Thursday, May 20, 2010

On Google Ads and other "ad revenue streams"

Updated Sep 7, 2010
Today I received an email from Makersmarket. They ceased operation. Their business model didn't work. I guess that the high monthly fees they charged made other sellers to pull out as well.


Updated July 9, 2010
The book promised by makersmarket never showed up. (I also closed my "store" on makersmarket because the fees were really eating the little revenue I made there.) Therefore, I took out their logo as well (shown below for "commemorative" purposes).











This has nothing to do with Arduino, but I thought it is still a piece of information (that others may find useful) and not just noise.
Out of curiosity, I signed up with Google Ads (aka AdSense) when I first developed this blog. I could have filled the screen with "AdSense gadgets" as they are called, by I chose the most modest of the advertisement modes, the one that displays a few line of ads between postings (plus one at the bottom of the page).

A year later, I made US$30. Well, I did not really cash it in, since Google sends out checks of a minimum US$100. So I will have to wait patiently (and write diligently) about 2 more years to see any money from Google ads.
Also worth mentioning is the number of hits ("page impressions") for the last year: 37K.

A little rough estimate of adafruit.com potential revenue from Google ads (if they would display Google ads) is somewhere around US$3,000 a year, which would be 100 times more than this blog (I remember them mentioning 1M pages served; that would be roughly 30 times more, which looks hugely underestimated). Again, $3,000 if the ads would be lightly displayed. Not bad, but not great either, considering they have sales in excess of US$1M a year.

On the same line (ads), also out of curiosity, I signed up with Amazon, although I did not start using their service yet. Expect some postings on books I read (or plan to) in the future, when I will find the time.

Thirdly, makersmarket, where I listed assembled wise clocks, offers a book (a value of $25) to the first 50 fellows who display their logo. Which is exactly what I did yesterday. This would be a much better ("efficient") deal than Google Ads, obviously.

And lastly, I got hooked up, also out of curiosity, with yet another "ad revenue stream", a business model developed by a friend who is trying to take over Google (I am kidding, evidently). The result is the "Rent this space" box on the right column.

Now you have all the explanations and excuses for all the ads you see on this blog. As they say, "don't blame the player, blame the game". Seriously, it is just a way to get a little understanding of what's going on.
I cannot resist to close with another saying: "if you are not outraged, you are not paying attention".

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