If you’re thinking about monetizing your website or blog, Google AdSense is one of the easiest ways to start making money online. But how much can you actually earn with AdSense? Is it worth it?
The truth is, AdSense earnings vary widely depending on your niche, traffic, and ad placement. Some websites make only a few dollars a month, while others generate thousands.
How Much Can You Earn With Adsense?
Google AdSense pays $0.10 to $1 per click on average, with earnings varying based on factors like niche, traffic location, and ad placement. The average RPM (Revenue Per 1,000 Impressions) ranges from $1 to $30, depending on your website’s content and audience.
You can use the Google Adsense earnings calculator to estimate how much money you can make yearly, based on page views, region, and category.
Here are some examples based on 50,000 page views in the Americans region:
- Arts & Entertainment - $900
- Business & Industrial - $2000
- Finance - $2000
- Games - $700
- Travel - $1700
What Do You Need To Make Money With Adsense?
To make money with Adsense, you need three things:
1. A website that meets Adsense guidelines
Adsense has policies related to website content, copyright laws, ad placement, traffic sources, and more. To make a career as an Adsense publisher, you must ensure that you will never violate these rules.
2. A website with a lot of high-quality content
Besides being compliant with Adsense policies, you need to have a lot of content published on your website. Although content can mean several things (videos, images, etc.), you need original and unique TEXT content (blog posts, articles, how-to guides). Of course, with the text, you can have images and videos, but text has to be the central part of the website.
3. A lot of traffic
To make serious money with Adsense, you need a lot of traffic. Adsense is unsuitable for websites that only receive a few hundred daily visits. You can still run Adsense if you meet the other two guidelines, but you should not expect to make a living out of it.
Factors Affecting How Much You Can Make From Adsense
For every ad click, Google will pay you a certain amount (from a few cents to a few dollars). So, the amount of money you will make from AdSense depends on the number of clicks your ads receive.
How big that amount will be depends on the following factors:
Volume of Traffic
Obviously, the more people visit a website, the more likely they are to click on one of the Adsense ads.
Type of Traffic
This is equally important as the volume of traffic. When you have an AdSense website, you don’t just need any traffic; you need targeted traffic, i.e., people looking to buy something or solve a problem, and they come to your website for help.
These people are likelier to click on an ad than those who visit your website to read the latest news or hang out in your forums.
Type of Website
This is related to the above as the type of website makes a big difference in the amount of money you can make from Adsense. For example, a website with funny videos will make less from Adsense than a website with in-depth articles.
The reason is that people will visit the website, view the different videos, and then leave since they are not looking to solve a problem or buy something.
On the other hand, people visiting the in-depth articles website are likelier to click a related ad after they read an article that helps them understand a concept, make a decision, or solve a problem.
Ad Placements
The type and location of ads are also important. Ads in the page's main content get more page views and have a higher CTR (click-through rate) than ads in the sidebar.
While the ad position matters, you should not take risks to achieve a higher CTR. When placing your Adsense ads on your website, make sure that you read and follow the guidelines for ad placement given by Adsense. Also, remember that Google is punishing websites with ‘too many ads above the fold’.
In other words, you can have ads above the fold and earn more, but at the same time, you should avoid exaggerations. One AdSense unit in a similar way, as shown below, is enough.
From experience, one of the best positions to place an AdSense ad in content-rich websites is at the end of an article or blog post to get a good CTR and revenue without violating any guidelines.
Competition
The ads shown by the Adsense system come from Google Ads. Advertisers using Google Ads campaigns to promote their products or services pay Google money every time someone clicks on their ads. Out of that money, Google keeps a percentage (around 40%), and the rest is paid to the publisher.
Now, the amount of money PPC advertisers pay for each click depends on several factors, one of which is competition. The higher the demand for advertising for a particular keyword, the higher the CPC and the higher the publisher's earnings.
So, if your website topics are based on popular and high-competition keywords, you have a better chance of making more from Adsense than a website with general content that people like to read but do not search for on Google.
This is also why niche websites perform better in Adsense (if they have a lot of traffic and content) than websites of general interest.
