Thinking about dumping Adsense

[Andy]

Adsense earnings have now plummeted so much so that only a few pages make significant income. I am seriously thinking about erasing adsense from my sites and switching to affiliate programs, selling ad positions or marketing my own products where applicable.

The reason for this decline is because too many other sites host adsense and google want the highest paying ads in sponsored search results rather than affiliate sites. So affiliate sites only get the low bidding ads.

So now is maybe a good time to abandon adsense?

For example, I might make $3 a month from a whole web site that I built with my own unique content and added some ppc ads to or I might make over $100 a month from a site that I marketed an affiliate product from. Maybe this is not as theoretical as it seems 

[SensoVision]

I would disagree, previously I was thinking about dumping them myself but last few months income grow up a bit, it's not much but I see some promising tendencies. In meantime I'm trying affiliate programs but without any income yet, on the good note I've got few requests from advertisers recently so got some steady income. I guess it's probably best possible way of monetizing site but unfortunately it would only work for certain resources, so guess AdSense doesn't have any good replacement in current moment.

[Andy]

I think you did a good job with your adsense placement and blending in with this site. So you should be getting clicks. But my problem is the pay per click is now so low. And every click is a visitor lost from my site. Some people will pay $1 to get somebody to subscribe to a list but adsense will happily take your visitor for say 6 cents.

I've got few requests from advertisers recently so got some steady income.

This is the best form of online income. It's one I recently started to build on with my free ads sites.

Affiliate programs only work where you are recommending products that you use. For example, I am making over $100 a month by continually recommending a product that I personally use every week. Also I recommend some eBooks that I purchased and found to be valuable sources of information. One of these earned me huge multiples of what I originally paid for the book.

[SensoVision]

I think you did a good job with your adsense placement and blending in with this site.

Thanks for compliment! Although I'm thinking about creating new design in near future so maybe they wouldn't fit into it as good as now.

So you should be getting clicks. But my problem is the pay per click is now so low. And every click is a visitor lost from my site. Some people will pay $1 to get somebody to subscribe to a list but adsense will happily take your visitor for say 6 cents.

sounds like a real problem. if I found myself in similar situation I'd probably dump them as well. Wonder why clicks are so cheap... I guess that you may display them on page which have high competition... maybe it's good idea to try them on different topics to see how it would perform?

Affiliate programs only work where you are recommending products that you use. For example, I am making over $100 a month by continually recommending a product that I personally use every week. Also I recommend some eBooks that I purchased and found to be valuable sources of information. One of these earned me huge multiples of what I originally paid for the book.

yeah I know you have different approach to affiliate programs and it's probably the reason why they workingfor you.

[Andy]

When I first started with Adsense I was amazed by the system and it really worked well. But now I am keeping the adsense ads low key on my sites rather than making them the most wanted click.

I am returning to affiliate programs and my own product where applicable. Also, people should look towards capturing leads.

This site I built today is a nice example of how I focus on capturing a lead (somebody who registers an interest in your product/service): http://www.squidoo.com/e-playbusiness/

You may be suprised that I built this site "today" even though I also installed an air-con unit and went 10-pin bowling, but it's true. I spent maybe 1 hour building this site ( OK, maybe 2-hours, I can't exactly remember). The process I followed is:

Start with a keyword in mind.
Register an un-taken related keyword lense with Squidoo.
Write an article about my subject.
Link to a YouTube video about the subject.
Create an aweber email list campaign.
Make a basic subscription page for the email signup page. Upload this to another site.
Insert the code for the email subscription into my lense as an iframe.
Publish the lense.
Link to it from my other sites etc.

I started to post my recommended online business-building resources here: http://www.aweconsulting.co.uk/resources

I expect the small amount of effort I put into building this site will result in 100's of leads for my advertised product over the coming months/years. The secret is to actually do it rather than procrastinating. I also, realise that what I posted is far too brief in explanation of the exact steps to take but it gives you an idea and me some idea to produce a tutorial in more detail if there is demand.

[mic_comte]

 And how do you find affiliate programs for specific topics?

 The reason most of the people monetize their site with Adsense and not with affiliate programs is that they know only about Adsense (like me).

[Andy]

The reason most of the people monetize their site with Adsense

It's because you just cut and paste some code and there is minimal effort required.

If you want to match your existing content with an affiliate program there are 1000's in categorized lists at places such as www.cj.com Or you can search for one.

[mic_comte]

 Yes indeed. Thanks for the link, I will look at this site.

[SensoVision]

I believe that people go with AdSense not only because minor efforts but because with Affiliate programs they mostly work with programs paying not for clicks but leads and sales, therefore they have to wait for customer to buy some service and there is always possibility that customer change his mind or tracking cookie would be blocked and you'll never get paid for this. In time when Google would pay you for click once it would be done and no cookie problem would appear.
I'd check CommisionJunction recommended by Andy as I've used it myself years ago and it has good amount of advertisers to choose from. I also would like to recommend other company I'm working myself ShareASale.com(you can see 88x31 banners from it on the bottom of this page). It's not as big as CJ but advertisers most time approve you much faster.

[fruit-engine]

Personally, Adsense has so far worked well for me (someone I know earns around a thousand dollars a month from his site-->I'm so jealous ).  But if you really want to dump adsense, then you could check out the alternatives to it.  Threadwatch has a list here: http://www.threadwatch.org/resources/advertising/contextual/adsense/alternatives.

[SensoVision]

Welcome to forums Fruit-Engine! It seems that you just need to pick right company to work with, AdSense still leading in my eyes as it give good revenue for minimal efforts from publisher side so I'm not going to dump it any soon.
Anyway I've just thought to write about another company I'm using myself, I'm talking about Kontera, you can actually use it along with AdSence or other program as it doesn't take any physical space but instead find a words in the text and convert some of them into links which direct to company related to this keyword, for each click you got a payment. I've wrote about it in this thread. It should perform very well in my opinion for blogs, forums and other dynamically changing sites where it would be hard to pick new banners manually.
I think it's worth to check(BTW you may see how it work if view any thread on our forum as a guest, for members it's disabled).

[Andy]

if you really want to dump adsense, then you could check out the alternatives to it.

I already did. The alternatives are not ppc ads, they are links to your own product, paid ads where you cut out the middleman or links to your own product. If you only get circa 5 cents per click you should erase adsense from that page and replace it with something that doesn't make you seem like a broke, starving scavenger.