
Ask HN: Does anybody make good money from Google Adsense? - thescribbblr
My earnings have dropped since last few months. So, I would like to know if anyone is making a good earning from Google Adsense or the earnings have dropped like mine?
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aks232
I used to make decent amount (for my purposes) around $1000 a month. This was
when the ads were based on the content. Then a few years ago they based ads on
the user (as personalisation is all the rage) which for me was ridiculous as
my site was about general social, political and environmental issues, so you'd
end up seeing an add about shoes or something you were shopping for on another
site which was completely unrelated to why people came to my site and
completely out of context so the ad clicks and revenue dropped while site
usage was growing. No way to reach a human to change it back. Some option on
AdSense implies you can but has not worked.

Also at some point got banned for false clicks except the site they said that
was violating their policy was not mine. Their automated responses of course
did not help. Only a few months later a friend of a friend who luckily worked
on the team was able to reinstate the account (but not the list revenue in the
meanwhile if course). turns out they had a big they didn't admit false
flagging my site. Wonder how many others they caught out...

Have ended up sticking with them as don't have time to look for alternatives
(tried Chiquita but not very good). (The site is a side project only.) Would
like to build my own niche for maybe non profits only, though I'm sure someone
has done that already so I probably need to just invest some more time to look
into it more...

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aks232
Sorry, I only spotted some auto-correct typos after the ability to edit my
reply had passed:

"(but not the list revenue in the meanwhile if course). turns out they had a
big they didn't admit false flagging my site."

Should say

"(but not the lost revenue in the meanwhile of course). turns out they had a
bug they didn't admit, false flagging my site."

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ganeshkrishnan
I used to earn couple of thousands dollars a month via my Android games. I
created them to learn unity and not to earn money but the games were picked up
by some game magazines and took off.

Google then banned the whole account for some "likeness to merchandise"
reason. They kept the whole money too

~~~
Guest0918231
I made about $200 per day and had 500 clicks per day from AdSense, steady for
years. Suddenly it dropped to $30 per day and 1-5 clicks overnight. Traffic
was consistent, about a million daily page views, and 40k active registered
users a day. 1-5 clicks was clearly wrong. I contacted AdSense support and
asked if I should try making changes to the ads, or wait for them to debug the
issue. They said to wait.

Well, I waited a month as they escalated it to different departments, and
someone went on vacation. Finally I get an email with their official answer.
It says they can't tell me the issue, because it's classified information.
However, I could try labeling the ads, "Sponsored Advertisements".

That's the great support I get after making them about 100k in commission.
Thanks Google.

~~~
loktarogar
I had a site that had 60k unique visitors a day. Adsense decided it didn't
want to show ads on 90% on requests. I was making $150/month with server costs
of over $500.

A company approached me to join their private ad network and the next month I
earned $5700.

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mtsx
i made 1500$ from my Nokia phones related blogspot.com site before 2013,then
Nokia lost market-share i lost my visitors & revenue.

before panda and hummingbird(mostly panda), SEO is very easy for self hosted
WordPress blog, create some post and make more tags ,you easily ranked on
google search.

*sorry for my english

~~~
thescribbblr
I guess now-a-days blogspot/wordpress blogs don't rank in Google search
results.

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mtsx
still possible, if u create Informative blog posts...

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VelNZ
Have used AdSense on latextemplates.com for 7 years. I wouldn't call it "good
money" but it's a welcome addition to my income. Haven't noticed any drop the
last several months, but 4 years or so ago there was a huge drop when they
updated their algorithm.

I dislike Google and would love to move to something else, but everything I've
tried is so much worse so I've just been stuck with it. Any suggestions?

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to1y
I've heard good things about Ezoic. Haven't personally tested it however.

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loktarogar
ezoic is good but they still use at least a portion of google under the hood.

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djzidon
This is correct

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gblanchette
Me, 10$K/month. Because of AdSense revenue, I took many hours building a new
website (online since last month) and hope that website it will eventually
make some money. I really don't like having ads on website I visit but don't
use AdBlocker (hide it behind other windows). I think WikWik.org is a great
site (I'm the author) and for sure would not have exist without AdSense
opportunity.

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thescribbblr
Which website do you run?

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gblanchette
Many sites, but money come mainly (70%) for BestWordList.com and
ListesDeMots.Net.

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thescribbblr
Checked. I liked the design. It's simple and only focus on the content that
you need. :) No distractions.

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jitendrac
I built a blog in 2008 with few articles and luckily got my account approved
in Adsense. after a month I was banned for lifetime with reason of invalid
clicks and violating terms. I still don't know why that happened? last I try
to re-apply in 2013/14, again I was reject for no reason.

I can really see a monopoly of google in this ad-space. because they can
always throttle our traffic if we use other network.

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monkin
My earnings also dropped, but I would say it's mostly because of their policy
changes and not adapting to it.

I wanted to change provider, but most of them are more scammy than AdSense.

~~~
thescribbblr
How about native ads?

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monkin
This is some kind of service? If you are talking about selling my own ad
space, then it's not possible. I run such a website, that people come, they
look around for few minutes, download image and never return.

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vlucas
I created and ran a website called jscompress.com for a number of years. In
its peak time, I made around $350-500 per month on it, with no maintenance.

2013-2015: $350-$500 per month

2016+: ~$125 per month

I attribute most of this to the rise of ad blockers, which impacted me
especially bad because it is a website targeted at developers.

I did a writeup on it and why I sold it: [https://vancelucas.com/blog/selling-
my-passive-income-stream...](https://vancelucas.com/blog/selling-my-passive-
income-stream-jscompress/)

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tpetry
The funny party is many people here reported being banned because of
„automated clicks“. When we used adsense for advertising purpose we paid for
many clicks which lasted less than 50 milliseconds.

So google is letting advertiser pay for fake clicks, but website owners will
not get this money, google keeps it by blocking their accounts.

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gexla
It has been years since I had made money off Adsense, but do a Google search
for "smart pricing."

Back in the day, I was making decent money off a new account and then that
income dropped off a cliff after a couple months. The issue was that the
traffic was low performing and I guess it took a couple months for Google to
figure it out.

Take a look at your traffic and how well it might be converting for the people
paying for those ads. If you're pretty sure it's crap, then do more searching
for how you might make that traffic perform better.

For example, my issue was that I had a lot of traffic coming from developing
countries and these people weren't going to buy anything. Another example
might be that a site short of content isn't aligning well with the ads which
Google is showing.

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fooey
Once upon a time I was making $1,000 a day with AdSense. Then Panda happened.
Now I don't make anywhere near that much in a month.

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cgb223
What’s Panda?

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ehnto
Nickname for a large ranking rule change which affected a lot of people's rank
on Google.

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hartator
I used to make $20-30k monthly with flash video games. Saw a click at $150 one
day! (Before 2008 crisis!)

~~~
atomi
Yahoo Ads with the old Revenue Science (Audience Connect now I think) would
pay similarly for high traffic file hosting.

Gods we were young back then.

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cft
My company (user generated content, user profile pages) reached $10k/mo in
2010 with AdSense. As soon as we crossed that threshold, we started getting
automated threats asking to check "all other pages" (we had about 20m user
profile pages back then). Despite our best effort (keywords filters in
Hungarian and Thai, heuristics), the account was banned when it was earning
$17k/mo. Fortunately, my bootstrapped start-up had a freemium model, so I
could keep the payroll and seemingly survived this blow (although as I now
understand, the long term impact was very negative). I tried to appeal, only
to get automated responses. Tried to approach AdSense team via contacts- a few
emails, and they stopped responding. Finally , I found some AdSense employee
patrolling webmasterworld.com - miraculously, he reinstated the account! We
immediately reduced exposure to 5k/mo and sold the remaining inventory first
with Exponential and then transitioned to header bidding with 4 different
DSPs.

TL;DR Avoid like a plague!!

~~~
thescribbblr
Google always do the same once you reach a decent amount they ban the account
for some silly reasons.

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tmikaeld
Why?

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thescribbblr
They give you silly reason like fraud clicks or something like and cease your
account.

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tmikaeld
Yeah, but doesn't Google earn commission based on the revenue from adsense? It
seems very odd that they ban accounts when they're also making money.

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thescribbblr
Also, they cease your earned amount.

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tmikaeld
Ah, so that's why, they simply rob people systematically.

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justaguyhere
How is this legal?

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tmikaeld
I'm guessing, since people/companies are isolated and don't even consider
suing a big entity as Google, there's no one that's going to do anything. And
the police/law certainly won't go after someone as large as Google. I'd guess
that, if EU would take it on, they could bring them to justice, but they seem
to only be after GDPR money currently.

~~~
justaguyhere
Can't people band together and bring a class action lawsuit? Looks like there
are enough people screwed over by Google for this to work, isn't it? Even if
Google doesn't reinstate the Adsense accounts, they should at least not
withhold the money these people already earned

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tmikaeld
You'd need a driven lawyer to pick up the case and find all the people that
want to use, I think it's as hard as finding needles in a haystack to be
honest.

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squeakynick
I make about $50-$70/month from Adsense on my blog. I use a single Auto ad
unit in the middle of each article. It would be nice if it were more. They
payout every couple of months when the balance gets over $100. When they
payout I get a 'report' that tells me they reduced my payout because of
'invalid traffic' (with no details about what/how/when). This deduction varies
from about 5-20% of the payout.

~~~
thescribbblr
Amazing. Blog's link?

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squeakynick
[http://www.datagenetics.com/](http://www.datagenetics.com/)

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chvid
Not any more. And in the end the nice people of G banned me having run the
same website unchanged for 5 years.

~~~
thescribbblr
They ban my account without specifying any reason or what actions have
violated their terms of service. I had earned over 500$ from a blog.

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booi
Google does

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shanecleveland
About $400/mo over a few sites. Best earners are B2B, non-tech related
(business-related tools rather than content-based). Takes just a few thousand
visitors and a few dozen clicks to see that revenue.

Consumer-oriented sites will require many more views to get clicks, and those
clicks are worth less. And the rise of ad-blockers and general awareness will
have a greater impact there.

My sites are also most-viewed on and optimized for desktop use, as they are
used in an office setting. Perhaps with a greater shift to mobile, either your
ad types are less likely to be clicked or less-likely to be served up at all
based on your site's layout and mobile-friendliness?

~~~
thescribbblr
Mind sharing link to your website?

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shanecleveland
commercialinvoiceform.org, as an example.

~~~
thescribbblr
Thanks!!!

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chvid
Incredible how many people have been stuffed by Google.

Amazing how this company can maintain its reputation behaving like this.

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seddin
0 $/month since they banned my account automatically when it reached the
minimum quantity to retrieve the money.

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buboard
I think adsense earnings dropped since oct 2018 or something, and it often
refuses to fill up impressions.

Also what kinds of ad units do you use? I m testing auto ads now and seeing a
drop in earnings (which is typical for most of google's automated
recommendations for me).

What alternatives to adsense monetization are viable nowadays?

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thescribbblr
Auto ads, i am also looking for an alternative.

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prawn
For years I did, but the growth of mobile traffic has made it a lot more
difficult.

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thescribbblr
Website?

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prawn
Yes, a variety of websites. Won't list them here though.

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robodale
Building a business solely relying on someone else's walled garden (Google
Adsense in this case) is a business risk.

You need to find other paths of revenue, ideally out of Google.

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buboard
There is no other way, at least in advertising. Google is monopoly. You can
make some extra by charging directly but it's not for every business.

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tuesday20
I see so many people screwed over by Google. Are there any Adsense
alternatives that have human support, not too high traffic requirements and
just don’t suck overall?

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terrycody
Media.net, taboola, infolinks, just to name a few...

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cloudking
Any good alternatives?

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reaperducer
If you can meet the minimum traffic numbers, Exponential is an option. Higher
quality ads than AdSense, but the fill rate isn't always as high as one might
like.

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wolco
Demanding min traffic and not being able to fill the slots is a red flag.

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reaperducer
It's more of an inconvenience, since you can specify a fallback.

US-based, and they've never missed a payment in 16 years. That's pretty good
considering how most ad networks come and go these days.

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otabdeveloper4
I'm sure Google does.

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wolco
Dropping like crazy, hard to know when to pull the plug.

What did anyone do with thier domain names from failed adsense sites?

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Trias11
Typical storyline: Google "banned publisher, kept the money and refuse to
communicate".

Of course these bans usually happens at the end of the revenue cycle where
accumulated funds are at their max.

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keithnoizu
No, some third party maliciously clicked on some ads and a purchased asset had
some prohibited/adult user submitted content that together wound up getting me
a lifetime ban.

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Digg_mov
Good,Good,Good

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tyzerdak
I had 25$ per month and in September or August dropped to 7$ Not a big deal
but still

