The Illogical Use of Adsense

[Dale King]

In my opinion, any business that sells a product or a service shouldn't have Adsense on their website. Why? Because with Adsense, you're promoting your competition, that's why. If you had a brick and mortar business, would you put your competitors ads in your store window? Of course you wouldn't. That wouldn't make any sense, now would it?

Well, by having Adsense on your website, you're essentially doing the same thing. That doesn't make any sense either. Not to mention the fact that there are some people who won't even patronize your website, if you have Adsense on it.

That's definitely not a good situation. Besides, it's tough enough to convert visitors to your website into paying customers, without adding your competitors ads to the equation. Granted, many buyers are going to check out your competition anyway, before they make their decision to purchase. But heck, don't make it easy for them by having your competitors ads in plain sight right on your own website.

And even if you enable the Adsense filter to block out competitive ads, the ads themselves are still a distraction.

Why sabotage your own efforts by throwing distracting ads into the mix? See my point? If you want to monetize your site, affiliate programs are a much better option, when you take into consideration the measly few cents per click that Google is going to pay you for Adsense.

The fact of the matter is, with very few exceptions, unless your website has mega-traffic, those huge Adsense checks are simply not attainable.

Before writing this article, I actually researched this topic and the sites that I researched that were the most successful using Adsense were all high-traffic, free content sites. For example free article directories, free dating sites, blogs, etc., that weren't selling anything. Not surprisingly, the sites that weren't as successful didn't have very much traffic and were trying to make money selling products in addition to using Adsense.

If you're selling something, to me it's counter-productive to send your visitors to another website, just to make a few pennies per click. It's just not logical to do that!

Do you agree or disagree?

Dale King

[jasaunders]

Amen to that. Unless you are bringing in hundreds of thousands of visitors, you aren't going to make anything substantial from adsense or any of the others. It detracts from your message and makes your site look "cheap". If you are selling a product or service, it lowers your credibility because why aren't you making money from your products or services? Why do you need to make a few measly bucks from other ads.

[Dale King]

Amen to that. Unless you are bringing in hundreds of thousands of visitors, you aren't going to make anything substantial from adsense or any of the others. It detracts from your message and makes your site look "cheap". If you are selling a product or service, it lowers your credibility because why aren't you making money from your products or services? Why do you need to make a few measly bucks from other ads.

Well said, Joshua! If you're selling something, having Adsense on your website does give the impression that you aren't making any money with your products.

Dale King

[BusinessAdviser]

I equate Adsense to picking change out of a sofa. If you walked into a business that had a waiting area with a couple sofas, what would you think of the business owner coming out and digging under the cushions as he was introducing you to his business, looking for a few pennies to pay the bills?

[rogercbryan]

I wish there were more posts like this. It was very well written and accurate in its depiction of the situation. This is great advice for anyone with a small business website. Thank You!

[dfveteran]

Well said, Joshua! If you're selling something, having Adsense on your website does give the impression that you aren't making any money with your products.

Dale King

Great post as usual Dale! I don't use adsense on any of my store websites, but I am experimenting with it on my blog. I dont mind testing it out there, Im making pretty good money off the affiliates on the blog. I have only had adsense there for about a week or two and dont see any real advantage to having it, unless I had tons of traffic going through. But I never used adsense and wanted to try it. Your right, it will probably be pennies compared to what I should be making. I have more people that want to buy some advertising space, so maybe the end of the month I will take them up on the offer and lose the adsense.

I have been using my blog as a trial and error before I make changes to my store websites. So far so good. And yes, I agree with you about the looks also, it looks like I am desperite for sales or something,lol.

You rock Dale!

[bzboy]

Thats exactly why I dont use them on my site! Great post...

[Dale King]

I wish there were more posts like this. It was very well written and accurate in its depiction of the situation. This is great advice for anyone with a small business website. Thank You!

Thank you very much, Roger! I appreciate your kind words. Also thank you, Lisa and bzboy!

Dale King

[Jdis]

Very good point.
I would like to write article as good as that.. but my English is too bad

[Dale King]

Very good point.
I would like to write article as good as that.. but my English is too bad

Thank you, Jdis! You can write articles that good. All you have to do is work hard at it. That's what I did. I put in years and years of hard work.

Dale King