How much can you earn?

Let's say you have a goal of earning $100,000 a year from AdSense. Is that possible?
Let's see ... $100,000 divided by 365 = $274 a day. So your goal is to produce either:
274 pages which earn $1 a day OR 548 pages which earn 50 cents a day OR 1096 pages which earn 25 cents a day
The following are hypothetical cases. To earn $1 a day per page, you need, per page...
400 visitors, 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5c payout.Or 200 visitors, 10% CTR and an average 5c payout.Or 100 visitors, 10% CTR, and an average 10c payout.Or 100 visitors, 5% CTR, and an average 20c payout.Or 50 visitors, 10% CTR and 20c average payout.Or 25 visitors, 20% CTR and 20c average payout.Or 20 visitors, 10% CTR and 50c average payout.Or 10 visitors, 20% CTR and 50c average payout.Or 5 visitors, 20% CTR and $1 average payout.
Let's assume you choose a goal somewhere around the middle, say aiming for 50 visitors per page and want 274 pages earning $1 a day. You'd need 274 x 50 = 13,700 pageviews a day.
Does that sound too tough? If so, you'd better look for more profitable keywords and ways to improve your click-through rates.
Let's try a different scenario. You choose more profitable keywords and make your $1 on average per page from, say, 10 visitors. 274 x 10 = 2740 pageviews a day.
That's looking easier to achieve. If your average visitor sees 3 pages, you now need 913 unique visitors a day.
Is that too tough to achieve in your niche? If so, create two sites, each attracting half that number, 456 unique visitors, a day.
Can't achieve those click-through rates and payouts? Then you'll either need more pages on your sites on more niche sites.
Some affiliates have a goal of writing one article a day and building one site a month.
Need a little more help reaching that $100,000 goal? Add affiliate commissions into the equation. Add a newsletter for repeat sales.
Choose the goal which best matches your site or sites.
Then start building keyword-rich pages containing well researched, profitable keywords, and get lots of high quality links to your site.
Please note, because of the AdSense rules, these are all hypothetical cases. I'm not allowed to give real cases. Real CTR rates and payouts vary hugely.
It's fast
Google usually approves web sites in less than a day.
After your site is approved, within a few hours a special Google spider will spider your site. Then it's time to paste the code into your site and the text ads will appear.
You can choose between either horizontal or skyscraper AdSense ads.

Experiences with AdSense

The payment you receive per click depends on how much advertisers are paying per click to advertise using Google's AdWords service. Advertisers can pay as little as 5 cents per click and as high as $10 or $12 in profitable niches, perhaps even more sometimes. You earn a share of that.
So your payment rates can vary enormously.
The rules forbid me from revealing my stats. However, in the tests I'm doing on five sites, the results have been startling - far better than I expected. The results are much better than I receive from many affiliate programs.
In the past, I've talked to affiliates who were happy to receive $5 or $6 CPM (per 1,000 page views). My results from AdSense leave such affiliate revenues far behind.
I've increased my use of AdSense. It's a winner!
If my results are typical, it helps enormously if you build very simple, uncluttered pages so that the ads catch the visitor's eye more than anything else.

Disadvantages Of Adsense

One problem is inappropriate ads. You don't want spammy junk advertised on your site. Google's standards probably aren't as high as yours. You can filter out 200 URLs, but in some industries that won't be enough.
The stats Google supplies are inadequate. They're easy to understand at a glance. However, they don't tell you exactly which ads people are clicking on, or which keywords are involved. That's frustrating.
Also, I'd like to be able to identify and block ads that have very low payout rates, without doing a lot of sleuthing and messing around.
The ad panels say "Ads by Google" - free advertising for Google. You don't earn anything if someone clicks on that link.
The minimum payout is $100, which is regarded as too high by sites which don't receive much traffic. That won't worry experienced webmasters.
Also, sites that want to display AdSense ads may not include "other content-targeted and/or text-based ads on the pages displaying AdWords ads." However, human beings review the sites. Rejected sites have been able to appeal successfully.
Another disadvantage is that Google doesn't allow you to share your stats with other webmasters. The AdSense Terms and Conditions say:
"Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. 'Google Confidential Information' includes without limitation: ... (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to you by Google..."
That's really weird. Web site owners need to be able to share such information and discuss successes and failures.
A big disadvantage of the service is that Google doesn't say how much its AdSense partners will receive. You'll just receive an unknown share of the revenue.
Only a company with the goodwill and respect Google has earned could get away with such a cheeky offer.
Google says:
"How much will I earn through this program? The AdWords ads you are able to display on your content pages are cost-per-click (CPC) ads. This means that advertisers pay only when users click on ads. You'll receive a portion of the amount paid for clicks on AdWords ads on your website. Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks."
So the only way to know how much you'll earn is to try it and see. If you want to bail out, all you have to do is remove the code from your site.
Don't put all your eggs in the AdSense basket. If Google discovers fraudulent clicks on ads appearing on your pages, it can dump your site from the service, and refuse to pay you all revenue owed. Some webmasters who claim total innocence have had this happen to them.
Google has made several changes to its AdSense FAQ, clarifying varying things. For example, it IS possible to apply for separate accounts for separate web sites. I've done so, and checked with Google that it's OK in my case. Read the rules - they look ambiguous to me. If in doubt, ask first!
Some time after the launch of AdSense, Google added "channels" which improve the tracking. I strongly recommend that you experiment with these.
Sites with "excessive advertising" are being rejected.
PLEASE read the rules and FAQ. When I looked, some advice in the rules contradicted advice in the FAQ. If in any doubt, ask their support staff. They're very helpful.

Disadvantages Of Adsense

One problem is inappropriate ads. You don't want spammy junk advertised on your site. Google's standards probably aren't as high as yours. You can filter out 200 URLs, but in some industries that won't be enough.
The stats Google supplies are inadequate. They're easy to understand at a glance. However, they don't tell you exactly which ads people are clicking on, or which keywords are involved. That's frustrating.
Also, I'd like to be able to identify and block ads that have very low payout rates, without doing a lot of sleuthing and messing around.
The ad panels say "Ads by Google" - free advertising for Google. You don't earn anything if someone clicks on that link.
The minimum payout is $100, which is regarded as too high by sites which don't receive much traffic. That won't worry experienced webmasters.
Also, sites that want to display AdSense ads may not include "other content-targeted and/or text-based ads on the pages displaying AdWords ads." However, human beings review the sites. Rejected sites have been able to appeal successfully.
Another disadvantage is that Google doesn't allow you to share your stats with other webmasters. The AdSense Terms and Conditions say:
"Confidentiality. You agree not to disclose Google Confidential Information without Google's prior written consent. 'Google Confidential Information' includes without limitation: ... (b) click-through rates or other statistics relating to Site performance in the Program provided to you by Google..."
That's really weird. Web site owners need to be able to share such information and discuss successes and failures.
A big disadvantage of the service is that Google doesn't say how much its AdSense partners will receive. You'll just receive an unknown share of the revenue.
Only a company with the goodwill and respect Google has earned could get away with such a cheeky offer.
Google says:
"How much will I earn through this program? The AdWords ads you are able to display on your content pages are cost-per-click (CPC) ads. This means that advertisers pay only when users click on ads. You'll receive a portion of the amount paid for clicks on AdWords ads on your website. Although we don't disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks."
So the only way to know how much you'll earn is to try it and see. If you want to bail out, all you have to do is remove the code from your site.
Don't put all your eggs in the AdSense basket. If Google discovers fraudulent clicks on ads appearing on your pages, it can dump your site from the service, and refuse to pay you all revenue owed. Some webmasters who claim total innocence have had this happen to them.
Google has made several changes to its AdSense FAQ, clarifying varying things. For example, it IS possible to apply for separate accounts for separate web sites. I've done so, and checked with Google that it's OK in my case. Read the rules - they look ambiguous to me. If in doubt, ask first!
Some time after the launch of AdSense, Google added "channels" which improve the tracking. I strongly recommend that you experiment with these.
Sites with "excessive advertising" are being rejected.
PLEASE read the rules and FAQ. When I looked, some advice in the rules contradicted advice in the FAQ. If in any doubt, ask their support staff. They're very helpful.

AdSense's advantages

AdSense is simple to join.
It's easy to paste a bit of code into your pages.
It's free to join.
You don't have to spend time finding advertisers.
Google provides well written, highly relevant ads - chosen to closely match the content on your pages.
You don't have to waste time choosing different ads for different pages.
You don't have to mess around with different code for various affiliate programs.
You're free to concentrate on providing good content and Google does the work of finding the best ads for your pages from 100,000 AdWords advertisers.
It's suitable for beginners or marketing veterans.
AdSense provides simple, easy-to-understand stats.
If you have affiliate links on your site, you ARE allowed to add AdSense ads. However, with your affiliate links, you must not mimic the look and feel of the Google ads.
You can filter up to 200 URLs, so you can block ads for sites that don't meet your standards. You can also block strong competitors.
Inevitably, AdSense is competing strongly for space on web sites with all other revenue sharing opportunities.
If you own a small web site you can plug a bit of AdSense code into your site and almost instantly relevant text ads that are likely to appeal to your visitors will appear on your pages.
If you own several sites, you need apply only once. This makes AdSense much simpler than joining a bunch of affiliate programs.
As you can see, I'm really keen on this revenue sharing service.

AdSense often easier than affiliate programs

Google's AdSense is a superb revenue generating opportunity for small, medium and large web sites.
Some webmasters are designing brand new sites specifically for serving AdSense text ads. (It's against the AdSense rules to design a site purely for AdSense, so you'll want to include a few affiliate links or sell your own product, too.)
Here's the background info:
AdSense overview
AdSense FAQ
AdSense policies
AdSense allows you to serve text-based Google AdWords on your web site and receive a share of the pay-per-click payment. AdSense ads are similar to the AdWords ads you see on the right-hand side at Google when you do a search there.
AdSense is having a huge impact on the affiliate marketing industry. It's often much easier to generate revenue from AdSense than from an affiliate program.
Weak affiliate merchants will die faster than ever.
If you're a merchant running a lousy affiliate program, now's the time to improve it FAST.

Earn Money with Google Adsense Third Party Ads

The Google content network has started accepting and displaying advertisements from qualified third-party vendors. This means that Google Adsense publishers will now have more variety of ad inventory and more ad spot competition which will help webmasters earn more money from the Adsense program.
Google suggests that Ad servers, rich media ad agencies and research firms can go through a certification process. They now have the ability to serve ads and measure performance through these certified third parties:
Advertiser ad servers: DoubleClick (DFA), MediaplexRich media agencies: DoubleClick Rich Media, Eyeblaster, EyeWonder, Interpolls, PointRoll, UnicastResearch firms: Dynamic Logic, IAG Research, InsightExpress, Factor TG
They also provide some insight to allow third-party ads on your site:
1. Third-party ads are only available in image or Flash - this means if you are opting for text only unit, switch them to image+text ads so that you can get full advantage of the ad competition.
Remember image ads are available in the following formats only and you can switch to these ad unit sizes to take full advantage of these third party ads
leaderboard (728×90)
banner (468×60)
skyscraper (120×600)
square (250×250)
small square (200×200)
medium rectangle (300×250)
large rectangle (336×280)
wide skyscraper (160×600)
2. Third-party ads usually target specific websites - make a custom channel into an targetable ad placement. Placement targeting allows advertisers to choose specific ad placements where they’d like their ads to appear. An ad placement can be an entire website or a specific sub-set of ad units within that site.
Of course you can use the recently launched Ad Review Center to filter specific placement-targeted ads. But I suggest you give this new option a try and track using channels to see if the your Adsense ad units are now making more money online.