Google AdSense is one of the easiest ways to make money online. It’s simple to set up and can work on (almost) any website or blog.
The question that many people have is, “How much can you make from AdSense?”. Is AdSense a way to make real money online or just another marketing trick of Google?
Those who follow my blog posts know that I’m a big AdSense fan, and this is for a reason. I’ve been an AdSense publisher since 2008, and so far, I have earned more than $100K in AdSense revenue.
It’s the monetization method I use for some of my websites, and it has helped me make money from my content without having to do any extra work.
Once your website is approved for AdSense, you must add the AdSense ads and start making money.
It sounds too easy and simple, but this is how it is.
Of course, the amount of money you can make from AdSense depends on several things (levels of traffic, ad placements, niche, etc.), but this is the same for all ad networks and monetization methods.
What AdSense does best is to give you a reliable platform you can use without worrying about security, payments, ad delivery, or anything else.
Now, before getting into the details of how long it took me to reach that number and what I have learned in the process, let me clarify this:
While AdSense is a great way to make money online, it is not the most effective method.
There are other methods (for example, affiliate marketing, selling your products or services) that can generate more income and revenue from the same content and levels of traffic.
The problem with the other methods is that it requires much extra work to create a product, convince people to buy it, and make a profit.
At the end of the day, it is up to you to decide what the best way to monetize your website or blog is.
In some cases, you will find that AdSense is a better way, while in other cases, it is more profitable to invest in your own products or engage in affiliate marketing.
AdSense Success Story - $100K Revenue From Adsense
The numbers you will see below are related to one of my websites: caloriesecrets.net
Calorie Secrets is a nutrition/healthy living blog launched in 2012 and has generated more than $100K in AdSense revenue.
What you see below are screenshots from my AdSense account. They are shown in different parts since, over time, AdSense has changed some of the reports (to get the full lifetime revenue, I had to run a couple of different reports).
Let’s see how you can replicate my steps and earn the same amount from AdSense.
Step 1: You need a website with a LOT of traffic.
I know that for some people, this is not good news, but that’s the truth.
To make real money with AdSense, you need a website with a LOT of traffic, not just any traffic but organic or targeted traffic.
The good news is that getting high traffic levels is not as difficult as it sounds.
It’s not easy, but everything is possible with the correct SEO approach, even in the most competitive niches.
Step 2: Your website and Ads need to be optimized for mobile
Go to Google Analytics and check the percentage of your visits from mobile devices. It should be over 65%.
Use advanced responsive ad units for mobile: While the best practice is to use responsive AdSense ads for both desktop and mobile, for mobile, you can add an extra piece of code to your ad units to force their size on mobile.
When you use responsive ads, AdSense will try to show the best-size ads in the available space.
When your pages are viewed in a resolution less than 400px, AdSense may decide to show a 320x100 ad or smaller.
The best-performing ad units for mobile are 300x250 ads. By adding a piece of CSS code to your ad units, you force the size to 300x250 on resolutions below 400px, and thus, you increase your earnings.
Look how .adslot_4 is added to the top of the code (enclosed in <style></style> tags) and in the line starting with ins class=. Also, the display is set to inline-block and not block like standard ad units.
<style type="text/css">
.adslot_4 { width: 1000px; height: 90px; }
@media (max-width:420px) { .adslot_4 { width: 300px; height: 250px; } }</style>
<script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<!-- XXXXXXXX -->
<ins class="adsbygoogle adslot_4"
style="display:inline-block"
data-ad-client="ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXX"
data-ad-slot="XXXXXXX"
</ins>
<script>
(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script>
For more information, read this guide from AdSense: How to modify your responsive ad code.
Make sure that your ad units are shown at the top part of the page:
When a user visits your mobile website, you must show them ads as soon as they start interacting with your page since this will greatly increase your CTR and earnings.
Ads placed ‘above the fold’ on either desktop or mobile always perform better.
Enable Auto Ads
One of the nicest things about AdSense is that they always develop new products to help their publishers earn more.
One of these products that you should use is Auto ads. AdSense will show ads in the best possible places to increase engagement when you enable auto ads.
Step 3: Your website needs to load fast
There is a direct relationship between your AdSense earnings and site speed. The faster your website is, the more you can earn from AdSense.
This is a fact for the desktop version of your website but, more importantly, for mobile.
To take advantage of all the ad types explained above, you must have a fast-loading website.
Solving the speed issue is difficult, especially if you are uncomfortable making technical changes to your website.
Nevertheless, every effort you make to improve the speed of your website will have a positive impact on your earnings and SEO.
Some pointers to consider related to page speed:
- Go to the Google Page Insights Tool and get a report for your website. This will give you a very good idea of your current page speed score and what you need to do to improve it.
- Evaluate your server's performance (with the hosting provider's help) and get more resources if needed.
- Optimize your images before uploading
- Minimize the use of images within your content (especially for mobile)
- Reduce the number of active plugins
- Upgrade WordPress and plugins to the latest versions
- Use compression and caching.
- Consider using a Minify plugin.
- If you have a lot of media elements (images, videos), consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN)
- Add AMP support. This will improve your page load time on mobile since pages are cached by Google.
Step 4: You need to experiment with different Ad Placements
To maximize your AdSense earnings, it is necessary to keep experimenting and testing different ad placements until you find what combination works best for your website and audience.
What worked better for me or others may not be your best solution.
I noticed that I used the word combination of ad units, and I will explain below why, when testing, it is necessary to look for the best combination of ads to use and not just concentrate on the performance of an ad unit alone.
Bigger ad units can attract more ad clicks but not necessarily more earnings per click.
The ad units higher in your content (above the fold) can generate more earnings per click, even though the ads are smaller.
For example, you can place a 300x600 ad unit in the sidebar, but the earnings per click can be less than the 300x250 that you have below your posts or within your content.
Don’t forget that when a visitor clicks on an ad, it leaves your website and visits the advertiser's website.
This means they have left your website without having an opportunity to view the ads that can potentially generate more revenue for you.
So, what you need to do is the following:
Start by placing your ad units in the most obvious places. For example, on your posts pages (desktop) you can place an ad unit below the header, one ad below your first paragraph and one ad unit in the sidebar.
Leave the ads running for a couple of weeks. If your traffic is low, you can leave them running longer to have reliable statistics to base your decisions on.
Go to your AdSense account and view the ‘Performance Reports’, particularly the ‘Ad Units’ report. This report shows the number of views, clicks, and earnings for each ad unit.
Take note of the CTR of each unit, earnings per unit, and TOTAL earnings.
Next, change the position of some of your ads. For example, you can keep the top header ad and the in-content ad but remove the sidebar Ad and add a new ad unit at the end of your posts.
Keep this setup for a couple of weeks and review your AdSense reports.
Continue the above tests until you find the best combination of ad units and placements that generates the most earnings.
Best AdSense Placements for Desktop and Mobile
I have run the above experiments several times and found out that ad units that are placed within the main content perform better than ads in the header or sidebar.
What I use for my desktop websites is the following combination of:
One responsive Ad unit below the 2nd paragraph.
One responsive Ad unit below the 6th paragraph.
One responsive ad unit is below the post content (above the comments).
This is how it looks on the Calorie Secrets website.
For mobile, I use the same responsive ads units within the content (but force the size to be 300x250 for resolutions less than 400px).
Step 5: Keep Testing New AdSense Features
As mentioned above, every couple of months, the AdSense team releases new features that are based on studies, different metrics, and feedback they receive from users.
Their main goal is to help publishers make more money from AdSense, and from my experience, most of the time, new features can actually help you increase your AdSense income.
To take advantage of new features, log in to AdSense and click the Optimization option from the left menu.
Under Optimization click on the Opportunities tab.
Evaluate the different products available for your account, and don’t be afraid to test them out, but don’t do it blindly.
When testing a new feature, look at your AdSense Performance Reports and evaluate whether a new feature has contributed to increasing your overall earnings.
How long does making your first $1,000 per month from AdSense take?
I know that to be motivated to work on your blog, you want to open your AdSense account and see a decent amount of earnings, not just a few cents per click.
I know the feeling of logging in to AdSense (usually several times per day – I admit that this is a habit I cannot stop) and seeing only a couple of clicks to your ads that generate $1 in total earnings.
Don’t get discouraged.
If you make some calculations, you can find out how long it will take you to make some real money from AdSense, and this will help you focus on your work until you meet your target.
Take it step-by-step; there is no magic way to go from 0 to $1000 per month overnight. It takes time and a lot of work.
Before getting to the $1000, you will earn smaller amounts, and as long as you keep working on your blog, the amount will increase.
How long it took me to get to the $1000 from AdSense?
For Calorie Secrets, it took me exactly one year. The blog was launched in April 2012, and by April 2013, I was making $950 per month from AdSense. That amount increased dramatically since the website's traffic took off.
Before getting into the calculations part, let me say that it took me one year to get to $1000 per month, but this is not a period you can take for granted.
This gave me enough knowledge and experience with blogging and AdSense.
How do you calculate how long it will take you to get to $1000 monthly from AdSense?
You can do simple calculations to determine how much you can make from AdSense.
Note: This is just a rough estimate and does not guarantee any results.
If you already have AdSense running, log in to your AdSense account and look at the Entire Account by Month report (located under Performance Reports).
Click on the CLICKS tab and look at your average CPC.
This is how much you earn on average from every click on your ad.
Take note of the average CTR (Click-through Rate). This is the percentage of people that click on your ads compared to the number of people that viewed your ads.
Let’s say your average CPC is $0.17, and your CTR is 1.26%.
By doing the following calculation TRAFFIC X CTR X CPC, you find your estimated earnings for an X amount of traffic.
So, if your traffic is 1000 visits per day, the result will be:
1000 X 1.26% X $0.17= $2.14 AdSense earnings per day.
To find out how much traffic you need to get to $1000 per month, the equation becomes:
15000 (Visits per day) X 1.26% X $0.17 = $32.13 per day X 30 Days = $962 monthly.
An alternative way (provided that you have enough data in your account) would be to look at the impression RPM column of the report. This number tells you how much you can earn per thousand ad impressions.
To sum up this section, as an AdSense publisher, you need to understand that your earnings depend on traffic levels, the position of your ads (which has a direct impact on CTR), and earnings per click (which depends on the niche).
Lessons Learned
If I had to summarize my experience as an AdSense publisher for the last 9 years and outline my mistakes and lessons learned, I would say the following:
Don’t build your website to look like an MFA (Made for AdSense) – in the past, it was easier to build a website and use it for AdSense, but this is not the case these days.
Your primary goal is to create a rich content website that has useful and interesting content and offers an excellent experience for the users.
I mentioned above that the ads' position is important for CTR, but try to keep a balance and position your ads in places that don’t destroy the user experience.
You aim to increase website engagement and keep users happy as shown below.
If you decide to use AdSense, stick with AdSense – AdSense can work with other networks, but adding too many ad networks to your website is not a good practice.
It will reduce your AdSense revenue, slow down your website, and damage the user experience.
I did several tests in the past to combine AdSense and other ad networks, but in the end, I found that AdSense pays better and is a more reliable network to use than any other.
Earnings per click are different per niche – While calculating how much traffic you need to get to $1000 per month from AdSense, remember that earnings per click differ for each niche.
For example, ads on a digital marketing blog can generate $1.50 per click, ads on a fitness blog can give you $.040 per click, and ads on a news-related website $0.10 per click.
So, before deciding that AdSense is the right monetization model for you, run some reports through SEMRUSH to see the estimated earnings per click.
Note: The estimated CPC is what Advertisers will pay in AdWords. Your Earnings Per Click is approx. 70% of that number (the rest goes to Google).
Keep your design simple – I see many ready-made themes that support AdSense, but in most cases, the design ‘hides’ the ads from the user.
A website that is using AdSense should have the following characteristics:
The main container's width should not be more than 700px – you need to keep the users concentrated on the site's main content so they can view the ads.
If you go for a full-screen design, the ads will be pushed outside the center of the screen, increasing ‘ad blindness’.
Ads should not be too close to images – don’t place your ads next to images or very close to media elements.
This is against AdSense guidelines and the media elements, which reduce the attention given to the ads.
Users are more likely to focus on the image or video element, not the ads.
Give users incentives to visit your website repeatedly – One of your goals is to get clicks on your ads, but this should not be your only goal.
Your primary objective is to get users to visit your website again, so give them incentives.
Free tools, free guides, a useful newsletter are just some ways to create repeating visitors.
Make sure that you read and adhere to ALL AdSense guidelines – If you plan to use AdSense to make a living, then make sure that you read all the guidelines.
You must know what is allowed and never violate any rules.
Forget anything you may have in mind, like asking friends or family to click on the ads or doing any fancy tricks with CSS and javascript to increase your CTRs.
Google takes AdSense fraud seriously, and you don’t want to get on their radar for any reason.
Be patient, play by the rules, work hard, and results will eventually come.
Conclusion
Creating your own AdSense success story is not impossible. With the right plan and hard work, any website owner can use AdSense to make money online.
Here is a summary of the steps:
- Create your website and try to increase your traffic.
- Learn SEO and apply the concepts to optimize your website for search engines.
- Keep your design simple, but don’t make it look like it’s MFA.
- Respect your users and their experience. Give them incentives to re-visit your website.
- Make sure that your website and AdSense Ads are optimized for Mobile
- Improve your page speed as much as possible
- Test and find the best combination of ad placements
- Try new AdSense features and products released by Google
- Do rough calculations and set different goals (how much traffic you need to get to X monthly revenue).
- Be patient and work on your goals.
What is your experience with Google AdSense? Share your AdSense success story or questions.
