The Death of Google Adsense And Other Myths by Titus Hoskins
Recent changes in the Google Adsense program has many online website owners and
marketers seriously concerned. Many have seen their Adsense profits and income
flatline... seen their four or five figure monthly Adsense income disappear
overnight. For many the Google Adsense bubble has burst.
What happened?
First, Google made a change in its Adsense program, letting advertisers choose
between putting their ads in the search results or on the content pages of
Adsense publishers. Search won out and started to receive the higher bids.
Search results convert better than content ads.
Next, Google has cracked down on Junk Adsense sites, like they should. These
sites consisted mainly of software generated re-hashed search engine links and
were totally annoying to say the least. But Google also cracked down on
'squeeze pages' or 'affiliate landing pages' - a lucrative source of income for
many online marketers, mainly because these pages helped marketers build an
opt-in list or use permission based email.
The results of these changes produced an Adsense meltdown for many online
marketers.
Some Internet marketers are speculating recent changes could even mean the
death of Adsense. One online marketer, Scott Boulch even published a free
report entitled 'The Death of Adsense".
Many affiliate marketers would agree with Boulch on some of his points,
especially the obvious fact that using Adsense on your web content is starting
on the bottom rung of the online marketing ladder. Instead of receiving pennies
per click with Adsense, alert marketers and webmasters have already discovered
that by using CPA (Cost-Per-Action) and direct affiliate links, they can
produce significantly more revenue from their web pages. Why earn pennies per
click when you can earn $5, $10 or OVER $100 per click?
But the fine people at Google are catching on...
In the past Google has made its own swing to the Cost-Per-Action direction with
its referral system for the Firefox Browser and giving webmasters credit for
signing up Adwords and Adsense accounts.
Many online marketers believe Google needs to expand on these baby steps and
open their Adsense affiliate program up to third party products/advertisers. In
a recent company statement Google offered some hope: "We're always looking for
new ways to provide effective and useful features to advertisers, publishers,
and users," the company stated "As part of these efforts we are currently
testing a cost-per-action (CPA) pricing model to give advertisers more
flexibility and provide publishers another way to earn revenue through
AdSense." Basically, in cost-per-action, advertisers pay for leads, purchases
or customer acquisition. It would help with the click fraud issue and the
monetary returns could potentially make Adsense's revenues pale in comparison.
As more and more commerce goes online... acquiring customers for such diverse
services as insurance, real estate, telephone, marketing, web hosting, travel,
mortgage loans, cable TV, banking... you name it, almost any service or product
sold in the marketplace is now turning to the Internet for customers and
lifelong clients.
Enormous sums of money will change hands. Perhaps, the most lucrative of these
is customer acquisition. Advertisers are turning to the Internet and
webmasters/marketers for acquiring these lifelong customers for their
respective services and products. Businesses and companies are quickly
realizing paying an attractive lead generating fee/commission is smart
business. They quickly build a client base for their services or products and
quickly recoup their expenses - realizing in the long run these leads will
generate huge profits.
It can also mean huge profits for the CPA networks like ValueClick's Commission
Junction and Rakuten's LinkShare who supply the advertisers with publishers and
website marketers to harvest these leads. It can be a lucrative venture for all
involved, especially for those online marketers who have cornered the search
engines for lucrative niche markets in big ticket items. Even small ticket
items pay quite well for those marketers who know how to market online.
Contextual advertising is fine, but CPA (Cost-Per-Action) will offer much
better returns for the website owner. Making any profitable site much more
profitable. It will and is opening up a whole area of marketing opportunities
that never existed before we had the Internet. Creating a complex structure of
advertisers, publishers and the Affiliate/CPA companies that connect the two.
Of course, cutting out the middle man has always been even a more profitable
venture for most marketers. As more and more webmasters realize they can make
much more with dealing directly with companies, rather than going through a
middle process like Google Adsense or the countless other affiliate/CPA
networks ... online marketers can reap even bigger rewards.
For an online marketer when you get a phone call or email from the CEO or the
affiliate manager with a company or service you're promoting with your website
- you know you have made it! Dealing directly with a company usually means
bigger commissions and special exclusive deals just for you or your sites.
Only fly in the ointment, all that extra paperwork and business wheeling and
dealing. Many marketers and website owners like the idea of someone else
handling all the tracking, collecting payments, promotional materials... they
just like to sit back and build more websites and content. It gives the
affiliate marketer a lifestyle that they are looking for on the web. They just
like to market and promote with their sites and let someone else worry about
the details. Therefore, there will always be a place for contextual ads like
Google Adsense... Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.
However, could CPA be a better alternative for the current Adsense contextual
ads?
Google would be the natural choice for a middleman if there ever was one.
Besides, many savvy marketers know the Google brand name is trusted online, any
product/service promoted through Google would be an easy sell. Many argue
Google already dominates the web, why should it not be the one to handle these
CPA transactions through its Adsense program.
On the flip side, over countless updates and changes to its indexing, many
webmasters have experienced more than a few negative dealings with Google. Many
have won, many have lost in this Google Age, but all have realized riding the
Google Search Engine is like running with the bulls at Pamplona, totally
thrilling unless you're one of the unfortunate few who get trampled in the
process.
About the Author
The author is a former teacher who now works full-time online operating numerous
websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web
marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools
For the lastest trade information in your own industry try:
Free Trade Publications Copyright 2006 Titus Hoskins.
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