If you have a page or blog which started generating a few visits, you may be considering adding Adsense ads to earn income and thus make a profit from your invested work. But… When is it worth monetizing a page with AdSense?
This is a doubt that can most likely come from the fame that AdSense has in regards to needing many visits to generate a decent amount of money. This is a rumor widely spread on the internet and from experience I tell you that it is totally true, and I even dare to say that it’s crazier than you can imagine.
However, there are infinite factors that depend on monetization and therefore the subject must be covered in depth:
Theme Greatly Influences Revenue
A page can have half the visits as yours and still out-earn you by triple your earnings, and why is that? Well, basically it’s due to the theme, for example, an insurance-themed page will earn much more money than a page about video games because large amounts of money are handled in the world of insurance and therefore advertisers invest more.
Think about it, selling a video game provides a benefit (without taking costs into account) of €60-70, it’ll depend on the game, but anyway, while selling insurance provides large amounts of money and with periodic payments.
Some highly paid themes in AdSense:
- Insurance.
- Hotels.
- Flights.
- Tourism.
- MBA.
- Hosting.
As you can see, these are sectors that handle a lot of money and therefore advertisers invest more money in Google ads, which translates into more money for pages or blogs that offer this type of content, which is where these types of ads will appear more.
In these themes you can earn interesting sums even if you don’t have too many visits, so why not focus on them? That is something that many people have thought about and done and for this reason the competition is abysmal and therefore very difficult to find a place, but everything is possible with a lot of work and adequate information!
How many visits do I need to earn money with Adsense?
Being a bit general and taking into account that your blog has a common theme, not one of the top themes, a good time to decide to place your ads is when you reach 10K monthly visits. Why 10K? Well, it’s a symbolic number and the one that in my opinion denotes that your web project is starting to work and get serious, for you it may be a low number, but I wouldn’t add ads to a blog with less than 2k because basically you are going to win cents.
As I have already mentioned above, the fame that AdSense has regarding the little that is paid for the visit is fully deserved and I even dare to say that you need more visits to generate something than you think. For example, I have a blog mainly focused on videogames and having generated about 18k visits in a month, it has only generated €8.5 in that month, so get used to the idea.
You do not believe it? Here’s the actual data:
I’ll give you a case of a website that monetizes especially poorly in AdSense so that you get an idea of how little you can earn even with a decent amount of visits. And why does it generate so little? Well, in my opinion it’s due to the following reasons, although this is pure speculation on my part:
- Many users are quite familiar with technology in general: There are studies that show that the greater the degree of knowledge in technology in general, the less interest in advertising on websites, and I think that this is precisely due to the awareness of knowing that what is seen is advertising and so-called “ad blindness”. These users are so used to seeing ads everywhere that their brains have developed the ability to quickly spot these ads and ignore them entirely. And as if that were not enough, this usually comes hand in hand with a more frequent use of AdBlock.
- Many users are minors: Due to the theme, there are many minors on the page and that also has a great impact in terms of interest in the ads. A minor will usually not have the financial means and will not feel interested in more general advertisements either, and even if they were interested, it doesn’t matter, if they want something they will depend more on their parents than on anything else.
These type of things are important for you to analyze, since each sector has its peculiarities and it’ll depend on precisely this how many visits will be necessary to obtain decent income in AdSense.
In cases like these, it’s worth considering other options to generate income, such as Affiliation, which normally generates more income. But it’s precisely in this same case that I have not obtained good results with it either, it’s driving me crazy because it has enormous potential in terms of attracting traffic but in terms of monetization it presents enormous problems.
The User Experience
And you may wonder… And what does it matter? even if I have 100 monthly visits, I put the ads and if I earn a penny, that’s better than nothing, right? Well, you see, putting ads has a big problem, which is that they hurt the user experience a lot, so you should think better of it.
This is something that the sites that abuse a lot of advertising are to blame for, because of them all the pages receive the consequences despite trying to use advertising in the least intensive way possible.
Advertising has acquired a very bad reputation and is often seen as something negative when really if you think about it, non-intrusive and well-run advertising only brings benefits for everyone. The page creator earns revenue and the user gets recommendations for products or services that might be of interest to them.
But things are as they are and the fact of advertising, even in a good manner, is going to annoy some users and that is something that translates into fewer page views.
Therefore, you shouldn’t take the risk of adding ads to earn 4 cents in total, it isn’t worth it.
Do a Test to See How Much you Generate
If you don’t do a test, you won’t be able to get an idea of how much money you can generate with your web project, so there is no better way to clear up your doubts than to create an AdSense account and test for a while to see how it monetizes your page.
A month or a week if you have many visits is a good period of time to get an idea and make the right decision. If the money seems enough to maintain the ads, fine, if it seems too little to justify harming the user experience, you remove them, period.
If that’s the case, you can always test again when you’ve significantly increased your visits. By the way, January, July and August (although again it depends on the theme… but as a general rule) are generally bad months in terms of Adsense monetization.
To give you an example of themes that could even benefit in these months… How about an online store of products for the beach? Obviously June, July and August (at least in Spain) are the months where more money will be invested in this type of product by advertisers. And regarding January… winter clothing in general, would be another example, which in addition to the cold, sales are coming. You should also think about these kinds of things now before making the decision or carrying out the tests in the most interesting months of your theme.
And that’s all! When do you think it’s worth adding AdSense to a page? Do you want to share your experiences of your websites? Do you have any advice to give on the subject or any questions? Leave your comment!