As the saying goes, “Somebody will win millions of
dollars in the lottery this month. Just not you.”
Similarly, there are many websites and individuals that will
make lots of money in Google AdSense ads – just not you.
In looking at many of the “Web 2.0” companies
that are out there, most of them don’t have a discernible business model
(by “business model”, I’m talking about some definable way to
charge money and create semi-predictable cash flows). When pushed, and
asked how they’re going to make money, many Web 2.0 company founders will
simply revert to the knee-jerk, “we’re really focused on building a
user base right now. We’re not focused on revenues”. Or
worse, the response is sometimes “we’ll make money on advertising”.
Unless the company happens to be really focused on some segment of the market, which
specific types of advertisers will be interested in and pay a premium for, this
model just doesn’t work. Systems like Google AdSense which “aggregate”
a large volume of advertisers and connect them to a large volume of websites,
though highly efficient, won’t work for your software company.
Here’s why:
- Systems like Google AdSense are
generally determining which ads to send to your site by using their highly
sophisticated algorithms to find just the right ads based on the content
of your site. Problem is, if you’re a software company, most
of your content is probably not “public” (i.e. requires users
to signon) and as such can’t really be processed by Google. So,
you end up with a bunch of non-relevant ads (which irritate your users
and/or don’t generate clicks/revenues anyways).
- You have no way of
knowing/predicting what kind of revenue you’re going to generate. Google
gives you lots of reports and details on click through rates, eCPM
(estimated cost for a thousand clicks), and other useful information.
What they won’t tell you is how much the advertisers paid for the
ads, and what portion is coming to you. If Google decides someday to
take a larger portion of the pie, you won’t probably know (and won’t
be able to contest it anyways).
- Given that Google is using an
auctioning process (which is a good thing), there is essentially a “market”
for Google Adwords (what the advertisers use to promote their
product/service). The upside to this is that advertisers have to “compete”.
The downside to this is that like any market, prices can vary. Advertisers
may decide (independently or in collusion) not to “drive prices up”
by competing with each other. Or, the market may just change.
This has a dramatic impact
on your revenues. And you won’t know until it happens.
- Click fraud (or more
importantly, suspected click fraud)
is a major, major issue. If Google suspects
that people (or automated bots) are clicking on your ads to inflate your
revenues, they can turn you off. Period. No warning, no arbitrage,
no recourse. Period. There’s been a lot of talk about this
(I’ve had it happen to me on one of my personal sites). Google
is judge, jury and lead prosecutor. They don’t have to explain
anything to you (and they won’t) and what little chance at “evidence”
there was is gone because they will turn off your account immediately so
you can’t even see your reports. You were warned. [Note
To Self: This entire phenomenon deserves an article into itself].
- The magnitude of revenues made by even highly successful
(highly trafficked) sites seems to be pretty low. If you’re an
independent blogger, writing content for left-handed plumbers that enjoy
Broadway musicals, and making $10,000/month on Google Ads – that’s
a success. And trust me, you’re in the 99th percentile.
That’s just not that much money when you have those irritating
things called expenses. If
you’re a software company trying to make a living (and pay
employees, rent and other things) and generating even $20,000/month in
AdSense revenue, you’re still struggling. The fact that your
monthly revenue can drop from $20,000/month to $2,000/month overnight will cause you much loss of
sleep. Somehow, explaining to your team that the price for AdWords
like “CRM, industrial, engineers” has dropped by 50% is not
going to provide them much consolation when they can’t get a
paycheck.
Obviously, I’m being a little extreme here (but not
that much). I simply don’t think that 90% of the companies out
there that think they are going to build a business on AdSense revenue really
know what they’re talking about. If you really want to learn how
all this works (and what kind of money you can expect), I’d suggest you try it. Setup a website, subscribe
to Google AdSense, make a little money and just see what happens. Heck,
you can even extrapolate and say “well, I’ve got 100 users today
and am making $100/month…if I had 10,000 users, I could make $10,000 a
month!”. But, just do the math – and be realistic.
Note: All of this is really looking at advertising
revenue through systems like Google AdSense. If you’re planning on
advertising directly with partners and others that place a premium on the reach
you have with customers, it’s a different ball game. You lose the
efficiency of Google, but will generally have other benefits (like a fair
degree of predictability and control).
If you think I’m wrong, and your experience leads you
to believe you can build a
software business on Google AdSense (or its competitors), let me know. Would
love to hear your success stories – or even your hopes for a success story.