn't changed. Keyword prices do change, vary with season, etc., but there isn't an overall downward trend.

From my experience, much of the "Adsense bashing", complaining, or claims that Adsense "doesn't work", "got worse", etc., comes again from people who haven't done it well.

I have dozens of Adsense sites, and run a forum with 2000+ people doing Adsense. My sites, and many of those on the forum, average $1 per click or more. And I have not seen any downturn.

Michael

[xTrav]

Originally Posted by bfas

You'll hear plenty of things that may not be so, often personal experience attributed incorrectly.

The payout percentage is static and hasn't changed. Keyword prices do change, vary with season, etc., but there isn't an overall downward trend.

From my experience, much of the "Adsense bashing", complaining, or claims that Adsense "doesn't work", "got worse", etc., comes again from people who haven't done it well.

I have dozens of Adsense sites, and run a forum with 2000+ people doing Adsense. My sites, and many of those on the forum, average $1 per click or more. And I have not seen any downturn.

Michael

I would like to join the Adsense forum plz?

[Bofu2U]

Adsense is normally regarded by people that see higher cpc's through other means as a waste of time. The bottom line is: there are times, places, and niches where AdSense is where it's at.

I use it all the time for my blanket niches where I can't find products, or the products convert so poorly that I'd rather have $0.15 a click instead.