5 Reasons why Your Home-Based Business Website Should Not have AdSense
September 4, 2007 | Author: Eve Lester | Filed under: Business Advice
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This is a guest post by Michael Martine, a blog consultant and designer who runs Better Blogging with Michael Martine. Michael’s been blogging since the year 2000. He makes hundreds of dollars a month with AdSense from a couple video blogs, but, for the reasons stated below, does not have AdSense on his main business site.
Google AdSense has done a pretty good job of making people money, myself included. These ads often have a click-through rate of over 10%, which is extraordinarily high compared to the .2% CTR in the old days of internet advertising.
For someone who is blogging as a hobby, it’s nice to be able to make some money from doing something you’d do anyway, so that situation, AdSense is often a good idea. Many people attempt to engage in professional blogging, where they deliberately use AdSense as part of a set of techniques to make money.
This all sounds wonderful, but is AdSense right for a home-based business? For the most part, I would not advise home-based business owners to place AdSense units on their sites. Here’s why:
- You already have a revenue model and a main purpose. As a home-based business, you have a product or a service to sell, and that’s how you make your money. That is your purpose. Would you put someone else’s ads in your printed brochure? Of course not! Then don’t put them on your website, either. Google AdSense distracts you and your visitors from the main purpose of your site.
- Unless you have at least 500 or more unique visitors a day (really, more like at least 1,000), or you are targeting keywords that advertisers are willing to bid high for, you won’t make much money at all–only a few dollars a month. When you balance that against the first two points above, AdSense doesn’t seem like much of a good idea.
- Advertising for products and services similar to your own will confuse visitors. If the ads blend in well with your site, people will mistake them for content. There may be confusion between the ads and your own content.
- Advertising for products and services similar to your own will cause your competition’s ads to appear on your site, which can lead to several unfortunate scenarios:
- Your potential customers click the ads, leave your site, and do business with your competition.
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Your competition gets your Google account banned because they think the clicks coming from those ads–which they are getting charged for–are deliberate on your part in an effort to drive up their advertising costs.
- Your competition can hire third party agencies to deliberately over-click on the ads you’re running to make Google think you are engaging in click fraud designed to hurt your competition in the pocketbook. This can result in your AdSense account getting banned.
- Placing ads on your site gives visitors more options than you want them to have. The process of getting a visitor to do what you want (buy something, sign up for something, etc.) is called conversion. The steps a visitor goes through to convert is called a conversion funnel. Naturally, you want that conversion funnel to be as easy and thought-free as possible. In other words, you don’t want any side trails branching off of the main path! You don’t want potential buyers to pause and say, “Hmmm… what about these people in this ad?” because then you just lost them.
I realize that there are home-based businesses using AdSense on their sites and everything’s fine. In some cases the ads would be highly complimentary to the site and there’s no problem. I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m asking you to consider some good reasons for not doing it. You can, of course, test it out. If it doesn’t work out then you remove the ads from your site. But you’ll never know how many customers you lost because they were turned off by the ads, how much revenue you didn’t bring in.
Generally speaking, if you’re selling a product or service through a home-based business, you’re going to want to be on the other side of this whole equation. You’re going to want to advertise online in order drive traffic–new customers–to your business site.
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17 people have left comments
Great to hear someone not supporting the Adsense plague. I often do not look at a site that has Adsense. I don’t care what anyone says, spam is spam. If I wanted commericals I could watch TV, pick up a magazine… I do not want to wade through ads on a website. They make even a well designed blog look trashy and needy.
Thanks for commenting, Laura.
The idea behind AdSense is that ad content is based on site content. The closer the match, the more relevant the ad is to the site visitor (that’s why they’re actually a problem for a site that already has a revenue model, which is the point of my article). In that situation, ads are a benefit, not an annoyance.
It’s interesting that you bring up TV and magazines. TV commercials are a great example of irrelevant, untargeted advertising (plus most of them are just plain stupid). Magazine ads, however, are more like AdSense. When you buy a fashion magazine, what do you see ads about? Fashion! Do you mind? Not in the least! Why not? They’re highly relevant.
Does Vogue magazine appear “needy” because it has ads? I think most people would say no. Vogue is the ultimate fashion authority, and that’s why people want to advertise in it. You can take that exact same principle and apply it to websites. That’s why we say “content is king.” It is content which creates the context in which contextual advertising works.
So, no, I’m not supporting the AdSense “plague” but I am supportive of AdSense done well. I make anywhere from $200-$400 or so a month from AdSense on my other blogs. People really enjoy the content and I make money from ads. It’s a very honest win-win.
Hi
Great article. I never thought that way before. Your article really made me realize that having AdSense in your business site could actually become your greatest rival. You have your own product to sell and yet your putting another competitor in your very own website.
Right from the start I never really have AdSense in my business site but I am thinking of putting one, now I don’t have to. I just have to put AdSense in my blog.
Thanks.
When I first started surfing the web before I knew what adsense was, I found those ads to be extremely frustrating because they seemed to interfere with my searching.
As a blogger, I hate that I have no control over what ads are served. Even though they are relevant, they aren’t sites that I would’ve naturally linked to which is my biggest reason for not using adsense on my blog. It was nice to see the flipside of adsense.
Michael has posted some wonderful information, I am honored to have had his input! I am glad every one like the article!
You make very valid points here. I must admit that when i first started to read this article I thought you were referring to all websites. So I was curious to find out your reasons. But after reading your article it makes much more sense and I do agree with you completley. The only time advertising should be used is if it complements the product or service you are offering.
Hey! wonderful article before reading this article i used to think that adsense is the best one for home based business. But i got an idea of how and where to use adsense. Thank you very much Michael.
@Internet Marketing: If your home-based business model is that you are selling a product or service, you are creating a conflict of interest by having AdSense on your site. If you’re already selling something, that’s how you make money. If you’re not doing very well at it, the solution is to improve your game, not hasten your demise by placing ads on your site. That will communicate to everyone that you are failing in your sales.
Some people want to make money online in a different way, such as by blogging. They create entertaining or informative, useful content that attracts an audience, but they don’t sell anything directly. These people benefit from AdSense. It is sites like that where I make money from AdSense.
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Google Adsense is particularly useful if it is used in an text based web site rather than using it in a product based one.It is really a useful tool if we use it wisely.The five point criteria is a nice one.
[…] 5 Reasons why Your Home-Based Business Website Should Not have AdSense » Home Business Blog That is 5 reasons not to if you’re in the make money niche or anything similar to it. Really it depends on the readership of your blog. Certain niches are more inclined to click ads; other niches are more inclined to be blind to them! Also some niches if you do get a click you get a few pennies; others a click could be a few $$$. Look at what your blog is about, who your readership is; how much adsense pays for your terms or those similar and make a decision. There are many other types of programs out there. Lot’s mentioned in this section. __________________ - Rob - Home Business Blogger - Submit Your Blog - Blog Reviews Bloggeries is a term used to describe the posts in a blog. Wanna help us out? Use the term. […]
Hi,
I never understood why anyone would want to put competitors into their own site as it sort of defeats the object of paying to get the visitor there in the first place!
Roger
Really tired of adsense. It’s not wotking well for me. I should remove them. ))
I think advertising is not bad at all, but it should have a personal location on site, which do not disturb your customers. It could be useful if customer have a tedious time, and don’t know what do next time on your site. I use AdSence in deep bottom of my site.