Can you really make money online with Google Adsense?

Google Adsense is a product//service offered by Google which allows you to earn revenue by placing their advertisers ads on your website. These advertisers pay Google money to promote their products.  Google in turn give you a share of these earnings when people click on these ads.  According to Google it is easy to do; they have over 2 million publishers of all sizes using Adsense. Google claims using Adsense is a hassle free way to place relevant ads on your website to help you earn revenue.  According to Google's testimonials publishers can live their dream lives thanks to using Google Ads with Adsense..

Well, I had a Google Adsense account for years, I had several different websites with Google Ads and now I can answer these questions based on my own personal experience.  Is Google Adsense a real way to make money online or is it a scam? Can you really quit your job and make a living using Google Adsense? Can you really live your dream using Google Adsense to make money?
 

I have first hand personal experience and I will share what I learned by trying it for myself.  I created three websites, I had a Youtube account and a Blogger (this one) site all on which I placed google ads - all sites were linked to the same Adsense account.  I taught myself how to do it, I spent a lot of time researching and studying and trying to improve my site, my ads, and of course my earnings.  .

In my opinion Google Adsense is a huge scam, I will tell you why I think that..  The only people who make any substantial money is Google itself and a few webmasters who have a enormous amount of visitors to their websites.  IMany of those large sites are promoted which means that publishers pay to have their websites pushed.  One of the first things Google Adsense invites you to do is promote and advertise your site(s) with Google Adwords where you pay Google directly to promote your site and therefore increase your odds of making money with Google Adsense.  See how it works?

Although I consider myself an intelligent person, I always did extremely well in school... but when it came to making money online with Google Adsense I found myself feeling stupid a lot of the time.  I found it a very difficult and tedious process.  I could rarely find answers to my numerous questions.  I found Google's information to be confusing, incomplete and often even misleading.  I used all the tools available to me like Google Analytics  and Dashboards, but there again I found these sites and tools too hard to follow, incomplete, misleading.  I often ended up with more questions than answers.  I was very frustrated. So may times I just wanted to ask a question and get an answer, it would have been so good to be able to contact Google directly for help - but that option was not ever made available to me.  I always felt like Google is just raking in the money, so it doesn't care if I don't make a lot of money - IT is making money off my content.  You know the old saying, it takes money to make money, that's what I feel is true with Google Adsense.  You need to create a website that will appeal to the masses and you need have the money to promote it, otherwise I don't feel it's worth even bothering to put Google ads on your blog or website.  The only one that is really benefiting is Google.  In 2011 Google made $9.71 Billion Dollars ($9,710,000,000.00).  Google does NOT disclose how much it pays it's publishers, does not tell you how much they make on each ad, does even tell you how YOU make on each ad.  Many people who use Google Adsense find that their numbers (page views, clicks) do not match Google's statistics.  It is a fair statement that Google is not forthcoming in how it manages and profits from Adsense.  I find that Google's business practice are questionable and I find that it's advertising of it's products is deceiving.

Another problem I had with Google Ads and this is a real deal breaker in my view is that Google promised to place relevant ads on my website, you do not chose which ads were placed on your website just what type.  When you create your website, you place labels and key words in a box to direct search engines (like Google (the biggest search again, Ask.com, Yahoo, Bing). to bring people to your site when they are searching for a specific topic.  Google is supposed to match your content to their ads.  I was often quite angry as the type of ads that Google  places on my website, they were not relevant at all, no wonder people did not click on the ads, in fact it may have deterred visitors from staying or returning to my site.  I have a blog that talks about living life with less and Google places ads about applying for credit cards or looking up your credit score with Equifax.  I had stories about poverty and beside them advertisements for new cars.  I even often had 3 identical ads on the same page, right beside each other.  I really was not impressed with Google at all.  I fond it very scammish.  Google seems to big and seems to making too much money to care about individuals and small publishers like me.  "Your account is not qualified to reach customer service directly please use the help forum for assistance or try our help section"!  That's the best customer service Google Ads ever gave me.

Some webmasters create website for the sole purpose of creating "content" and lure the search engines to these sites in order to get "clicks" on their ads and therefore earn money.  This is one of the reasons the internet is overloaded with websites that have duplicate information, bogus and inaccurate content and why the word spam is common place.  Many internet marketers sell programs, videos, discs, templates, how to get rich quick schemes to promote making money online.  These people pray on the average web user with false promises of making easy money online.  There are also make pyramid type scams out there, where only the one selling this information is going to make any substantial amount of money. Another way people can make money online is by collecting information (and then selling it of course).  Newsletters, people finders, sites where you are required to sign in and create accounts.  Publishers sell email lists to generate revenue, I think this is an invasion of privacy.  I do not like it when I get advertisements or spam in my email inbox.

You cannot contact Google directly or indirectly for assistance.  Google does not have an email address, they do not offer live chat support, no phone numbers - basically you are making money for them and if you need help trying to figure out how to improve your odds at making money for yourself you cannot even ask them for help.  You are directed to use their online help pages or to join a forum and ask others customers for assistance.
So how much did I make on Google Adsense and how much does Google Adwords cost?  It's hard to tell you how much Google Adwords really costs, Google is very good at not giving you specific and accurate dollar amounts, you can spend as little as $10 a month (when researching this amount, I now notice that if you need help getting started with Google Adwords they now have a toll free number you can call, I guess people were just giving up - it's a difficult and time consuming process to get started)

I do not trust Google and I did not have a good experience at all trying to make extra money on the web, I never fell for the get rich quick and easy gimmick.  I know that nothing is for free and with hard work only comes rewards.  Well I did a lot of hard work and I had very little reward.  Google does not send you any money until you have made $100 (I think that too is a scam because I am sure many people give up before making their first hundred dollars and then Google just keeps that money).  It took me over a year, yes, over a year to reach the $100 threshold - I had two of my own websites (a how to install tile (with videos and pictures and 10 pages of information), a website about camping and the outdoors (again lots of photos and videos - with links to camping equipment and tons of advice).  A Youtube channel about how to tile and other nature clips on it (that is the only one that made any money really - I think Youtube is your best bet for earning money through advertisement, it has a jhuge audience, but unless your videos goes viral, you won't make much money at all.) and this blog that never really made any money at all (mainly because the ads were irrelevant and the website views are very low).  I never paid for Google Adwords - I found it too expensive.  So in the three years I used Google Adsense I only made $119.00 total.  I spend countless hours designing my websites, working on my videos, taking pictures, uploading, doing research , teaching myself how to use Adsense and how to interpret their analytical statistics which in the end I found not very helpful and was a very difficult application to navigate through.

 That's what I did, I removed all ads from my sites and I closed down my Google Adsense account.  I think Google should have been paying me way more to place ads which they were already getting paid to promote.  I am the one who created the relevant content and I am the one attracting visitors.  Google is just another corporate greedy pig thatwants to hoard all the money for itself and use the little guy to do all the work.

 


Links for information about this post - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Adsense