| Will The Google AdSense Program Survive? |
Copyright © Gauher Chaudhry, All Rights Reserved.
Almost everyone is now aware of the Google AdSense program that
has taken the Internet by storm. The Google AdSense program
lets webmasters place Google's paid sponsor listings on their
web sites and collect a percent of the bid amount when someone
clicks on one of the listings.
I have been reading many ezines that I receive and every
publisher seems to be making a huge hoopla about Google's new
program.
In my own words, it is seriously overblown.
Now, this article might make a few people unhappy who are
counting on the Google AdSense program to finally be their
"oasis of Internet riches."
But somebody has to be the devil's advocate. :)
Discussion boards, chat rooms and advertisers are buzzing about
the Google AdSense program like it is the California Gold Rush
all over again!
Do you know how many people made money during the California
goldrush?
Not many.
The reason was quite simple. Thousands of people flocked to
California in 1849 to claim their gold riches, but ended up with
nothing.
There were a few people who made some money finding gold, but
the real people who made a fortune were the ones who provided
food, accommodation and laundry services to the thousands of
people who flocked to California.
In fact, laundry services were so expensive that people had to
ship their clothes to Hawaii to be washed for a cheaper price.
The ones who will probably make a lot of money with the Google
AdSense program are the ones who sell complimentary products or
services.
For example, don't be surprised if you soon see an ebook "How To
Make $100,000 A Year With Google AdSense" which will probably be
a flimsy report that tells you to create targeted web sites that
attract top dollar paid listings from Google AdSense.
But guess what, hundreds of naive people will probably buy this
ebook and many other products and services that will pop up that
are related to the Google AdSense program.
I am currently using the Google AdSense program on a few of my
web sites and it does bring in revenue each month, but I don't
expect it to stay at the same level.
I will tell you why I feel this way.
When the Internet first started, everyone was making a huge
hoopla about how you could put banners on your web site and
make money.
But what happened?
Internet surfers started becoming immune to banner
advertisements and the average click-thru ratio on banners has
now dropped below 0.5%. Many banner ad networks have slowly
died and gone out of business.
As the Google AdSense listings will start to appear on thousands
of web sites, Internet surfers will also start to become immune
to these listings, which will result in lower click-thrus and
revenues for the webmaster.
Overture.com is planning on launching their "Content-Match"
program, which is similar to the Google AdSense program so
regardless of what you believe, Internet surfers will become
immune to text listings.
Many people hail the Google AdSense program as a long-term
advertising solution because its technology analyzes the web
page and delivers *relevant* and *targeted* listings that will
interest the web site visitors.
But banner networks have been doing this for years without much
luck, so what is the big commotion if Google can match text
listings that are relevant to the content on your web pages?
This is nothing new.
Just as banner networks had to deal with false click-thrus,
Google will have to some how tackle the same problem. The
Google AdSense program is a perfect environment for a fraud ring
as is the case with many pay-per-click search engines that
operate revenue sharing programs.
How do I know?
Because my company witnessed it on our very own pay-per-click
search engine BulletBid.com. Basically what happens is
organized groups of individuals sign up as affiliate partners
and then they all take turns visiting each other's web sites and
clicking on the paid listings.
This is something that is hard to track because the IP address
of each click on the same listing is different. We managed to
track the culprits because 1) We didn't have an overly huge
amount of affiliates and 2) The software we use had built in
fraud detectors to alert us the something could be wrong.
But with the Google AdSense program, they will have tens of
thousands of webmasters who will be running their paid listings
on their web sites. It will very hard to track who is organized
with who.
I have a feeling that Google's staff knows this in the back of
their mind and that is why they allow advertisers to opt-out of
appearing on partner web sites.
But if Google cannot track down fraudulent clicks, this will
result in their paid advertisers having a lower sales conversion
ratio from the traffic that Google sends them,
This will result in advertisers lowering theirs bids and honest
webmasters who host the Google AdSense listings receiving lower
revenue payments.
Depending on the factors that I have mentioned above, webmasters
might in the future find it more profitable to go back to their
old affiliate links.
So what is the answer to the question, "Will the Google AdSense
program survive?"
The answer is yes, but webmasters shouldn't expect to make as
much money once the initial goldrush is over.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gauher Chaudhry is editor of the weekly Cool Cash Ezine.
Receive informative articles like this every Sunday that will
help you grow your online business. You can sign up by sending
an email to "subscribe@freecoolcash.com" with the word
"subscribe" in the subject or visit http://www.freecoolcash.com
|
Back to Articles Index
|
|
 |
|
