The Danger of Relying on AdSense

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The Danger Of Relying On AdSense

By: Nathan Weinberg
2008-01-30

Incredimail, an Israel-based fun email company that is publicly traded on the NASDAQ, has a business model consisting entirely of revenue...

...from Google AdSense. The company discovered the danger of that single stream earlier this month when their AdSense account was disabled, but the rest of the world got to see that common problem unfold in a unique way: They stock tanked.

Incredimails stock, traded as MAIL, fell 30% in a single day on news that the company had lost its means of making money. In the interim, the company probably could have found another partner, like using Yahoos Publisher Network as a backup, but instead they watched as the market lost confidence in their company. It took 11 days to reach an agreement with Google to resolve matters, and since then the stock is up, but still off 21.92% from its price three weeks ago.

There is a lot of danger in solely relying on AdSense. I use AdSense, but I also have Blogads bringing in a little extra, as well as an Adify spot that is funded by ComputerWorld and significant Amazon referral revenue, and its still not enough to cover our expenses. For the last two months, weve been trying to solicit ads from tech companies and startups, but without any sales experience, it hasnt been all that successful. I need to figure out how Andy Beal does it.

If you are relying on AdSense, and only AdSense, as your primary source of income, for gods sake, just diversify. Try other, complementary ad networks, try finding something in your niche, try selling ads yourself or finding someone to sell ads for you. At the very least, sign up for an account with another contextual ad network, like Yahoos, so if something goes wrong with AdSense you can rotate in the new code.

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About the Author:
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.


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