How much does Google Adsense pay?

How much does Google Adsense pay is a very popular question among bloggers (especially beginners) and I will explain below why. Adsense is for some the medium to achieve a better quality of life by increasing their income and for others it’s a total waste of time.

I am using adsense for almost 10 years now and I am happy to say that I managed to stay in the first group after a lot of effort and hard work. What I can tell you for sure is that Adsense is indeed a great way to make money online. What I cannot give you is a precise figure on how much money you can make with adsense and this is because there are a lot of factors that play a role.

Let’s take it step by step and you will understand better what I mean.

How do you make money with Adsense?

What does it take to make money with Adsense? If you research this on Google you will find a lot of different answers but in reality you need 3 things:

An Adsense complaint website – A website or blog that meets adsense guidelines. Adsense has a number of policies related to website content, copyright laws, ad placement, traffic sources and many more. To make a career as an Adsense publisher and you need to make sure that you will never violate these rules.

A website with a lot of hiqh quality content – Besides being compliant with adsense policies you need to have a lot of content published on your website. Although content can mean a number of things (videos, images, etc) what you need is original and unique TEXT content (blog pots, articles, how-to guides). Of course with the text you can have images and videos but text has to be the main part of the website.

A lot of traffic – To make serious money with Adsense you need a LOT of traffic. In my opinion adsense is not suitable for websites that only receive a few hundreds of visits per day. You can still run adsense if you meet the other 2 guidelines but you should not expect to make a living out of it.

So, if you want to become a ‘professional’ adsense publisher you need a good website, a lot of original content and many people visiting your website on a daily basis. If all these are true then how much money will you make from Adsense?

Hint: Read my 10 Adsense tips for maximizing your revenue.

What factors affect how much you will make from Adsense?

For every click a user makes on an Adsense Ad, Google will pay you a certain amount of money (from a few cents to a few dollars). So the amount of money that you will make from adsense depends on the numbers of clicks your ads will receive.

How big that amount will be depends on the following factors:

Volume of traffic – Obviously the more people visit a website the greater are the chances someone will click on one of the Adsense ads.

Type of traffic – This is equally important as the volume of traffic. When you have an adsense website you don’t just need any kind of traffic but you need targeted traffic i.e. people looking to buy something or solve a problem and they come to your website for help. These people are more likely to click on a related Adsense Ad than people who are visiting your website to read the latest news or hangout in your forums.

Type of Website – This is related to the above as the type of website makes a big difference in the amount of money you can make from Adsense. For example a website that has funny videos will make less from Adsense compared to website that has in-depth articles.

The reason is that people will visit the website and view the different videos and then leave since they are not looking to solve a problem or buy something.

On the other hand, people visiting the in-depth articles website are more likely to click a related ad after they read an article that helps them understand a concept, make a decision or solve a problem.

Ad placements – The type and location of ads is also important. Ads that are in the main content of the page get more pageviews and have a higher CTR (click through rate) than ads that are in the sidebar.

IMPORTANT: While the ad position is very important you should not take risks for a higher CTR. What I mean is that when placing your adsense ads in your website make sure that you read and follow the guidelines for ad placement given by Adsense and also have in mind that Google is punishing websites that have ‘too many ads above the fold’.

In other words, you can have ads above the fold and earn more but at the same time you should avoid exaggerations. One adsense unit in a similar way as shown below is enough.

From experience, one of the best positions to place an adsense ad in content rich websites is at the end of an article or blog post so you get a good CTR and revenue without violating any guidelines.

Competition – The ads shown by the Adsense system are coming from Google Adwords. Advertisers that are using PPC campaigns to promote their products or services, pay Google an amount of money every time someone clicks on their ads. Out of that money Google keeps a percentage (around 40%) and the rest is paid to the publisher.

Now, the amount of money that PPC advertisers are paying for each click depends on a number of factors, one of them being competition. The higher the demand of advertising for a particular keyword, the higher is the CPC and the higher are the earnings for the publisher.

So, if your website topics are based on popular and high competition keywords, it is more likely to make more from Adsense rather than having a website with general content that people like to read but not searching for it in Google.

This is also the reason why niche websites tend to perform better in Adsense (if they have a lot of traffic and content) than websites of general interest.

Final thoughts and advice

To make real money from adsense make sure that:

You don’t violate any of their guidelines ever.

You create a website with lots of original and unique content.

Concentrate on getting organic traffic to the website since it converts better than any other type of traffic (when it comes to adsense).

Your content should be mainly text and must provide a solution to problem or advice (how-to articles).

Position your ads above the fold and in places where people can see them (best places are in the main content).

Use big size ads without overdoing it.

If you follow the above suggestions, sooner or later you will be able to answer the question “how much google adsense pays” and also you will be able to understand whether adsense is the medium to improve your quality of life.