Anyone using Google AdSense on their site or blog?

[Richard M. Coda]

I was just writing a new blog post and I saw a new tab called "Monetize". It's for Google AdSense, where you allow them to put targeted ads on your blog. Anyone using this, or more precisely, anyone making any money with it? Also, do you think it trivializes a website? I'm kind of leaning towards NOT using this feature.

TIA.

Rich

[QT Luong]

Yes, it's less classy, but since it is everywhere, not really noticed by most. Whether that's worth doing depends on your traffic. Pays $1 for about 1000 page views. I resisted for a long time, but eventually last year decided I could use the money (my wife wanted it). I have quite a bit of traffic, but for a new site, probably not worth it.

[Mike Putnam]

QT,
For the record, I've checked out your site many times and I have not had any negative thoughts about the adsense. Of course I'm only there to see your work. By the way, It's great! How do you get an accurate measure of the page views your site is getting? I operate a few different analytics and I get widely varying results for page views in any given day. With all the variation, I'm not sure which to trust.
Thanks,
Mike

Mike Putnam Photography

[QT Luong]

I don't think I have such an accurate measure (see the recent Google analytics thread in this section), and it doesn't really matter. What matter are relative measures, so you can know if you are doing better or worse, and in the later case, re-tool your site. The number I gave of $1 per 1000 page views is based on Adsense's own reporting.

[Mike Putnam]

Thanks QT, As I'm not running adsense(I suspect my site is still too small to bother with) I was wondering if there was some close correlation via another analytic system that could help me determine what my return would be. Are the adsense numbers similar to or the same as Google analytics numbers for your site?

Mike Putnam Photography

[QT Luong]

Yes, accounting for the fact that I do not have AdSense everywhere, the Google analytics pageviews are almost the same as those reported for adsense.