AdSense Income

I recently gave a session on WP Camp Germany in Berlin on how to optimize your income from ads on your website. As the discussion had shown, a lot of listeners where just starting to monetize their website and their first question was related to how much AdSense pays you in general. In this article, I am going to review some information on the potential of AdSense income, list some benchmarks from various sites, and give basic optimization tips.

How to earn money with AdSense

AdSense is an ad network belonging to Google. It is the biggest ad network in the world and the main service through which Google can display ads on a lot of websites. The secret behind AdSense is its simplicity. As a website owner you just need to sign into your account, create your first ad, and insert the source code on your website. The last one is the trickiest part for non-technical publishers, but still a lot easier than what some other ad networks ask you to do.

At the beginning there was just one way of getting paid with AdSense and this was on a per click basis. This means that you earn money each time a visitor to your site clicks on an ad. It doesn’t matter what he did afterwards on the target website. But before you start thinking about it: When Google figured out that some people tried to raise their payments by clicking on the ads on their own sites, they started penalizing for such behaviour.

68% of the click price

How did Google AdSense determine the amount you receive per click? Google also runs AdWords, which is kind of a mirrored service to AdSense. On AdWords advertisers running shops, services, or other marketers create ads and tell Google to publish them on either the Google search engine or in the display network, so all websites belonging to the AdSense network. 68 percent of the amount an advertiser pays per click on their ads on your site is your income. The rest is Google’s commission fee.

This still isn’t all you need to know about how much AdSense pays you. The costs per click are calculated in an auction. Every ad that is somehow in the pool to potentially be displayed on your website takes part in it. In this auction, it isn’t just the highest bidder that wins, but the winner is also determined by his “quality”. Without going deeper at this moment just remember that Google will ultimately run some smart algorithms that try to get the highest income per thousand impressions (return per mille = RPM) for you (and them).

CPC, CPM, CPE

In addition to the cost-per-click (CPC) model, there are two other bid types. Cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) is an income model where advertisers pay you a fixed price per thousand ad impressions. No click on them is necessary for you to earn something from AdSense. This bid type only works if advertisers choose on AdWords that ads should be displayed only on your website. Before they can do that you need to ad custom channels. I might cover this in an upcoming article, so you might want to subscribe to the newsletter so as not to miss it.

The most recent bid type is cost-per-engagement (CPE). In this case the advertiser is defining an action the visitor needs to fulfill like expanding the ad, watch a video ad, finishing a poll, etc. This form is so new that the documentation from AdSense doesn’t even mention it. As much as I would like to increase income from AdSense, we will have to see how visitors react to this, because the new engaging ad units might be a bit more jarring than the classical text or image banners.

Which is the best bid type?

You are not able to select the bid type yourself. Google calculates the best income when combining them based on what runs best on your website. If advertisers know about your good reputation and book CPM campaigns on your website, they might outrank your CPC income. If your CPC banners are well placed and your content is written for valuable topics like finances, your CPC might be unreachable. Lets see how the new CPE ad types kick in. The first AdSense accounts I have seen them in look very promising.

Should I use AdSense?

Once the ad code is inserted in your site, you are ready to earn money with AdSense. In practise, there is just one little problem for most small websites: to earn money with any kind of ad type you need traffic on your website.

This is the point where I normally stop new publishers who ask me for consulting. You are just building your content and reputation, have to fight for every newsletter subscription and the absolute traffic is below 10.000 pageviews a month. In this situation you should consider waiting with ads on your website. They might not only drive potential visitors away, but you also need time to manage and optimize your ads. Are there exceptions? Yes, there are. You will know when you see one.

Some website owners explain their banners in terms of their costs for hosting and the domain. I personally consider both to be so cheap nowadays that any hour practically worked for free on your project costs you much more than those things. If you don’t need those extra few cents per hour wait with AdSense or any other ad network until your website has grown significantly.

How much can I earn with AdSense?

AdSense earning examples

The answer to how much AdSense finally pays you depends on many variables. Still, the most important is the content on your website. Still, this is not a very specific answer to your question. Neither Google nor most publishers like to publish numbers on how much they earn with AdSense. I also won’t publish my clients’ income reports and their name so blank in this article. Sorry for that.

Still, there are some numbers I found thanks to Peer Wandiger, a German blogger who publishes monthly reports on incomes gathered from various sites. I took the following examples from his review in September 2013.

$48/ 1000 visits

The first impressive number comes from Pat Flynn, the owner of SmartPassiveIncome. In his own September report he stated that his niche site SecurityGuardTrainingHG.com generates $1,466.33 in revenue with 800 to 1,000 visits per day. This is about $48 per 1000 visits and is a very respectable number for such a niche site.

Other ad networks beyond AdSense

A great example of the chance for ad diversity is the income report of pinch of yum. Here, AdSense has the smallest income from an ad network. They seem to be more successful with the use of BlogHerAds. If you are more familiar with AdSense and ready to go a step further, there is probably also an ad network better suited for you.

Also moms-make-money.com earns more from other ad networks and income sources than from AdSense. Still, $272.82 for 158,710, which seems to be page views, is not bad at all considering the fact that you hardly notice the ads from Google.

Some general AdSense benchmarks

Even though I can’t state detailed income reports from my clients, I would like to give you a general benchmark of how much AdSense pays you when you use it on your website. I already summed up the 3 rich media banners you are allowed to use as well as link banners and the Google search on your website. Of course, your income is also highly dependent on the size and placements of the ads, but you will see there is a wide range of income possibility.

$0,25 – $3 RPM for unspecific, generic content

When you are running a forum, social network or directory of non-business information, chances are your AdSense income might not jump over $3 per 1000 page impressions. This is due to either ad blindness of returning visitors or information, that isn’t connected with products and won’t attract visitors eager to buy anything. Even affiliate programs might not really work here.

$1 – $10 RPM for content-rich sites, e.g. blogs

Content-rich sites like blogs should perform better with AdSense. How much AdSense pays does still depend on your niche and how you implement the ads, but a high frequency of new visitors and placement close to the main content will lead to a decent income. If you have a higher amount of traffic you might want to try other ad networks, affiliate programs and split tests.

$10 to a lot more for product-related sites

This is no surprise. If you are running a product-related website, like a blog about products and services, review products or a business directory, your income from AdSense, but also other sources should be the highest. But don’t think you are the first to have this idea 😉

What to do now?

Many of you might now be thinking of leaving your current hobby blog and starting a website with product information to earn more money from AdSense. Stop for a minute and rethink your monetization strategy. Maybe it is just AdSense that doesn’t fit you and your content. Or maybe you should check your banner performance and can earn more by using my basic optimization tips. Still, the numbers I mentioned are in such a wide range that I would love to read your comments about your AdSense income to either prove me right or wrong.

The Author

Comments

  1. Mark McDougall

    I have had a few cheques from Adsense in the past for an old blog, which I let slide as I became uninterested in the subject. I am slowly trying to build a reputation with my new site, and I say slowly because I know it takes a long time to do this and I only started the blog about a week ago. Thanks for the info. Very useful to know..

    1. Ralph

      I would like to say that adsense is the best way to earn online, specially for beginners. I have also started my adsense business while ago and it still makes me good dollars. 🙂 you can outsource your work and build multiple websites to earn decent revenue. In my case i outsource to getawab they have guaranteed service for adsense available on there website. You can build adsense websites yourself if you have time and don’t want to spend $$… 🙂

      1. Thomas Maier Article Author

        Thank you for your insights, even though I wouldn’t recommend outsourcing everything for projects that still need passion and personality.

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  4. Jones

    Thanks for the info but i just opened a new blog and i was wondering if you could tell me the amount of post i need before applying for adsense

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Jones,
      I never heard about a minimum of content one needs to apply for AdSense. It is not the amount of posts, but the overall traffic and monetarization potential I would look at so that applying for AdSense makes sense to you.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Sorry, this would be too much off topic. Maybe I will do that in a future article.

      1. Nick F

        Hmm, it looks like I was wrong. I only got the pre-approval for AdSense within an hour since applying. That allowed me to place the code I was given to the web site and the full approval can take up to a week. At the moment there is just a blank space where the add will be placed. Probably a human operator will actually check if the site meets their standards. Time to do some more work on the web site

        1. Nick F

          I got the full approval for google adsense today (two days later after applying). The only one web page I had was as incomplete as before, with almost all links blind or invalid. I checked if there are any websites that get rejected and I was very surprised to hear there were! In the meantime I added some more pages with content to the web site.

          1. Nick F

            Thomas, I came back to thank you! Two days ago I discovered that my AdSense account has $7.50 in it and it’s all thanks to you! Since I posted my message here, I had like 240 visitors and I got 6 clicks on the add banner. Not all visitors came from webgilde.com, but all of them who clicked on the banner were referred by webgilde.com
            Despite the fact it is a small amount, I am very proud for being cashflow positive so soon after starting the website 🙂 This is very encouraging and it motivates me to do more work on it.

            Cheers,
            Nick

          2. Thomas Maier Article Author

            Hi Nick, this is pretty cool news, thanks for sharing and good luck with your project!

    2. Nick F

      Hi Subhasis,
      I registered a domain name last week, put together a single page, lots of broken links and poor content. I uploaded it a few days ago o a free web host server using a free template. I asked today google for adsense. It took an hour to get approved. So, it appears to me that the process is extremely simple and it’s very easy to get approved.

      1. Thomas Maier Article Author

        So much about the site review when applying to AdSense. Thank you, Nick F, for sharing this.

    3. Amos

      Actually there is a minimum number of textual content needed for AdSense approval. Though I am not sure of the estimate, you can get approved with only a few pages and minimal traffic. They both count

  5. Gary Jordan

    Thank you for your insightful information. I’ve been trying to find the best way to monetize my blog lately. It hasn’t been easy, but at least now I know its potential. Keep Up The Good Work!

    1. Nick F

      I reached in total 1300 visits (1055 AdSense page impressions) and I accumulated from AdSense $28.62 from 24 ads clicked. The lowest amount I got for a click was about $0.09 and the highest one was $3.25. I try to increase the amount of traffic to my website, but I am not very good at that. I uploaded some photos from a trip on Pinterest, I got just two visitors. Put some quotes on Twitter, got no visitors. Building visitors for a new site is pretty hard. I need to build better content and concentrate less on AdSense earnings – the $12 per month is just peanuts, but I am overly focused on these earnings – it’s a pretty nice feeling to wake up in the morning and see a few more cents into my account 🙂 But if there are two or three days without any income, I am getting depressed 🙂
      On the other side, I am quite ashamed of how my site looks like and how featureless it is. Besides, my articles are quite poor, I read plenty of things on the forums which are much more valuable than my content. The bounce rate is not that bad at 62%.
      I purchased hosting and I should try to move it to WordPress or similar. I am thinking if buying some links to websites with high PR may be a good idea, I am not sure yet.

  6. Shanthi Ganesan

    Hi Thomas Maier ,
    Really well Written article,i want to know why blogs from india,pakistan should have minimun 6 month old to apply for adsense.Thanks in advance.

      1. Ryan

        FYI I have a blogger Blog and it says my blog must exist for 6 months in order to use Adsense.

  7. Josh Racicot

    I will be honest – I ditched ClickBank and AdSense altogether from my blog….reason being there are too many merchants who’s products and services either get banned or leave ClickBank and as for AdSense, it gives visitors to your website another route to click and leave your site. If you have affiliate programs and products already on your site, you are guaranteed to make more money with them than through AdSense, unless your are driving some serious traffic.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Thanks for being honest. I also wanted to give publishers a fair chance to decide themselves, if monetizing through AdSense is a good choice or they should better look somewhere else.

  8. admin@dec

    I had started my site last february 2014 and still working hard to generate traffic. I started my adsense just mid of march and got almost $16 from it. the thing is still I diddnt received my mail to verify my account and little worried if that mail would reach me or not. does anyone have an idea?

    1. Nick F

      I was also concerned about the mail – from the moment I was informed that Google will send me an email to validate my address, it took about three weeks or so until I actually received the mail. It came all the way from USA (I am in Australia) and it is not an envelope, but a thick paper bent in half and has the well known Google logo on one side.

  9. FlowingEvents

    I got few cheques from adsense. But due to low CPC and CTR losing interest in this. I think adsense was a good source of online earning before 2012..Now they are changing everything.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Tested most of them without success, but maybe someone else has more luck with them.

  10. Manohar

    Really nice tutorial but is still have some questions. According to Google Adsense TOS if publisher click on his/her own ads they’ll disapprove the account. Here my question is that what if a publisher view his/her blog rapidly for making some changes in theme and and editing post. Is they also disapprove publisher account in this cases?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Manohar, an intentional click an on ad is not the same as a page view where the ad appears.

  11. adilrehman

    i need your help is there any way to disapproved adsence accoint to reopen
    my account blocked due to invalid activaty i want to open it again
    any way i tried to fill apeal from many time but this doesnot works

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi, I am sorry, but I don’t have a secret recipe on how to reactivate your AdSense account.

  12. marius

    Hi there,
    Very helpful topic, id like to know how much id generate from a website with around 100k+ unique visitors per month(I didn’t get there yet, but I surely will) using adsense.

    Thank you indeed!!!

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      You can use the numbers from the article to estimate. Just have a look at the benchmark of the category you think your website matches best (e.g. blog, forum, product related etc.)

  13. pascal

    i learnt that there are many pluggins which u can make use of, where advertisers contact you directly. is this also good or do i need to sign up to different affiliates?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi pascal, sure you can use WordPress plugins to sell ad space directly. I listed some of them here. But there is no plugin that will find advertisers for you. This is the hard part.

  14. Naveed

    Thanks Thomas, This is so simple and informative post. I am running a website about smartphones for more than 7 months and have started attracting some good traffic from last month. More than 4,000 daily pageviews. But i have not yet applied for adsense.

    What do you think about the earning potential in smartphone niche with such traffic ?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Naveed, I think in this segment you might apply for AdSense to check the income potential. It will definitely depend on a lot of factors, like content and origin of visitors. Anyway, a real life test would bring you more clarity than my uneducated quess.

  15. fred lapides

    Old guy here (85), no tech know how. Run my site for some 12 years now, no ads….I ask one a year for donations…have a new site about marijuana that accesses from regular site ..would the type(s) of sites I run be acceptable to AdSense? and worthwhile for me?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi fred, your site is violating AdSense content policies, because it is not family save and drug related. So you wouldn’t be accepted by the ad network. Even I had to remove the link from your comment due to some local laws.

  16. John

    Hi,
    I’m new t o blogging and also adsense. Adsense didn’t considered page views from India. I’m getting better traffic from US and India. Adsense only consider page views from US and generate estimate earnings for this. It didn’t considered india’s page views. I want to know why? Can you help me?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      With a simple split test, e.g. if AdSense is your main source of income and you want to give Yahoo/Bing ads a try, put them on the same spot and deliver 80% AdSense, 20% the test candidate. Depending on traffic, compare the results after a week or two. There is much more about split tests, but I am going to cover this in an upcoming article.

  17. Carl Ojerio

    Very nice and informative post. I’ve just started a blog about “money making apps” just a month old. I don’t know about SEO stuffs and i think my site not doing quite good but your post make me do more. Thanks.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Carl, glad you liked the article and was able to motivate you.

  18. Bob

    Great post – very insightful.

    Can you please explain how the CPC works for different search terms and direct traffic?
    e.g. say I have 2 different search terms
    A – “Best Dog Leads” with CPC of $5
    B – “Canine Leads” with CPC of $1
    Does the correspond to the search term and if so what if somebody follows a link to my site or types the url in and clicks an adsense ad? How is that CPC worked out?

    Thanks

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Bob, officially, the search term is not determining the CPC. More important is a connection between your content and the keywords the advertiser entered for his ads (e.g. when creating them in AdWords). On the other hand, more and more banners are displayed due to the users interests, like when he is retargeted by another site.

  19. 4lareen

    God will continually bless you with progressive ideas Thomas. Please i wanna ask, how best can i draw traffic to my website?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi ekant, if you mean income from AdSense you should simply try it. My articles just gives a very rough benchmark, but the best way is to start implementing AdSense and optimize from there.
      Good luck, Thomas

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      That sounds not right. At this size having up to 3 Banners from AdSense and no click at all is highly unlikely. I might have a look at it, but maybe the technical support of AdSense is the right place for you.

  20. CJ

    i’m now getting back into IM after a 2 year hiatius. This was a good read on Adsense potential which ii wasn’t completely sure of. Wish me luck

  21. ed

    Thank you for the article. I’m glad to give you some numbers. My website is about 15 years old, before penguin and other animals started to do some tricks, it attracted up to about 2 million unique visitors per year, the income was about $35 per thousand, those were the good times. Now after all the google adjustments, unique visitors are down to less than a million, but income per thousand has dropped even more dramatically and income is now ridiculously low, about $0.95 per thousand! Maybe I should contact Adsense support but I have been wondering whether their numbers are still honest or what are they doing? Or should I change ad network….

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi ed, thank you for your insights. In my experience, the decrease of rpm is a general phenomenon, not just with AdSense. I am testing a lot of other methods and networks and even with these low numbers, AdSense still beats most of them. I don’t think there is a direct connection between the animal updates and ad prices. It is rather about competition, supply and demand.
      Still, I would be interested in what the AdSense support tells you. A simple “try more” wouldn’t do it when you can prove that you actually made a lot more before.
      Please, keep me posted.
      Thomas

    2. Nick F

      How in the world can you have such a low income per thousand? Are you using Google Analytics to check if that is the real number of visitors? A friend said he gets like 50-100 visits per day, according to his counter. But after he installed Google Analytics, the actual number displayed was around 5 per day – probably google knows how to eliminate bots and crawlers and all other similar creatures. If you say that 1000 ad clicks give you $0.95, that is an equivalent of 0.09 cents! My lowest adsense click was 9 cents, which is like 100 times larger. Something is fishy – if somebody wants to advertise, they pay usually at least 50 cents, which means you should have receive around 30 cents per ad click.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi anwar, programming blogs are very hard to monetize and I would suggest to try something else than banners. If people like your solutions and you can build a reputation offer them help with their projects (=coding jobs for you). Or combine some useful knowledge into eBooks. AdSense is easy to implement, but doesn’t pay well on most websites.

  22. Mikey

    Hi Thomas,

    Great post!!! It answered all of the questions I have been searching for in one go.

    As the lesser technical minded partner in my buisness, my responsibilites lie with driving traffic and generating revenue. Spin4 has trebled in traffic for 3 consecutive months now but I am still unsure whether the implementation of AdSense would negatively impact our user experience.

    In other words, have you ever heard of, or seen, users complaining or loosing interest in a website due to its adverts? I am slightly concerned at the relevance of each ad given the lack of control we would have over it.

    Thanks

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Mikey, the short answer is yes, each visitor has a different level of tolerance against ads. There will always be someone who doesn’t like any ads, starting with less disturbing kinds like affiliate links. The more unique your service and higher your user engagement, the less people will be annoyed. When helping others monetizing their sites, we take small steps and test and don’t put in every ad we can find right from the beginning. From what I can see on spin4 there should be better ways than AdSense.
      Wish you good luck. If you need help, just contact me.
      Thomas

    2. Michael Olsen

      Got another programming / very wide range of topics blog on http://rlogin.dk, maybe 100 different topics, from system administration,programming,books,hosting, but generally geek stuff

      Probably not worth to do adsense on right?

      I might be making some product blogs soon instead, or putting on my other blogs 🙂

      adsense is expensive to use though, just paid $30 for many clicks but no customers in about 10 days on my 1 week old company site

      might have to target better…. I wouldn’t get my customers that way unless I could tax deduct the fees, else its really expensive if you have to pay the fees yourself out of own pocket

  23. Jesse Zauka

    Hi there,

    I have to say that it’s not easy to get 1000 unique visitors a day and earn $48.00. Usually Google pay less. You might earn about $20.00. I am talking from my experience.

    Jesse

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Jesse, thanks for sharing your insights. You are right, $48 is a bar not many can reach. That is why I always add that a lot of conditions need to be matched before this can happen. It doesn’t just happen by accident or good will. A lot of planing and business insights are needed.

  24. Spyros

    Hi Thomas!
    Thank you for this article. It is very usefull. I would like to ask you something. I dont understand how cpm works. I have a blog and i had 1000 impressions in three days, but 0$. I only earn some cent from clicks. Should I change something? Can i choose cpm or cpc ads? Because I earn money only from clicks

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Spyros, with AdSense you can not choose whether to earn per click (cpc) or impressions (cpm). There are some indirect influences, but it seems to me you should focus on driving traffic to your site first.

  25. Anuj

    hello Thomas,
    Would you please clear my some doubts about
    earning revenues by allowing advertsements on my blog page ?
    it would be a great help from you !

    1. how many page views do I require for being considered by the adsense advertisers worthy of posting their ads? ( i am starting a new blog on health, living, fitness )

    2. if i elect blogger.com as my blog platform for blogging, would blogger allow me to add advertisements other than google adsense ?

    3. if I add google adsense in my blogger .com blog page , and also add some other advertising channel to the same page ( different place on the page) would it be a violation of google adsense ?

    Please Thomas slow these queries of mine if you have any idea about the same. It would be a great help from you brother !
    thank you
    -Anuj Juthani
    India .

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Anuj, I don’t know about a page view limit before being able to use AdSense. blogger.com might be picky about other ad networks, but I don’t know for sure. I wouldn’t recommend starting a project you want to monetize with ads on a hosted environment – to few control. You can, in general, use other ad networks aside with AdSense.
      Thomas

  26. jason

    I am curious…I only get about 3000 page views per month but its in a HIGHLY competitive niche (insurance) some of the bids are 40-50 dollars a click in Adwords. Am I right in thinking the high bids might make up for the low traffic?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Jason, Please, use AdWords prices with caution. I am planing on writing an article about this, but it is unlikely you can come somewhere near that. Still, it might be worth a try just to get an idea about the potential. Keep me updated. Thomas

  27. Lokesh Darpe

    Hi Thomas,
    Your article was too much helpful. I want to know that how a newly launched website can earn money if they have not enough users now ? And If they get 10-20k clicks in a month on their website without Ads, then will they earn money ? Means I want to know that Is It possible for a website to earn money without Ads on it, If it is not very much popular ?

    Thank You, Sir.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Of course it is depending on what you want to accomplish. You can have just a dozen page impressions and still make a lot of money when you sell a service or product there that people want to buy.

  28. James

    On my blog I have a modest 15 to 20 thousand page views. A subsidiary of Buysellads pays me $1.00 CPM. This sounds love from reading your post. They maybe taking a very large cut and not passing down to publishers? Do you think adsense can match or beat $1 on a tech blog using just 1 banner? Also in past the 768×90 banner looks bad on Mobile.

    Thanks

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi James, I wouldn’t think a huge cut is a reason for many ad networks not paying a lot. In your case, AdSense should be able to beat that.
      you can use AdSense responsive ads in case your website is optimized with a responsive design.

  29. Sacihin

    hello thomas..
    your article is really gud..but can you please check ma website and tell me that it can generate good income through adsense or not??
    thanks in advance

  30. amit kumar

    a nice post but can you tell me that how much a small blogger from india having majoirity of traffic from india from google adsense per month

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Amit, it is tough estimate the income for a project without analyzing it. The best way to do it on your own is to simply apply for AdSense and test a banner or two for a couple of weeks.

  31. Kosciusz

    I’ve read your article hoping that I learn how Adsense works. Specifically, how the ads are paid. Your answer is only: it’s complicated. I knew it is complicated. But you should describe in simple words a general idea. What are the factors here? I.e. does the size of the ad matters??? Instead, you’re juggling fancy words (many words) not getting to the point.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Kosciusz, thanks for your feedback. You are right, those basics are not covered here. This is planned for an upcoming article.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Rai, if you don’t have content, this rpm can be realistic if people don’t really have a motivation to click on an add. Maybe you can increase the click rate playing with ad positions.

  32. Max

    How many hits per month would you say is the absolute minimum before considering any type of advertising for a website?

    Also how many hits/month before ‘real’ money is earnt?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Max, there is no absolute minimum. It depends on your topic and income goals. You can set up AdSense when your blog is still small and check the overall performance just to learn more about your income potential. But it is very rare that you will be satisfied with a blog you started to earn money that gets less than 1.000 views a day.

  33. PNGfacts

    Hi, Thank you very much for this information. Really helpful. We have a news website but it seems that adsense does not perform well. We will look into other options to monitize our websites.

    We hope to improve in the near future.

  34. Mudassir

    Hi i apply 4 adsense but my request rejected for the reason below site did not meet the google policies
    please take a look my website & tell me what should i do 4 googel adsense ?

  35. GPS Traker

    I constantly hear stories about Adsense being a revenue generator for websites, but as the webmaster of a e-commerce site the biggest worry is sending potential buyers elsewhere. What would you suggest?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Putting ads on an e-commerce site is dangerous if you are not sure what you are doing or don’t have time to optimize it properly.

  36. Parnable

    Hey, guys! I can`t but to share my results. First of all I`ll make a reservation I worked in Russian segment of network and there is drastically other numbers of bids. So, I had a sport site with video sharing, sport recordings, news etc. with daily visits in 1500-3000 range. So I have been earning just 3-7 bucks a day. That`s deplorably . CTR was like 0,8 – 2% whatever I tried to change block location. CPC was near 10 cents, occasionally increasing to 15 and maybe 20 cents on big holidays 🙂 So it was near 150-200 dollars a month recently. But then Google disliked this site and stopped to display ads there. But also I noticed increasing of CPC. At the very beginning two yers ago it was like humiliating 1 or 2 cents per click! And then the rate of trust had been risen by time and CPC increased. AdSense is a good stable and fair network and it is good to have deal with. But you must have a really useful and good looking site with good technical background to earn good money. Good luck! P.S. can somebody name some else ad networks besides Adsense? Thanks.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Parnable, thank you for sharing your experience. You will have no problem finding lists of alterantives to AdSense around. There is no specific one I can recommend for your case, but you might want to check my article on ad networks. Good luck to you too. Thomas.

  37. Ankit Kumar

    Heyy Thomas….
    Hope you are doing good.
    I am planning to create a website that is a information sharing platform for users (can’t say exactly what the info will be, #playing safe). If I get good traffic on my website, will AdSense be the way for me to make money or is their some other way too. Kindly advise..

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Ankit, therer are other ways, too (e.g. other ad networks, affiliate marketing, paid reviews…).

  38. M.Shoaib

    Thank you Mr. Thomas, for wonderful information.
    but in short my question is about a website,

    acutely im planing a public website and sure about after some month strugle i will manage/arrange traffic around 1500 visitors per day, and how much my earning USD for add impression
    im asking for impression because i don’t have idea my visitor click on google add or not, but they will seen.

    kindly guide me
    Thanks again

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi there, I am sorry, but with the information you gave me I am not even able to make an uneducated guess on the potential of your website. You also won’t generate income with AdSense only with ad impressions.
      Thomas

      1. M.Shoaib

        Thank you for replay
        here some miss understanding, any how leave it.
        tell me one adsense account manage (when we genrate code and paste in our website, is it work for) if some visitor click than count google pay me as CPC, & if not click on add than count and pay as CPM, ?
        or declare before add appear that spouse add A is CPC and B is CPM?
        hope you understand,
        waiting for your kind detail replay

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          Sorry, Shoaib, but I really don’t know what you are asking me. There is either CPM or CPC, but not that if visitors don’t click on a CPC ad you get paid by impressions. There are CPM ads if booked directly on your page, but still only few advertisers do that.

  39. Siraj Mahmood

    Hurrah !!
    Today I got amazing articles on adsense earning that how to optimize ads on website to maximize revenue. Really Appreciated & Thanks for sharing useful article

  40. sachin

    Hello Thomas…I have a couple of queries.
    1. I get an RPM of approximately $10…it is a content rich website…is it possible to improve those numbers …if yes then what should one do? I only display google adsense on my website. Never tried any other service.
    2. I am thinking of adding Amazon affiliate program on the website to improve my earnings…not sure if it will help improve or my existing income will drop… but my biggest concern is will it impact my traffic in any way as 95% traffic to my website comes from google search. is it safe to add affiliate program in addition to google adsense.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Sachin, congrats on your good RPM.
      1. there is always a way to improve. You should read through some of my posts on ad optimization, split test with other ad networks and of course, can hire me for help and consultation 🙂
      2. I am not aware of the Amazon affiliate causing any issues with traffic from Google. You can even use static links and banners if you care for a better loading time. Google AdSense is in general not against using other ad networks on the same page.
      Hope this helps, Thomas

  41. Calvin

    Hi , I just sign up my blogger several mouths ago and i want to got more money from Adsense .Thanks for your tips . I will do my best !

  42. Lucky

    I am the head developer of website http://www.pupkart.com .. its an e-commerce of pet accessories. I am thinking of putting adsense into my site. But I want to make sure that it does not display my competitor’s ad. Is there any way to choose what kind of ads to display and what not?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Yes, you can block categories or single ads. But I wouldn’t recommend the last onein most cases: too much work.

  43. Melvin

    I have run this website for a couple of years with pretty strong content that links to other sites – Do you think there’s potential to earn good income from Ad sense or other ad sites? Please do not post the website address

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Melvin, I don’t see real content on your site so AdSense would also have a hard time figuring out what your visitors might be interested in. As your site seem to be some kind of hub for local information you might better be off selling classified ad directly.

  44. ProSiteNews

    I now I am still confused with how optimization adsense ads visitor clicks around 3000 but only 18 to 24 only, and since I get adsense account in March 2014 I have not received a check from adsense, hopefully you can help me

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi there, if I understand correctly your banners get clicked, but you didn’t get paid yet? AdSense has a payment threshold depending on your currency. Please check here.

  45. Jewish women wigs

    I don’t know if it’s worth to go on with adsense! I have ever one website but it’s company website, and we have to rebuild new website, is it worth to do?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      It is like with every other business. There are many that business models that can work, like making money with AdSense, but not every business fits you. But I even helped someone earn more money with AdSense on his online shop than through actually selling things.

  46. David Dos Santos

    What a great post, thank you. I was looking at starting to put ads into my travel blog… once I switched to self hosted of course and this gave me all the info I needed. Thanks Again

    David

  47. Umer

    Excellent work Thomas. How much can we earn with 500 pageviews a day. Also what about the RPM of a blog with eBook reviews and downloads?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Umer, 500 pageviews are enough to just test AdSense, but probably not enough to make a living from it. If your blog is about a product (e.g. ebooks), you should also consider affiliate links.

  48. Sean Behan

    Hello Thomas!

    Firstly, I would just like to thank you for your understanding information provided. I have recently started up a Men’s Fashion & Lifestyle Blog – http://seanbehann.blogspot.com I’m from the UK and using blogger, for some reason I do not qualify for adsense yet. Anyhow, I have copied an add banner to the right hand side of my page. I’m receiving around 50 page views per day, how can I get more traffic on my website to get more clicks on my ad?

  49. JonSnow

    Thank you Mr. Thomas, for information.

    I recently have made website of my own and I have generated a quite good audience 7000-10000 unique visitors per day.
    I haven`t placed any ads yet, don`t have google adsense either but I have made ad spots on my website, five of them.
    And I was just wondering how much could I make with adsense per day ? approximately ?
    The website contains of jokes, funny short stories, funny gifs and funny pictures…and 80% traffic comes from U.S
    Thank you in advance.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi JonSnow, please have a look above for some benchmark numbers. I would say your sites matches the unspecific, generic content category.

      1. JonSnow

        0.25 $ – 3.00$ per 1000 impressions…let`s say it`s 1,50$ per 1000 impressions I will get by every ad (in my case it`s 5 ads) 1,50$ am I right? 1,50$ x 5
        Is there any other way I can boost my income from Adsense ?

        Thank you in Advance !

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          Sorry, but I have to lower your expectation. In this article I talk about the cpm as a site wide benchmark and not per ad. In your case I would also estimate a number far below $1 per 1000 page impressions. btw, AdSense only allows 3 display ads per page, but you can fill up with other networks. How to boost that? Consider hiring me 🙂

          1. JonSnow

            Okey I`m actually considering it.

            How much would it coast me per month ?
            I have now 10 000 unique visitors per day, how much profit could I get from that? Btw traffic is growing by every day.
            I read from some people that from 10 000 unique you can easy get 100$ per day. But ofc you need experience.

          2. Galingo

            If this is true 10k views is 100$ per day, than I should be capable to get 10$ per 1k views…
            Is this true ?
            If that I will definitely hire you !!
            Contact me please.

          3. Thomas Maier Article Author

            It is neither true nor wrong. I have seen pages with a higher AdSense income, but most generate less. It depends on so many factors that it would be highly non-serious to promise a specific income. However, I am able to increase income on more than 90% of my clients pages.

  50. Manvinder

    Hii i have started this site on 16 october 2013 and my googleanalytics reports from 16 october 2013 to september 9,2014 are as follows:users-915,sessions-1131,pageviews-1872.Please tell me about my website traffic.Is it good report or bad?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Manvinder, you site seems to be offline, but anyway, those are just vanity numbers. What is your goal? e.g. a specific number of sales?

  51. Myra

    I am still quite confused as to what adsense *actually* is. Money is tight right now, and this all seems too good to be true. I would love to make money from my blog, no matter how small the income. Money is money. I do not have a “premium” wordpress account at the moment. Spending money to write just seems silly. Do you need an independent “domain” as you call it, in order to use adsense?
    Do you have to actually *create* ads to put on your site? Is this difficult? Does it require a lot of practice and training? How do you actually *do* this? If it’s a lot of work, it seems I am doing their job for them…My blog is a humour blog, not really one that outwardly talks about products. I don’t have any wish to change that. My “market” would be fellow writers, and people who are fans of the pop culture references I make.
    I don’t get a lot of traffic right now, but I also don’t really “plug” myself in anywhere. I am willing to do that.

    So: what actually is adsense? What do you need to do?

    -A newbie.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Myra, this is indeed a question (and answer) for its own article, but let me try to explain shortly. You don’t need any premium account or even WordPress, but just a website where you are allowed and able to put ads into.
      Creating ads in AdSense just means you create the spot for the ad = defining the size, text colors and type of ads, etc. This is made really simple in AdSense. So in fact, when you include the ad code into your website you just offer AdSense a place where they can put ads. They get ads from AdWords, a service where advertisers create ads and (mostly) pay for clicks on them.
      I hope this helps at least a bit.
      Thomas

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Alfredo, thanks for your question. You got me with this one. There are some language restrictions, but I didn’t find a list of countries. I read something about AdSense and Iraq not being allowed, but am not sure if this information is still valid. Why not just try to register and you will see?
      Good luck. Thomas

  52. Rajesh Deepak

    It is very informative and interesting post. I have opt. the chitika but my earning is not satisfactory . can you suggest my blog is ready to apply for AdSense or not.
    Thanks to provide the chitika ad working procedure.

    Rajesh

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Rajesh, I am sorry, but you must have mixed my post. I didn’t write anything about chitika. You probably also mistyped your url, so I am not able to guess if your site is “ready” for AdSense. Actually, there is no “ready”. A test can help you more than my best guess.

  53. Sajeev

    i have 1,862 per day visitors [in blogger dashboard] and i dont have much earning in my adsense. I have only get .07$ for a click to why i got this low income any tips ??? Hoping a reply

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Welcome to the club of “sites with unspecific, generic content” (see above) :). I share some of the tips here.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      The topic, content and location/language are important factors for a good CPC. You might start there. Good luck! Thomas

  54. ashley

    Hi. I enjoyed the tips in your article! I just started my blog a week ago. I have had 1500 views this week. So you recommend waiting until I have 10,000 a month to get adsense? I am completely new to this. Will I be able to pick which ads run or is it random? And I’ve read some comments about “making space”. How is that done? Is that part of a certain WordPress theme?
    Thank you so much for sharing all the info!

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      10,000 views per month might be ok to get a first impression on how AdSense would perform on your site, but not make you real money. “making space” means you need some space where to put the ads. Depending on your theme you often don’t have to make space, often ads push aside some other content.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Sounds like a bigger issue. Does AdSense display any error or message in the AdSense dashboard?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Nazneen, I’d love to help you. Please use the contact form to get in touch. Thomas

  55. Vinod thakur

    hey, thanks for all the info buddy. i just started blogging as my hobby and came to know that i can even earn money through a blog. it was quite tempting and hence i got curious about about all this i.e. Google AdSense, CPC, CPM etc. i got as much info i could grab. thank you so much.
    my blog is simple, i usually post poems some quotes with images and didn’t have views also.But now i am hoping for the best.

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          Hi there, this is a bit off topic here, but you can find some ideas to get more traffic in other posts here.

  56. Ola

    This is “great”, I meant. Thanks for the time in putting this together. And I wish you could help me get more ways of getting visitors to click my ads. Thanks

  57. nikhil

    Hi, my website is around 3 n half months old. I get around 200-300 pageviews per day. And heard that for applying to adsense, website should be at least 6 months old. When is the best time to apply? Pleasesuggest.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Well, it seems AdSense became sloppy on this rule and you might already try to apply. Your blog seems still too small to make a fortune through AdSense, but once applied your account will stay valid.

  58. Jai

    hello sir, i am running an education related website, i am getting around 300-400 per day unique visitors. but the website is not too old. its around one month old. i have around 15-20 content rich articles.can i get approval from adsense. i m from india. and please tell me also that how the education related sites paid.? do they get high pay or get low pay..? thank u..

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      I have heard different stories about the approvement process not being as strict as publically stated by AdSense, so you should just try. Please have a look into the article about income benchmarks, but if you attract more visitors from the US, UK and Canada, your rpm is probably higher than with visitors only from India.

  59. Swift J

    Hi Thomas,
    I have just launched a new website in automotive niche and looking here and there to learn about experience of people with adsense in this niche. Have you observed performance of this niche with adsense?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Swift J, yes I had projects in this area. RPM varies depending on location, language and topic. _Automotive_ is still a niche with many different topics.

  60. Sohaib

    HI Thomas,
    I want Google Adsense for my blog, I just want to know that how adsense calculates per impressions or per clicks ? and how to make more income out of blogs? Thank you.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Sohaib, they calculate mostly per clicks. I wrote some more articles here about optimization and monetization and am for hire if you need help.

  61. Khalid

    Hi, couple of days back I got the Approval from Adsense on my blog http://www.taazinews.com. It is a content rich website and the global rank is 1 million and Indian Rank is 71000. However, I’am getting only $.50 to $ .60 per day, which very poor income I’m afraid. Can you explain?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Khalid, the ranking does say nothing about the income potential. $.50 can be good or bad, but I can’t tell from what you wrote. There are a lot of comments from India already here on this page and there is probably an explanation for you already. But if you want me to, I can offer you an AdSense review for your site.

  62. Siraj Mahmood

    Actually I’m personally like CPM. Because Only 15 to 30 Clicks on 1000 per day traffic. And especially these 15-30 cpc rates could be low due to unpopular country traffic. So in CPC ads, Lot of problem like one day you earn 3$ and second day with same traffic but earn 1$. Its look like so tragic for us . Thats why we like CPM (Cost per thousand impression).
    Your article is so informative for us. Thank for sharing with us.

    Regards:
    Siraj Mahmood

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Every publisher would love a high and steady CPM, but advertisers don’t 🙂 If you find a decent CPM offer, please let us know.

  63. Khalid M. Raza

    Hi I’m really worried about my adsense income though I was happy when it approved my website http://www.taazinews.com, which 7 months old and I got approval about 20 days back. Still my current earnings below $4. What should I do please tell me how should I increase my income of adsense. Please.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Khalid, are the $4 per day, month, in total? If your site is 7 month old and this is your income per month you should consider trying another business modell. Else, you can always ask us to make an AdSense review for your site.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Evon, sounds great – regarding the number of daily visits on your site.

  64. Debora

    This information was useful, it gave me a clear idea of the potential my website may or may not have. My baby wipes niche is pretty universal, but getting traffic is harder than I thought. Good advice on waiting to build up my audience.

  65. ferdinand

    please, i really did enjoy your information………but i have a question for you……
    Do google pay for page views…..???? i have about 600 page views per day but yet my daily earnings arent increasing…………..i have been approved for adsense long time ago……….please help me….i am about quiting blogging because i am getting furstrated ………….i own okwudili.blogspot.com ……………expecting your reply…THANKS

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      AdSense can pay per page views, but the most common way still is a click based price. If you want to make a living from 600 page views per day you should definitely try something else than display ads.

  66. bobby

    i must commend you for the good work Mr.Thomas. what is your take on buying traffic? would that help increase ones pay on Adsense?. my blog: bobbymishark.blogspot.com is falling short of daily views and would like to seek your professional help

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      More traffic helps to increase AdSense payments, but buying traffic is normally not a long lasting method. We can help you with a content strategy, if you like.

      1. bobby

        Mr. Thomas thank you very much for the quick update…so how can you help me with content strategy? so as to get more page views which would in turn increase Adsense payout.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Sure, this is part of our startup review offer that you can find in the deals section.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Yes. Check the tab “bid types” in your AdSense performance report. You might find some cpm-income there.

  67. Patrick

    I have a client with a WordPress.com-hosted blog. As I understand it, the blog would need to be self-hosted with a new domain in order to be eligible for Google AdSense. With that, I am wondering how Google determines the age of a blog–content or domain name?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Yes, the wp.com hosted blogs are (currently) not supported by AdSense, resp. wp.org doesn’t support AdSense. You can use a wordpress.com setup to manage content on an individual domain. Maybe this speeds up the process applying for AdSense.

  68. Chitwanjit

    Hey Thomas.

    very nice article. I was wondering what Advertisement solution you are using for this website. there is no ad visible on this page.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Chitwanjit, I only display internal ads on webgilde.com – like special offers. There are currently none. On this site and my other sites I use Advanced Ads to manage and display ads.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Doesn’t sound like a huge business 🙂 Earning with AdSense is not a matter of time, but of clicks and click prices.

  69. umme

    Hi,
    I would like to know how many blogs do I need to have in order to apply for my website. I am searching for ways to increase traffic too. Any help is grateful

  70. Molain

    Hey mate,
    do you think its possible to earn by using google blogger rather than purchasing a domain for a website?
    Cheers.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Yes, I think they have limited earning options, too. Anyway, I sometimes even suggest starters to go there to try out their editorial spirit without the technical hassle, but I also saw successful projects having problems with the limited options on blogging platforms.

  71. Cyril

    Great post.
    I am new in blogging, My question is every time I post I need new AdSense ad code or AdSense provide you with one code to use in all your post ad website you own.

    Regards

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Cyril, in theory, you could use the same ad code over and over again on different sites, but it would be limited to the same settings (e.g. size). I personally also prefer different ad codes per page for better evaluation.
      If you use a content management system like WordPress, you also don’t need to setup the ad code manually on each new post – there are plenty of solutions for that.

  72. jasom

    Hi Thomas,

    I was wondering how does google pay?

    Do they send checks by mail? Do they deposit in the bank account? Can they pay in your PayPal account?

    I don’t live in USA so I do not know how they would send the money to me…

  73. Manu

    Hey Thomas I have been running a niche website on development issues in India. These are opinion pieces on policy issues and some alternative development case studies. It may not rank high on the competition stats. The site is on since 2011 and I got 1,152 page views last month. Do you think it stands a chance?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Manu. A chance for what? To earn money from it? No, not with display advertisement. Still no reason to give up an interesting hobby 😉

  74. Nick F

    Hi Thomas,

    November was the first month when my website earned $1/day (in total $38). In December I hope I will get the first payment from AdSense, since my account has over $100 in it. You’ve been of great help!

    Cheers,
    Nick

  75. Scholars

    Great article. Just googled the keyword and your site ranked first in google. Keep up the good work. Could you explain why youtube partner with google adsense pay little?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Unfortunately, I work litte with the youtube partner program and don’t have an idea about what “litte” is.

  76. Bob Jones

    Great post thanks. I’ve got a law resource website and decided that I may as well do some advertising so your article has really helped me learn if I can offer adsense what to expect and what steps to take.

    Thanks for the insight.

  77. jahanzeb kayani

    helw… Em from Pakistan.. I just want to ask You that if i started or develop my own site then should google provide me some ads?? If not, then should i place ads and attached my account with adsence then should how much should google pay me per 1000 click on my site?? kindly guide me.. thnxx

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      AdSense works on pages from Pakistan. However, if your content is not in English, check this list for supported languages: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/9727?hl=en
      The income potential very much depends on the language, target group and content of your site, so I am not able to tell you more about the potential. But if you are just getting started, you should first concentrate on growing your traffic to at least 1000 page impressions per day first before starting with AdSense.

      1. jahanzeb kayani

        thnx for your support sir.. now if i started my PTC site and place the ads then after a good traffic should google pay me for this??

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          Well, if enough people also click on the ads your chance is good to get a payment from Google someday.

  78. aditya

    its a new blog then you should go with (link removed) as CPM ads are profitable only when you receive lot of traffic and page views.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      I would, in general, allow other networks to post their offer here, but after testing many of them, I don’t support networks that just claim they are good without any proof. Too many of my readers lost too much time on them.

    2. jahanzeb kayani

      hmmmm.. so kindly give me some suggestion that where i can get paid ads for my PTCsite??

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      What kind of followers are those? If you know your average AdSense income (e.g. rpm) and how many of your followers you can convert into visitors, then you might have an idea about their potential. Else, this would be a lot of guess work and I would suggest some small tests.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Congrats! There are plenty of articles about that here on the blog and I am also available as a consultant for more individual help.

  79. rohma

    I have a question,
    AdSense pays for the views on our blogs + click on adds or just click on adds?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      There is a more complex answer to this, but a very short version is that the more attractive your site is to advertisers, the higher your potential for to earn just with page views.

  80. khirod

    Hi Thomas, i am a bank employee of a govt bank in india. From last 2 months i am going through various blogs and trying to findout the answers to various q those are coming in mind. Today i came across your blog read one article which is quite impressive. The lengthy discussion forum proves your blog is very much popular. My wishes are with you to do even better. I want to start my own blog but running out of idea as i have never come across anybody who is already in this business. So i need your help regarding this.

    Thank you.

  81. Reddy

    Hello ThomoThomos, thanks for your post I run a entertainment movie review website.. I get daily 2000 visitors .. But my cpc 0.08$ which is very low. How do i improve. And in my other website which is general news publishing also same. Help me to improve. And i heard nich keywords as insurance .. Means should a website must have that keyword or the website should have articles on insurance or financial topics.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Reddy, in fact, the cpc is higher the more advertisers might be willing to pay to target potential customers. So “insurance” is normally a better topic than film reviews. However, stuffing your content with unrelated keywords wouldn’t help for many reasons. You might compare platforms and source of your traffic for the ones with the best performance and concentrate on those.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Yes, it is. I have worked on accounts with a five-figure income per month.

  82. Tribhuwan Prasad

    Hello sir,
    I am new baby for blog and adsense. After one month my blog has about 50 – 70 visitors per day.
    And my earning is very low. But can you tell me, What should be be the average income for 50-70 visitors per day.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi, sorry, but there is no average. You should be able to get some idea about the potential from reading this article though. However, 50-70 visits per days is nothing to draw a lot of conclusions from.

  83. Bishnoi

    Hello, thanks for article

    I am new to web earning. I wanted to know if I start a blog with good content (health related) on blogger and if I get good visitors per day, will I be able to earn?
    How can one earn just by publishing a site? If the site has huge traffic…

    Even I don’t sign for any advertisements will I earn something due to visits on my page??

    Thanks

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      If you site has good traffic and ads on it, chances are that you are going to earn something. Depending on your feedback channels and the amount of tests you run, you will also be able to learn from and about your audience.

  84. BG

    Hi, I have used adsense for a month now. All the revenue generated is from clicks. I did not get any revenue on the basis of CPM. Has google stopped paying a fixed amount for visit?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi, yes, you normally start just with cpc, but especially when setting up targetable custom channels you might, over time, experience an increase in cpm as well.
      btw. Nice readup on ad injections on your page, but why didn’t you mention my Advanced Ads plugin? 🙂

  85. Harry Verolme

    Hi Thomas!

    First of all, thanks for writing this extremely useful article. There is a problem I stumbled upon though. After having read the whole thing, I got kind of upset. Let me fill you in on why that happened. A couple of months ago I started a car-related blog. I’ve read books on the proces of establishing an audience and one thing I read everywhere was: it takes time. I notice this when looking at my page views. (about 800 over the last month)
    Generating money with the website wasn’t one of my first goals, but I wanted to implement AdSense anyway. I applied some time ago, and got the approval after a week or so. I’ve now had Adsense on the site for a little while and haven’t received any clicks.

    Since I meet your standards, which is no surprise really, of a ”new publisher” would you recommend for me to take them down until I get a bigger audience or just keep them where they are? I’d love to hear some input from someone who knows what he’s doing.

    Have a good day.
    Harry.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Harry, I personally prefer to leave out the ads on projects where I am not sure if they have potential at all and where I just want to get started. If you know that it works and how to scale, you can start displaying ads even with lower traffic.

      1. Harry Verolme

        I’m not sure I understand. I get the first part, it’s hard to tell whether something has potential. That’s my business though, right? In my case, you don’t have to worry about potential, since you’re not involved and I’m no client of yours.

        The second sentence is where I get a bit lost. Could you elaborate on that, please? Thank you for the reply anyway.

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          I am not worrying 🙂 just told you how I would approach. In the last part I practically said that even though AdSense might not generate a lot of income now, you might put it on your site when you are confident, that traffic will grow in the near future.

          1. Harry Verolme

            In that case everything is fine. Thanks for clarifying. I’m still pondering if I should keep it on there, though. It hasn’t really done anything for me yet, but like I said, that wasn’t really a goal now 🙂 Maybe in the future we’ll see a giant influx of people that clicked on the ads.
            For now, I’m trying to establish myself a bit, making connections, writing, do research, meet up with people involved in the car-scene, etc. It will probably take a long time before anything to exciting happens, but I have my hopes haha!

            Thank you ever so much.

  86. zark Bedalov

    Thomas,
    I’m running a travel blog. Otherwise I’m an engineer. Just joined AdSense and have a code on my dashboard. Ads are running on my pages. I’m still experimenting with the shape and size of the ads as not to squash the content.
    1. I’m supposed to see an Earnings Tab on my dashboard, but it is not there. How long do I have to wait for the tab to show up.
    2. I’m also planning to buy things trough the ads on my blog, as the ads are the searches I had initiated, mostly airline tickets and hotels. Is there any reflection on the earnings when I buy via the ads running on my blog.
    Greetings
    Zark

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Zark, I am sorry, but I am not using blogspot and neither are my clients, so I can’t say how their monetization works and if there is an Earnings Tab in their dashboard.
      About clicking or buying things through your own ads: this is normally not permitted by many networks and in the best case you just won’t get paid the commission. In the worst case they can bann you.

  87. RKPANDIT

    Hello sir, I made a blog but I have not such good traffic on my blog as I have affiliated by ad sense. So kindly give me some useful tips so that I can increase my earning .
    Take a look on my blog and tell me about that .

    Thanks in advance 🙂
    Regards,
    RKPANDIT

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi RKPANDIT, sorry, but I can’t do reviews through comments. Please have a look at the deals section on this page. You can also subscribe to the newsletter, since I give a lot of insights and tips only there.
      Kind regards, Thomas

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Good luck, but don’t be surprised if your site doesn’t beat your Youtube channel. Sometimes, it is just really hard to reach an rpm of $1

  88. vineet

    Very informative post. I am a new AdSense user and searching for related post. Can you tell me, when AdSense show my earning in account dashboard.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      There is a slight delay, but you should see your earnings within the same day.

  89. Paul Dabuco

    I was approved to run adsense this new year, Jan 02, 2015 and right now I have 1,000 ad impressions and earned $0.13. I know this is quite low and I need to work on it. Nevertheless it’s still very exciting earning an online income! 🙂

  90. PIQUE

    Hi !
    I have written a blog and it is getting 60 views per day . When I check the site stats it shows ‘ no clicks recorded “.I also check my ad sense account and there are no clicks. I know I don’t have much traffic but at least there should be one click .Can you please tell me what can be the possible causes of this problem ?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi PIQUE, lets assume an average click rate of 1%. That would need 100 page views for one click. In case of your site the click rate should be even lower since your placements are not optimal. You could try the post injection feature of my Advanced Ads plugin to optimize that.

  91. Saif Ullah

    Hi Thomas, i would like to ask what percantage of amount do AdSense pays to publishers from total advertisers payment? I have joined AdSense from 2 months and its earning are really slow for me. Any tip to boost it? And thanks for sharing useful information for AdSense Revenue.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Saif, AdSense pays 68% to publishers. Boosting your income is one of the main topics here on this blog, so stay tuned and get the newsletter 🙂
      Thomas

  92. Borqet

    Hi !
    I made this random entertainment website and I`m getting nice traffic 2k-5k per day (uniqe users)
    But the things is…90% of the traffic comes from reddit.
    And I was wondering is there any chance I can earn something from that…even 1$ per day ?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Borqet, why do you think the source of your traffic matters for AdSense. Depending on some other criteria, your traffic should be able to monetize to at least $1 / day with AdSense.

      1. Borqet

        basically I can gather some income from Adsense and spend that little amount of money in Adwords to boost my traffic ?
        Could it actually be this easy ?

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          Yes, you could do this. However, not every visitor from AdWords is going to click on your ads 🙂

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Yes, selling ads directly has more potential, but is tough. Would you like to share some insights?

  93. Scholars

    Awesome post. This year (2015), Google has reported that its revenue from adsense has declined. Do you think, this will affect our earnings from adsense? Just curious

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      It is definitely a warning shot. I advise in general that publishers look for other sources of income too.

  94. nitin sharma

    Hiiiii
    Thank you very much for this information. Really helpful for me. i have a create JObs Related blog, but it seems that adsense does not perform well. We will look into other options to monitize our websites.

  95. penelop black

    Hello I have had ads on my site for 3 months I get 10000 visits per month yet have made only £10 so I think it’s very hard to earn decent money. Thank you for your tips and help its very interesting.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi, some topics are indeed hard to monetize, but this performance seems a bit too low, especially if you’d have most visitors from the UK.

  96. silvio

    In my oppinion, Adsense sucks, is crap!
    My Blog has thousands of visitors, In one month I made more than 17.000 banner publications/ clicks, visits.
    I only earned a few cents from each click, its a crap.
    The total made was only 20$.
    Crap.

    Let me show you some examples :
    Immagine that someone clicks a banner , and it goes to an online shop, that guy purchases a book of 28 dollars. That click in the banner generated a sale of 28$, GOOGLE will earn commission. And you will earn a few miserable cents!!!
    for that click.

    Iam from Portugal, I use European ad platforms, they pay commission from each sale, not from each “click”.
    Some banner clicks, generally of services and companies, give me around 2 or 3 euros $ each click. Sometimes if the product/sale is bigger, I may earn 20$ from each click.

    Some ad platforms, that Iam using are netaffiliation.com , and netlucro.com , their advertiser’s are BIG companies like telecommunication and internet companies, Vodafone, Banks, and more.
    I had bad experiences with Google.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Thank you for your detailed comment.
      “17.000 banner publications/ clicks, visits” – there is a huge difference between clicks and visits. You probably mean ad views here.
      Google earning an extra commission for sales is new to me, where did you find this information?
      Indeed, affiliate marketing is a related source of income and has more potential, but for that you’d need an audience you can sell to. Many websites don’t have a topic and audience where affiliates work. Congrats, if it did for you!
      Best, Thomas

  97. Matthew

    Hello I would just like to say thank you for your post it was very informative. My blog is getting about 50 views day which I’m rather happy with but obviously would like more to share with people in the same hobby as me

  98. Max B

    Hey all! So I created thepatrioticmovieproject.weebly.com website and I was wondering if anyone could check it out and let me know if it is adsense worthy?

  99. SATISH KUMAR

    first of all thanks for such Very informative post. i have just created a website and want to advertise both private Ads and google AdSense. will it create any problem to advertise both kind of Ads?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Glenn, please send some more information about your site (page impressions, unique users, location of users) to support@webgilde.com and I will provide you with a quote.
      Thanks, Thomas

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      That’s true. I have other sites that I monetize with ad. This blog is not ment to display ad networks, but to share my experience and help others.

  100. uday

    Hi sir this what am searching it a clean and perfect details about Google ad-sense …… thanks for sharing …

  101. Bozzookaa

    Hello !

    I’m having slight difficulties with adsense.
    I made a website … It’s humor website.
    Basically it’s just images+jokes+vines+video+gif

    I sent an application to adsense and they declined .
    Reason : Insufficient content: To be approved for AdSense and show relevant ads on your site, your pages need to have enough text on them for our specialists to review and for our crawler to be able to determine what your pages are about.

    I have seen many website with the same idea as mine and they have Adsense, so there must be a way to go around this silly rule.
    Do you have any information that could actually help ?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Did you create any of this stuff? If not, AdSense has a point.

      1. Bozzookaa

        Do you mean if I created any of the pictures or gif myself ?
        No !
        People do it ! They upload the stuff they want.
        I’m just deleting inappropriate pictures and comments and stuff….

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          Yes, unique images would be great, but also more text content.

          1. joana

            But why you dont talk about Adblock? A lot of people have this program or similar programs and dont see ads at all !!! One of my site has 100 view per day, but google adsense ads see just 10 !!!! So 90 have ads blocking programs and dont see ads ! So nowadays is very hard to earn from adsense 🙁 I think in the future will be advertisements in the picture format or something better…

          2. Thomas Maier Article Author

            I talk a lot about AdBlock and even have a plugin to count the number of ad blockers. I measured a lot, but 90% is definitely too much. There must be other reasons in your case.

  102. manoj

    Sir, please guide me how to increase traffic in my blog.. I’m really suffering from low traffic..

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      I am sorry, but this is not the topic of this blog post. You should get started fixing your site, because I only see a php error.

  103. Dmitriy

    Interesting article! Although we have a young(jurinform.com.ua) and site income in times less. Revenues in the US is not even bad!

  104. salman

    I got approved for adsense within 2 days on my site http://www.shortstoriesfor.com after i apply with just 2 post with 1500+ words. But my problem is that i dont have much traffic now.. just 10-20 views a day & i wonder it would kill my adsense future so suggest me some way to get traffic adsense safe way

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      With your topic I would suggest social media activity and communities where you can share your passion with others and link to your content.

  105. Joy

    Happy to see some of the new webmasters have been paid by google adsense. I just started my website four days ago. I really hope when things are all right I could make google adsense on my site, too. Thank you Thomas for sharing information here.

  106. anjum

    Hi,

    Wiill we get the money when someone visit our page only not click on google ads…..
    If its happen then how much i will get 1000visits per country?
    Will type of ads give more money?
    Is google give the access for blogger?

    Wating your reply.

    Thanks

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Yes, it can happen that your site gets targeted by advertisers directly, but on most sites this is a lower rpm than from clicks. I can’t tell you a specific number for such an rpm though. The best ad formats with AdSense are still the default formats they suggest, like the Leaderboard or the Rectangle.

  107. Adarsh

    Hello,
    Frankly I am a new blogger who is wishing to make his blogg a burning topic…perhaps I manage to get 100-200 views daily but I am not satisfied with it can you please give some of your valuable suggestion regarding my wish…

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Adarsh, unfortunately, the answer is not as simple as you expect and I can’t even get started in a comment.

  108. Barrett

    I started a niche site about a month ago. Since then I’ve gotten about 15k page views and only made about 8 dollars with ad sense. My highest day was 1.72 with 1200 page views. I’m getting rich media and content related on the site but the income is very low imo. What am I doing wrong? Does the site need gain some age before it starts to make some decent revenu? Thanks in advance.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Barrett, your ad placements are a bit unfortunate, but maybe there is not that much potential in your niche. Maybe you can double it with better placements and ad sizes.
      I don’t know about an age-factor in AdSense.

      1. Barrett

        We’ll we have been kind of experimenting with that. We did get 99 clicks out of that 15K views but the page RMP is only at .69. Not really sure If were making money off clicks or the page RMP? I would think that if it was going off of the RMP than the ad placement wouldn’t matter?

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          You can check the bid typs in your performance report. It varies from site to site if the performance from cpm or cpc is better. Still, cpm is often increase by direct bookings and if advertisers see that you are offering bad placements, your cpm might stay low.

          1. Barrett

            Thanks for the reply. After the comment I posted initially I created a few custom channels for one of the ads and my ad revenue jumped up to about 1.## for that day. I did see the bid types and noticed that up until today I was just generating revenue off of views but this day I made money on clicks rather than the views. Since then I added a few more custom channels and monitoring the results closely. I also went in and edited the “Allow & Block Ads” to cut out some of the items not related to my niche.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Aman, I don’t know for sure, but would guess an rpm below $0.50 if your main traffic comes from India.

      1. Alfonso Muñoz

        Hi. Thomas.
        1) I have read all the guidelines of google AdSense. I have an educational website, I don’t want to put publicity on the site and the games are run on modal windows, I would like to put make the users watch short videos before playing, so this means the publicity would have to run on the modal window and before or after the game. Can you give me your opinion if this would brake google rules.?
        2) If I reward some schools for using our site a lot am I barking again google rules? the increase of video views its a direct and obvious consequence of this. but how can I explain this to google.?

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          Hi Alfonso,
          very interesting questions indeed. Here is my opinion on them:
          1) Maybe you should try AdSense for Videos. I am not an expert on that, but there is a special program for that.
          2) Certainly, you are not allowed to gratify someone for clicks, but I didn’t find any term in the program policies against having traffic partners.
          Thomas

          1. Alfonso Muñoz

            Thomas, Thank you very much for taking the time to reply I really appreciate it.
            I will read again google adsense rules and try to find a bit more inf, in the web, anyway I will give it a try and with a bit more of time I will try to come back and update you about how it went.
            Have a nice day and again thanks.!!

  109. salman

    hello
    gone through your blog, and i must say very informative and helpful blog for a newbie like me. i need your help i have created a blog regarding this upcoming bollywood movie “bajrangi bhaijaan”

    bajrangibhaijaanonline.blogspot.com

    I have also got adsense in just 5 post only. but the traffic count is very low on my blog so plz give me some tips to increase traffic on my blog and right platform to promote it regarding niche of my blog

  110. Brad

    Thank you very much for the great article! I recently started a blog website ( http://www.blawggers.com )and after reading you article I submitted to adsense and was approved within a few days.

    I only have a few articles so far but have been updating my page and growing vistors fast. It’s exciting to see the first few dollars in my account!

    Thanks for all your posts on here.. all have been very helpful!

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Brad, I am very glad I could motivate and help. Keep up the good work!

  111. Mariana

    Hi Thomas, I read your article and found it very interesting. I am so curious about the custom channels for adwords that you mention above. Can you help me about it? and please do visit my page worldoftraveler.net and do review on it. I just started to write blog on 10 April 2015 and really wish to have side income from it.

    Thank You

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Mariana, unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to get deeper into custom channels with an article, so I don’t have a resource for you. Explaining it in a comment is rather difficult, but I think the help article in AdSense itself should give you a good overview. Regarding a review I would suggest you keep on working on your project and we can talk about it when you have some traction.
      Kind regards,
      Thomas

  112. hemu

    Hello Thomas,

    I have three sites related to food and crafts and the total page views (adding all 3 sites) are around 10 thousand daily, but still my rpm is only 1 to 1.2 . My daily earnings are 3-4 dollars. I feel they are less than expected, isn’t it?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi hemu, the rpm has not much to do with the number of page views. And rpm of 1 dollar with 10k page impressions should be 10 dollars. Anyway, if your traffic comes mainly from India, the rpm is lower than if your traffic came from the US. 1 dollar might be quite normal then.

      1. hemu

        Thanks for the reply. Why do I see different page views in adsense dashboard at different places? I see much higher page views in home page of adsense (or entire account by day section) than I see in ‘sites’ sections. Which are actual figures?

        1. Thomas Maier Article Author

          I am already trying the new AdSense reports and have to figure out some of the new rows, but with the current dashboard it seemed to mix page impressions and ad impressions on some of the stats.

  113. Izzar

    Hi,
    I read your points on Adsense. Very interesting and I am looking forward to build a website of my own. Need your tips and opinions since I have the materials. What should I choose to make a free websites @ blog? Can the adsense place on these type of webpage?

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      It is possible with some blogging platforms to also have ads, but not all of them allow this. My personal opinion is that if you just want to try some content ideas, you might use a blogging platform, but as soon as you are going to monetize it, choose a hosted solution on your own domain.

  114. YouReadyGrandma

    I’m kicking myself because I had 2 blogs go viral within 3 days. I’ll hit 300,000 hits within 1.5 weeks tonight. I actually applied for AdSense right when the first one started to go viral. They didn’t approve my site and said there wasn’t enough content. I had about 30 blog posts at that point. Not happy.

    I could have made thousands!

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Congratulations. Don’t focus on what you might have missed, but on what great is coming. I can’t disclose all my business know how in the comments, but if you need help with ad networks that you can get up and running fast, just write me an email for a quote.
      Thomas

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi, I think you shouldn’t draw conclusions from one click. And Malaysia is also not a country with high cpc.

  115. Chun

    Hi Thomas !

    Thank you very for this article, that’s very clear and informative for people like me who just launched their website recently ! 🙂
    It takes around 1 week to get a website fully approved ; I guess all I need now to get more traffic is perseverance and keeping writing good contents, right?

    Looking forward to reading your next articles !

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi Chun, well, there are very different strategies to increase traffic, but you definitely mentioned a very important one.

  116. Subodh

    I recently purchased website (link removed). It a website which simply provides links to watch or download movies which are present but doesn’t host any of the Movies. Traffic is also good around 6000 /day unique sessions and around 20k pageview/day. I have approved adsense account. Would it be ok to add this site to adsense or should I continue with other advertisers. Also, Do you know any other CPM (not eCPM) based advertisers.

    Thanks in advance.

    1. Thomas Maier Article Author

      Hi, from what you describe you would risk your AdSense account. I know other networks, but this know how is part of my reviews or some other articles.