I’m sure that many of you have been seeing posts on how Google’s Adsense/Adwords program is ripping off their users.  Here are some of the recent posts:

• John Chow - Google putting the Screw on it’s Affiliates
• Darren Rowse - An Open Letter to Adsense

These two have illustrated how Google has recently changed their policy towards referrals, and is lowering the payout on referrals.  They’ve also changed the locations that they’re allowing people to refer to them from.  While this does seem like a huge blow to their program, it is because they are trying to post good numbers at the expense of their affiliates.  I don’t think this will last for too long, as Adsense is a huge source of income for Google.  They’ll come around, I think.

I’ve also read a recent very interesting article from Bryan Clark on why you should remove your Adsense Code.  He makes very good points about Value Pricing:

• A low click thru rate leads to value pricing, where the value of a click is reduced to 10 percent of its value.  A click worth 50 cents might be reduced to 5!
• It decreases the value across all of your blogs, placing all of your code in the value pricing category.

While Bryan makes some very good points, I still think that Adsense is very useful to new bloggers.  While new bloggers are highly at risk towards being placed in this value pricing category, not all hope is lost.  If you’re going to Blog for a Bravia like I am, you have to make use of all the moneymaking opportunities you can use, and Google Adsense is an easy one to implement.

I’ll agree that being placed in the value pricing category can be frustrating, but don’t give up.  Use it as motivation to drive more traffic to your blog, and thus lead to more clicks.  With enough quality content and good traffic heading towards your blog, your CTR is going to increase, which should pull you out of the value pricing category.  I know that it’s possible, because I’ve had some really good days recently, and I’m sure it’s because I got out of the value pricing category.  It helps you all around.

Finally, has anyone else noticed that good is now providing ads that have a “more” link in the bottom?  We all noticed when Google had their arrows leading towards more ads showing on their ads, and I think this is another way that Google is looking towards increasing CTR.  This one is not particularly effective in my opinion, because it opens up the ads in the same window, driving people away from your site….. let me know what you think!

I’m going to send Darren Rowse an Email about this… maybe he’ll pick it up!

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