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How AdSense Lowers Site-Self-Esteem
By Jason Lee Miller
Staff Writer
Article Date: 2005-12-06
While AdSense makes it easy to monetize a Webpage or a weblog, are Webmasters selling themselves short by putting their prime real estate on sale for a fraction of its worth? Google has the luxury of exploiting not only their own effectiveness and reach, but also the ignorance of the online marketer.
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How has online advertising affected your views of publishing online? Does the content truly come first, or do the needs of optimization take precedence? Tell us more on WebProWorld.
Sometimes, a well-crafted in-house campaign is nothing short of a Stuart Smalley proclamation of "I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And doggone it, people like me!"
After Jason Calacanis set up his network of monetized blogs, all supported by AdSense, Weblogs Inc. was swallowed up by America Online for as much as $35 million (most estimates report $25 million). The move was a shocker and milestone for the weblog. A short time later, Tristan Louis created a tool on his Business Opportunities blog business-opportunities.biz based on things like page rank and in-bound links (among other factors) that measures the value of your weblog.
But online marketer and co-founder of Fortune Interactive, Andy Beal, feels many Webmasters are devaluing their advertising space by selling to the lowest AdSense bidder. Running AdSense exclusively or even concurrently with in-house advertising is an exercise in low self-website-esteem.
WebProNews' Mike McDonald and I had a chance to sit down with Andy at the Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago, and using a good cop-bad cop approach, interrogated the online marketing guru and squeezed him for information.
(Guess who the bad cop is! It's not worth it Mike! Let him go, man.)
When Beal set up the Search Engine Lowdown website, the decision on how to monetize the venture was a tricky one. AdSense is a safer bet. It guarantees advertisers, if not clicks, and takes very little effort. But the thing is, Google doesn't disclose what percentage their taking from those same advertisers. What's a Web entrepreneur to do?
"We through all the rules out the window," said Beal in a loyalty-torn and interesting British/North Carolina accent. "It blew my mind how much revenue we would be able to generate from Search Engine Lowdown--we went straight to selling [advertising] ourselves."
In fact, placing advertising on the site was really an afterthought. Similar to the purist blogger who is a writer first, and an advertiser second, Beal told us that at the time he didn't have any plans to offer ads. Though the ease of AdSense makes it appealing-just slap the provided code into your HTML and your set-for Beal, it made little sense to go through a broker when it could be done in-house for a higher profit.
"It was just a project. Okay if anyone wants to buy it, it's x-thousands of dollars a month. It was like an anti-sale, it was like 'I don't need to sell advertising,' but if you want to buy a piece of real estate on this site, this is what it's going to cost you. And people bought it!"
Search Engine Lowdown went on to earn well over six figures a year, he said.
The lesson here is that while AdSense can benefit some models, as in Jason Calacanis' case, or in the case of a content provider who is more interested in art than money, there are instances where AdSense is akin "shooting yourself in the foot."
If the site is worth something to you, it's probably worth something to someone else. Just say to yourself, "It's good enough. It's smart enough. And doggone it, people like it."
About the Author:
Jason L. Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.
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