If you are like most aspiring bloggers, you wouldn’t mind make a few bucks from the fruits of your efforts. Many bloggers start on Blogger which makes incorporating adsense into your template super easy and seems like an effortless and effective way to monetize your blog.

Wrong! It is nearly effortless but it is hardly effective, at least for most blogs.

Monetization Basics

I don’t think anyone will argue that in order to effectively monetize your blog, your choice of method needs to match your readers. You need to provide something that they are looking for in order to get them interested enough to either click your ad or make a purchase of some sort.

If you have a blog about rock bands of the 90s then chances are if you elect to try to sell an internet marketing course then you likely will be met with little success. The product doesn’t match the readers interest in the slightest and they will pay them absolutely no attention.

Adsense seems to provide a perfect solution in that they are contextual. The ads will try very hard to match the content on the site and they typically do a pretty good job of accomplishing this. It appears that this would make a good choice right?

Wrong….again.

Readers and Searchers

The issue that few are aware of unless they experiment is that there are two types of readers out there essentially and these two types have very different needs and very different habits.

The Reader - Readers are here for enjoyment. They like your writing style or they enjoy reading what you have to say. Let’s say you are running a humor blog. Your readers are there to read your latest funny story, anecdote or joke. They most likely have a number of humor blogs that they stop by to check out daily or weekly.

They have no purpose for being there other than to check out what you have to say and they aren’t likely to click OUT on an adsense ad. They will most likely click out on the next blog in their reader or bookmark list.

The Searcher - Searchers are looking for something specifically. They have a question and they need an answer. They arrived at your blog via Google with a question in mind. If your site answers their question then they are happy and satisfied and may simply leave. If your site has adsense ads that appear to offer up a better answer then they may very likely click out on one in search of “the answer.”

The searcher is the kind of reader you want if you intend to monetize via adsense. This presents a challenge as most blogs do not get the majority of traffic from search engines. If yours does then you may be a good candidate for adsense.

The Conundrum

You might have picked up on a couple of issues that you are facing as well. If your site is too good, if it offers the answer to the searchers question, then they will be less likely to click out on an adsense ad. If you write half baked posts with no answers to the questions your readers seek then you will get no repeat traffic or RSS subscribers.

The two types of readers work against each other. In order to maximize adsense income you need to attract readers with questions and NOT answer them. In order to attract RSS subscribers and grow your traffic then you want to write thorough and well thought out posts so that readers will return.

What do you do?

Conclusion

Most blog readers are there for entertainment. They are not searching for answers but rather enjoy what you write and like interacting on your site. They aren’t very likely to click out on an adsense ad and therefore adsense is essentially a waste of space.

You would likely be much better off to try and work in some affiliate offers for products that are related to your blogs main theme. If you combine those with some private ad sales and sponsored reviews then you are likely to make much more money from this than adsense.

It isn’t hopeless and if you are hell bent on adsense then you will still garner a click or two here or there. If that’s ok with your goals then great but if you need or WANT to make more money from your blog than a few bucks a week then you can do a LOT better than adsense.

Adsense makes a great monetization outlet for niche sites, but a terrible one for most blogs. Anyone have a different opinion?

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