Is AdSense a valid business model for publishers?

November 22, 2005

Question:
I’ve been reading a lot of posts about people giving up their job for adsense & legacy publishers relying on adsense for an increasingly large portion of their ad revenue. And sensible advice has always been to diversify your income sources (regardless of the business you’re in), particularly when Google was the only real player in town.

But what with Yahoo, & MSN in the near future, both entering the contextual ad market, is online publishing that relies on contextual advertising now a truly valid & sustainable business model?

Answers
< -> Yes, I think so. The online advertising market is just picking up, thanks to contextual advertising. And if you have serious quality traffic, you can think about monetizing your site(s). Competition between ad services is also picking up - and very beneficial for publishers. So the outlook is quite good IMO.

< -> This sounds like mostly a question of semantics.

Is it “valid”? I’d love to see a reason why not. Is it “sustainable”? It’s all in how you define the term and what timeframe you choose. IMO it’s just as sustainable as any other online venture.

< -> I think AdSense is a valid business model but it’s not a good one. You still need to diversify to spread the risk.

It’s difficult but if you have one website which gets 75% of its traffic from Google and if you’re solely relying on AdSense for your income then you are taking a big risk. A search engine update, or even worse, getting banned from AdSense could take away a huge chunk of your income.

It’s better to diversify. You need multiple income streams from multiple sources to spread the risk.

By the way, my income is still not as diversified as I want it to be. But I’m working on it by getting another income stream (mainly PPC, but unforunately I haven’t cracked that nut yet).

< -> Yeah but businesss is risk. Most businesses fail.

< -> Is it “sustainable”?

That would depend on your ability. If you refuse to fail, then it is a sustainable business model. The options are only increasing, giving more options to those like us, who simply refuse to fail. Diversification is always the correct safety net to use.

We may switch oars in the middle of the row, and we have many times, but we never sink the boat.

< -> Our sourcing is today an wide spreaded business term.

The fate of every print publisher is determined by his ad selling department. A print publisher has with the best content no chance, if he has a weak ad seller.

But in online publishing, there is out sourcing possible. Why should I bother to sell my ad space? I am a very bad ad seller. There is so much more interesting in the wolrd, than to sell ads.

So my business model is, I am a publishing house, my ad selling department is complete out sourced and named Google AdSense.

BTW, I and my wife have now both press cards.

< -> It’s better than what I had been relying on in the past (affiliate programs).

But I don’t want to rely on contextual ads only. A stool with three legs–contextual ads, affiliate reviews, and direct advertising–seems to me to be pretty stable.

Author: roitracker
Source: WebmasterWorld.com