AP 0230: When Should I Use Google Adsense?

AskPat 230 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 230 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me here today. And before I go on, I want to say thank you to everybody who, over the last couple of days, actually less than two days, has donated to my birthday campaign to help build schools in Ghana.

On my birthday, on Friday, I actually put out an campaign to have anybody else who wanted to contribute to the campaign. And I will match every dollar that comes in, and if we reach our goal of $25,000, that means that I will match and throw in 25 of my own. And we will be able to build two schools in Ghana, Africa. So you could read more about this at AskPat.com/birthday. However, I'm really happy to announce that at this time, we've already passed the halfway mark. And we have until the end of the week to fully fund this goal, so thank you so much to everybody who has already donated. Thank you to those who will. Even a dollar helps. It goes a very long way. So again, AskPat.com/birthday, and you can check out why that's actually really, really important to me. Thank you.

Now I also want to thank today's sponsor which is FreshBooks.com. The super easy to use cloud accounting solution for those of you that are keeping track of your business and expenses and income for your business. And you know, you might as well join a million other businesses that are using this software. It's proven software. I've used it myself. They have a super easy to use mobile application, and if you're doing any invoicing, it makes it really easy to create professional looking invoices so you can get paid. So if you want to get FreshBooks and try it out for free for seven days, go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section.

Cool. Now let's get to today's question from Avi.

Avi: Hi Pat. I've just wondered, why don't you use Google AdSense on your website? Is there any specific reason for that? Keep up the great work. Avi.

Pat Flynn: Avi, thank you so much for the question. And you know, it's interesting, because you know I don't use Google AdSense on SmartPassiveIncome.com, and I don't use it on a few other sites as well. But I actually do continue to use Google AdSense on a few sites. You might see them on FoodTruckr.com, although there aren't very many of them on that particular site. But actually, SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com, which is another one of my niche sites, is about 95% funded by, or makes 95% of income specifically from, Google AdSense. And this is upwards of three to four-thousand dollars a month. And it's pretty awesome.

And so I like Google AdSense. I think if you're just starting out, it's a great way to get your foot in the water and test the waters of what it's like to generate an income online. I remember my first few cents coming in. I remember a bunch of people talking about their first 11 cents. Their first dollar. I remember my first $1.18 from my first advertisement click on Google AdSense, and so it's a great way to get started. However, I feel like depending on the site and depending on the niche, and SmartPassiveIncome.com is definitely one of them, Google AdSense may not be the best solution for you.

Now there is a couple of reasons why. And I actually did have Google AdSense on Smart Passive Income back in 2010 because I have tried it on sites before then, and it did very well. So I wanted to put it on SmartPassiveIncome.com at this time, and I put them on the site and I started to notice that the ads that were being automatically generated. For those of you that don't know, that is how it works. Google sort of reads the content around your site and, you know, puts ads in those places where you put the code to serve your audience based off of the content of that site. And the ads that were showing up were just not ads that I was really happy being there. And you have to realize that those are advertisements that other companies are placing on your own site. And Google AdSense, more so than any other sort of advertisement engine, you can't really control necessarily what companies are going to be shown there. Yes, you can control certain things in the back end of Google AdSense, and you can control content that you put on the page.

But for example, when I put Google AdSense in the side bar and at the bottom of the posts, and then some other places in SmartPassiveIncome.com based on all the content on my site, I was just seeing stuff that was primarily for get-rich-quick schemes and things like that. And that's not because I'm talking about get-rich-quick schemes. It's because I'm talking about making money online and generating an online business and home-based business, and all that stuff. And those are things that people are paying a lots of money for, to get on sites where there is an audiences like I have. And so immediately, I mean like after a week, I pulled those down because they were just not something I wanted people to click on.

And you have to realize that when people click on those advertisements, those are people clicking away from your site. And I think that's the biggest and, I think, the most important part to realize with Google AdSense is that if you have a business that is selling product, that has affiliate products that you make a decent commission from, you have to know that when people are clicking away from your site, going to those advertisements, that's a potential customer lost. That's a potential click on an affiliate link gone. And yes, some of those people might come back in the future, but more than likely, I mean, you've probably done it before. You've probably clicked on an ad, and then you kind of go down that path. And you could have gone down another path, but that ad happened to be there, and you went down that path. And you might not even go back to where you started before you hit that route.

So you have to keep that in mind, and if you are primarily wanting to generate an income from product sales, from affiliate commissions, from coaching, from getting clients, things like that, memberships sites, software, putting ads on your site, isn't necessarily the best way to go. So think about what your primary motive is, and if it's to, again, sell those products of yours, then don't pull people away from your site by putting advertisements on. Again, that was the problem I had with SmartPassiveIncome.com.

Now the reason the ads are on Foodtruckr.com is because they're just there purely for experimentation purposes. I actually had them on before products started being sold on this site. And like I said, it's a great way to get started and get your feet in the water. And immediately when I put those ads on, about eight to nine months after starting that site, I started seeing a couple hundred dollars coming in from those google advertisements. Now that I have a product, I'm seeing thousands of dollars come in, and I'm actually going to take those ads off of Foodtruckr.com very soon. SecurityGuardTrainingHQ.com is primarily content-driven without any products on the end, and so I want people to click on those Google advertisements. And that's how I've been able to generate two to three thousand dollars, sometimes up to four thousand dollars a month, on that particular site.

And at least at this rate, I feel like the ads are going to stay on there, and it's been about how to optimize them. Where to put them, what color to make them, what size they should be, and things like that. Although, I feel like when product is placed on that site in the future, depending on the price of that product, the conversion, how it's going, and how it's selling, you know, I could eventually pull those ads. And at that point it might be a hard decision. I think that's a really hard decision for people to make especially if they are, you know, with Google AdSense. You know, I feel like for a lot of people, it's their first love. You know, their first time feeling that sense of making money online, and they don't want to get rid of it. You know, it's the first memory they have of that. And you know, it's hard. It's hard to get rid of that. But you have to realize, again, you have to grow. You have to move forward, and hopefully all of you that have Google AdSense on your site can get to point where you are selling product and making a lot more money that way and keeping that customer in your brand and controlling that experience, as opposed to having people click away, forgetting about you, and having a totally different experience elsewhere.

So Avi, thank you so much for the question. I hope that answers it. For those of you listening, thank you for spending the time with me today. Avi, an AskPat t-shirt is headed your way. An assistant of mine will send you an email very soon to collect your information. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd potentially like to ask me and have featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com, and you could get a free t-shirt as a bonus.

I also want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. Again, one of the . . . you know I've made a lot of mistakes in my business, and one of biggest mistakes when I first started besides a) not starting an email list and b) thinking I could do everything myself and not hiring a VA sooner is c) trying to do all the accounting and tax information, and income, and expenses, and all that stuff on my own using a spreadsheet. FreshBooks makes it so much easier to do, and that's what I recommend if you're just getting started and if you need some help with finances with your small business. So if you'd like to check it out and get a free trial, go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us” section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com and enter “Ask Pat” in the “How did you hear about us” section.

Now, as always, I love to end it with a quote, and today's quote is from Noah Everett. He says, “Don't worry about funding if you don't need it. Today, it's cheaper to start a business than ever.”

Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.