The strange world of Google Adsense

For those that don’t know, Google’s Adsense is or was a way of making money. Google gave us free blogspace so we could create blogs that could carry Adsense. Those blogs are vehicles that attract people to the vicinity of the adverts. In order to get people to put adverts on their blogs and other websites, Google created Adsense. This is a method by which Google shares some of the advertising revenue with the blog publisher. It’s win win for Google. They get money without doing any of the work.

For a number of years I’ve carried Adsense on all my blogs. That income has plummeted though.

I’m not really sure what the problem is since nothing has changed on this end. I will say this though.... I went into a store and used one of the demo computers to click an advert just to see what was going on. Well, Adsense on my phone came up with a click and 65 cents. I went home and looked and there was no income though there was a click. It’s as though Adsense is not paying any more.

Indeed, I look at the monthly earnings and this is across YouTube and 3 blogs and income is maybe 1 cent a month if I’m lucky. That’s no way to be! I’d noticed before that Adsense income had tailed off badly. It’s not as though visitor numbers are poor either. This month so far across my 3 blogs around 33,000 page views. There’s definitely something amiss with Adsense!

If it wasn’t for that unpaid $37 then I’d just dump Adsense. Look at it... the last payment was $107.63, two YEARS ago! In fact since it’s now November that’s almost two and a half years ago. Nothing has changed. I still post. I post photos and high quality content. Adsense has simply quit making sense.

Online I read about people making Monopoly money from Adsense yet it now looks like yet another of those internet get rich quick schemes that doesn’t work. Remember Five? That was a website where people would undertake small projects for $5 only it wasn’t. The site took $1 so you got $4 only you didn’t because they charged you a percentage to deposit your money into your PayPal account. I believe PayPal then took their cut leaving Your $5 a job looking a lot more like $2.50.

In my regular job I get way more than from either of these two charlatans. In fact, compared to my regular income, those two just don’t even class as anything at all - not even pocket change. I blog because I enjoy writing and because occasionally people read what I say. I don’t much mind whether somebody reads it and declares me to be the biggest jackass in history or whether they start raising glasses of fine malt in my honor. My pleasure is in creating and sharing the content and of course in the case of the Bus blog, building my motorhome.

So, Adsense or no Adsense? If really and truly nickel and diming your way through life is what you want to do then Five and Adsense are the way to go - while others laugh all the way to the bank. As far as the apocryphal tales of internet millions are concerned, I wouldn’t bet my dinner on them being true.