AdSense ROI: A real-world online advertising scenario

StartupSkills.com is talking about the ROI of Google AdSense and AdWords.

For those of you who have been in a coma for the last couple years, AdSense is Google’s text-based ad service for content-driven web sites, and AdWords is their keyword-targeted pay-per-click ad purchasing system. Both programs are well executed, and extremely successful to the point of literally redefining online advertising. (I talked a little bit about the basics of pay-per-click advertising for small business in a previous post.)

Anyway, back to the post on StartupSkills.com.

Richard gets “vaguely specific” about the performance of his Google-based ad campaign and the sales of ads on his site. (And does an admirable job of skating around Google’s Terms of Service “gag order” on discussing specifics.) The bottom line is that Richard not only getting good ROI on his AdWords dollar, but his AdSense revenues are actually paying for it with a little profit left over.

“…AdSense now fully subsidized the entire costs of this blog, including advertising. I’ve throttled advertising budget to about $100/month (which gives me about 25,000 impressions and two hundred click-throughs). AdSense recoups both this and my hosting costs, and a little extra besides.

Impressive results, to say the least– especially when he’s not selling a product on the site beyond his blog. His site already has one of the better guides to successful use of the programs, and it’s nice to hear that it can work even for a blog site like Richard’s. I think I’ll re-read his excellent series on running an ad campaign. :)