AdSense Pays 78.5%

Google AdSense is probably the most popular blog and Web site advertising system around. It's a pay-per-click system - you get paid anywhere up to a few dollars every time someone clicks on an ad.

Almost anyone can sign up, although Google often throws people out of the program for ill-defined reasons and confiscates any money in their account ("you have committed one of the following evil things, hence we banish you"). In their defense, they have problems with "click fraud."

JenSense has spotted a article in the New York Times that claims AdSense pays out 78.5 cents for every dollar,a higher figure than most would have guessed. It's been "super-secret" until now. AdSense figures in general are kept secret, and AdSense users can be ejected from the program for revealing details of how well their advertising is doing. Is 78.5% accurate?? Who knows for sure.

Also read the comments at JenSense and Problogger for more details (and thanks to Problogger for the heads up).

I've run AdSense on some of my blogs and run it on some blogs for clients currently. I firmly believe that it works well on some blogs and Web sites, and not on others. For starters, you need significant traffic.

Consumer oriented sites seem to do well in general - especially when people are looking to buy.

Other sites may or may not. I suspect this blog would not do well, and probably won't try AdSense. I've got better uses for my valuable screen real estate - and yes, it IS valuable!

I will write up some very basic AdSense tips eventually - I'm still experimenting on a number of site. I have been able to sometimes Quadruple AdSense income with some very simple tweaks and experimentation.