Google AdSense and Text Links: Do They Really Work?

In recent news for Bloggers and websites in general who try to monetize to make some extra revenue (or those whose primary income comes from this sort of revenue) it seems that Google and their AdSense division has finally allowed all publishers to include AdSense into their RSS Feeds via FeedBurner. Many know that FeedBurner was acquired by Google a little way back and some people have been beta testing AdSense in their ads for a while too.

I know I might contradict myself in this post but a post over at John Chow’s website sparked this little thought of mine in regards to Google AdSense and RSS Feeds: How effective is running Google AdSense in RSS feeds for generating some extra revenue?

RSS Feeds and Who Uses Them

Most people out there in the Blogosphere (think that is the first time I’ve used that term) are fairly tech savvy people who know what an RSS Feed is and how it is used. For those who do not know what an RSS Feed is or why you use it, an RSS Feed is a syndicated version of one’s website (hopefully dynamically driven content) where you can read new posts remotely (without visiting the website) on an hourly, daily, weekly or sometimes even monthly basis (depending on when content is updated). This allows easier access to some of your favourite sites without having to actually go to them (there are pros and cons but that’s another story). People ‘subscribe’ to these RSS Feeds and you can keep track of your ‘subscriptions’ via services such as Google Reader (web based) or something like RSS Bandit (windows client).

Google AdSense a Brief Lowdown

Now most people have seen Google Adsense, in fact if you look at the top of this post there should be a 250×250 block for a Google AdSense Ad with text links to other websites who might have something that is related to this particular post (ads generated based on content). They can be in the form of text links, links with a brief description, or even images. When people click on them they are taken to a website which might prove to be useful to them.

My Thoughts

Now with those to aspects briefly described, now is time to explain why I don’t think Google AdSense for RSS Feeds (via FeedBurner) will be very successful and I invite people to prove me wrong!

RSS Feeds as I mentioned above are more for those web-savvy people (such as other bloggers) and one thing I find is that most bloggers, or web-savvy people do is not click on AdSense ads, or not as often as other people might want. I know I don’t really click on them because ads are rarely ever interesting (enticing) enough for me to click.

I have found that AdSense and other text links ads (or ads in general) are for the not-as-savvy computer users who are ‘tricked’ into thinking they are links and thus click on them to be moved to another page. That is why you are able to adjust colours of the ads to match those of your site (as I have done). I find that if your website receives savvier computer users you might find yourself earning less revenue on these types of ads. This is where you might want to look at Private Ad Sales and be paid on a weekly, monthly basis.

In regards to RSS Feeds I believe they will not be as effective in generating revenue using a service such as Google AdSense due to the fact that most bloggers, computer savvy people are less inclined to click on an Ad since I do find that these types of people make up the vast majority of people who use them (RSS Feeds). This also was somewhat proved to me on a previous mentioning from John Chow saying he has never really made a large sum of money off the ads on his RSS Feed. People are just not as inclined to click on an Ad in an RSS Feed as they would be on a website.

Though I guess time will tell as more people introduce Google AdSense or other advertising within their RSS feeds. I could include AdSense into my feed but I just do not see the point so I am not going to do it. Am I then SoL for the potential of generating a little bit of extra income? Probably not, I mean after the 2 years I have been using Google AdSense I have not received a cheque from them. I have earned more with private ads than with AdSense and other text based advertising.

I still stand by the fact that if you do not generate a large amount of traffic then cost per click ads (such as AdSense) will not fetch you much in revenue generation. If you are just starting out I don’t think it hurts including service such as AdSense, but if you are not receiving mass amounts of traffic then don’t be expecting a monthly payout. Look at selling Ad space privately until you get more traffic.

What do you think about ads such as Text Link Ads, or Google’s AdSense? Do they work for you?