» Is Adsense A Good Business Strategy? Part I

I hear people ask questions like this all the time… “Is Adsense a Valid Business Strategy?”.

Well considering there are companies out there making millions with it, I’d have to say it is. In addition, many individuals are raking in quite a mint with Adsense.

So here are a few thoughts I have concerning Adsense and where it might fit into your business strategy …

The main issue I’d like to address in this article is the “Am I putting all my eggs in one basket with Adsense?” arguement. Quite simply put, if Adsense is the only way you’re generating money online, then yes, you stand to lose all your income if Google decides to shut down your account because you violated their terms or they close down (not likely, but let’s just pretend).

But for a moment, let’s stop and think about this. If you’re actually putting up real sites, with real content, and you’re getting real traffic, can’t you make money with other methods as well? I mean, you’ve done the hard part, can’t you now just replace the adsense with something else and maintain your income?

I think you can. Adsense is just a way to generate advertising money. You don’t really need Google to do this. Of course it’s nice and easy (just copy and paste the code they provide for you and you’re done), but you don’t really need Google to be your advertising middle-man. You can do it yourself.

For years before Adsense ever came around and even now in the Adsense Hayday, website owners have been playing the advertising game. Whether they charge by the click, the impression or just a flat rate for the size and duration of time to leave a banner up, saavy internet business owners have been doing this for years.

That’s the beauty of a real content site. The content attracts traffic … and other businesses clamor to put their message in front of all these sets of eyes. There are thousands upon thousands of websites out there that charge $500, $1,000, or even upwards of $5,000 (and then some) to allow another business to temporarily claim a piece of their traffic pie.

You can do this too.

It does require a little more work than copying and pasting Google’s code to your site, but it’s still not that tough to set up. And then it’s really your business, not just you getting paid by another company.

Alternately, you can always add in affiliate banners. Just be careful to select those that people will really want and try to “pre-sell” your visitors. By this, I mean you may want to make your own ad with a nice teaser of a headline, get your visitors to click on it and sell them on whatever the product or service is. You can just slap on an affiliate banner, but then you probably won’t make quite as much with that tactic (remember, anytime you’re williing to do more than the other people out there, you’ll be way ahead of the game).

But there are even more options. Yahoo has a program very similar to Adsense that is in beta and should be released soon. There is also talk that MSN will soon follow. So that means all your eggs really won’t be in one basket for long. There are many other similar programs out there that you can give a try if for some reason Adsense dries up.

You might also be able to create a product or service for the visitors who frequent your site. If you collect emails (and you really should), all you need to do is ask your subscribers what they want. Direct them to a survey and collect statistics on who wants what. Then just create it for them. You can make a ton more money this way than with virtually any other method available to you.

So in all reality, Google Adsense may just be a crutch. I think it’s a great program and I hope others open up in the future, but it’s really a lazy way to make money (please don’t be offended since I’ll admit that I’m lazy and I take advantage of it too).

In all reality, once you get a site up, you start making money with Adsense and you increase your site’s popularity in the search engines, you may make quite a bit more if you explore some of these other options. Think of Adsense as a “test” base. Once you get x amount of traffic per day, try to replace it with something else (i.e. something you put more effort into than copying and pasting in a few lines of code!) and see just how much more you can earn.

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