Keith Devens .com - Weblog: Google AdSense

Wednesday, February 4, 2004

Google AdSense

As of mid-afternoon on the last day of the month my revenue exceeds my typical monthly hosting/bandwidth costs by well over US$500. For reasons I’ll discuss below this is quite a bit more than I’d expect in a typical month, but I’m pretty sure the revenue will stay well ahead of the expenses. Summary: I’m not going to get rich or buy a new car with Google Ads, but turning ongoing from an expensive hobby to a sideline revenue source feels good.

This whole AdSense thing feels a little too easy; I splice in a few lines of Javascript and I’m suddenly seeing cashflow.

Not that I get as many visitors as Tim Bray does, but for the first time I'm seriously considering putting Google ads on my site. I'd never considered it before because... well, I don't want to put ads on my site! If I was working, I'd never consider it. But I'm not, and I have no money.

If there's a shot putting Google ads on my site could help me pay a chunk of my credit card bills every month, I'm compelled to consider doing it. If anyone has any opinions, please share. Danke.

Permalink | 7 Comments | Tags: Personal, This website | id 4694

20:50 (utc-5)

Comments

Check out how Gadgetopia has implemented the ads ... usually at the end of individual articles ...

... no need to pay me for the tip ... ven though you didn't get back to me on my question from yesterday ... g!-)

I implemented them last September. Not on my home page but in my "hobby pages". I'm averaging about a quarter a day (One click-through). This isn't enough to get paid monthly, and I'm still waiting for the end of year check for '03.

∴ Boyink | 5-Feb-2004 8:42am est | http://www.boyink.com | #3881

Well, I contemplated for a while as well, not really wanting to do ads. Finally someone approached me with an offer. It's not a lot, Not enough to pay off any bills, but it's enough that I can try to donate a bit to an open-source project each month, and buy books from authors I like every other month,,, It's my own way of convincing myself I haven't sold out.

though you didn't get back to me on my question from yesterday

I didn't get anything. Did you e-mail me?

∴ Keith | 5-Feb-2004 1:28pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #3885

I started serving Google ads around July of last year, and received my 2003 end-of-year payment for just under $100 last week. A hundred bucks for six months isn't going to make me rich, and it certainly isn't going to cover my hosting costs. On the other hand, claiming Google ads as an income means I can probably claim my personal website expenses as a deduction on my income tax. Well worth the corporate sell-out of serving advertising.

∴ Anton | 6-Feb-2004 7:47am est | http://raath.org/ | #3891

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