Does anybody else think adsense is a waste of time

[crash12345]

I made $100 in a year via autoblogging - spent over $105 on 15 domains - lost $5

[crash12345]

I get around £400 a month from adsense and my sever cost £129 a month so I'm not complaining.

can u share the link to your wbsite

[DejanK]

Adsense will only generate you as much money as the niche you operate in.
People bid on those keywords.
Such as in your case aquarium, fish, etc
So, if there isn't a lot of competition with those keywords then the people will bid smaller amounts. In the case of the $.07 click, that publisher only had to bid $.07 to win that keyword over and display his ad.
At one point, before I started working fulltime, I was making $200-$400 per month on adsense.
It's an awesome tool if your niche has a lot of competition.
Most of my clicks were directing to products, which if someone purchased would yield higher.
Try using affiliate marketing on your forum then.
Maybe you will yield more money from people buying products and you getting commissions then from adsense.

[testerv]

It happened again just 5 minutes ago...My ad clicks for the day went up by 2 clicks. My revenue went up $4. I checked my adsense revenue again after about 10 minutes and the 2 new clicks were still recorded but $3.50 of the ad revenue had been deducted. No, it wasn't me that clicked the ads.

My ad revenue has dropped over 50% in the last 2 months but my ad views have increased by 30% and the ad clicks increased slightly during the same 2 months.

[links4rank]

I didnot use any ad. Adsense earn me no money if compared with hosting, and times I spent.

[tyxla]

Adsense is not very profitable but is good for side cash

[PoC]

It comes down to audience size, market spending power and cost per click.

- and usually it's the cost per click that's the key.

Getting a few cents per click won't help unless you deliver millions of pages a month. Getting dollars per click is (obviously) better.

If you have a site that deals with the standard vices (gambling, drugs, sex/dating, marketing - throw in some legal and other medical/variants thereof) you can probably make a good return. As you can from an audience that is happy to spend a lot of money on their interests (like photography, boats, cars, computers etc.).

If your forums are strongly themed, Adsense should be efficiently showing the right kind of ads but some forums have a wider spread in their keywords and things can go awry.

Basically, you've got to be dealing with money-making topics to make money.

Few complain when Adsense is making money for them, but if it doesn't perhaps best not to use them. After all, otherwise all you're doing is giving free exposure and raising brand awareness for people who are paying you nothing. (Magazines for instance don't get paid ad. money on the efficiency of the advertiser's advert, they get paid for the opportunity to expose the advertiser to the magazine's audience.)

[steven s]

...Few complain when Adsense is making money for them...

Adsense is covering my hosting and licensing fees and them some. Enough that I need to pay towards my [US] income tax quarterly so I don't get a big bill come April 15.
I also supplement with vibrantmedia and viglinks.

[testerv]

Is there a way to request specific adsense advertisers? My site deals with hunting and fishing in Missouri. I never get ads from places like Cabelas or Bass Pro Shops. Instead my ads are for colleges and dating. On the other hand, when I visit Missouri newspapers I see adsense ads for Cabelas and Bass Pro Shops.

[carntheroos4eva]

Does anybody else think adsense is a waste of time

I'd rather have adsense than getting nothing from skimlinks.
Skimlinks is a complete waste of time and vbulletin should remove it from it's sponsors list as they decline users who sign up.

[Zachery]

I'd rather have adsense than getting nothing from skimlinks.
Skimlinks is a complete waste of time and vbulletin should remove it from it's sponsors list as they decline users who sign up.

Just because it doesnt work for you and your site, doesn't mean it isn't working for other people.

[carntheroos4eva]

Just because it doesnt work for you and your site, doesn't mean it isn't working for other people.

NO but it means if they are denying people who wish to use the system because you guys have it up as a sponsor it's not going to help pay your bills for you.

What I would do and this can be taken as a suggestion, is get rid of skimlinks altogether because there are better sponsors out there that people are using and getting better payments from.
They are just going to give people the run around.
I wouldn't want to be relying on them for a payment when all they are going to do is decline everyone.

[Trevor Hannant]

So because they declined users who perhaps don't meet their T&Cs we should drop them?

[LouisB]

When my gaming forum was pretty active i made next to nothing off adsense. So little i just took adverts off completely. My wordpress blog though earns about £5 a day so it's more than enough to cover the hosting bill.