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I’ve had AdSense ads on this site for a while, maybe a month or two. I never really expected to make much of anything off of them, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to stick them up.

Well, so far I’ve made a whopping $5.02 off them. I doubt I’ll ever even reach the minimum amount for Google to send me a paycheck. And they just clutter up the site, mess up validation, and display wonkily in most browsers (except for IE … how weird is that?).

I think I’m going to go ahead and take them down. I’ve been reading as of late that AdSense is “dead,” anyway. I mean, whatever the ads are selling, if people are clicking those ads, I’d much rather it be an ad for an affiliate program I’m promoting. Instead of getting $0.09 for a click, I stand to make anywhere between $20-100.

I did the math the other day. I have an ad for an affiliate promotion that’s received 204 clicks so far. Of those 204 clicks, four people have actually made a purchase. Each purchase netted me around $40. In all, I’ve made $166 off those 204 clicks, and I’ve spent a little over $20 for the ads.

Now, my AdSense ads have received 17 clicks total, out of 2,000-something impressions. My page CTR is 0.76% or thereabouts. Estimated earnings per 1,000 page impressions: $2.22.

I only get a few thousand page impressions per month. I might get lucky and pull in 10,000 page hits, so, if I’m lucky, I stand to make $22.20 off AdSense for a good month.

No, I’d rather those 17 clicks went to affiliate programs I’m promoting, or to other pages on my site. If I can average that many clicks (and it’d be more, since people tend not to click AdSense ads just on principle) per 2,000, say, I can get 135 clicks for my affiliate links per month. Based on what I’ve seen so far, that’ll lead to at least one sale, which in itself would probably be more than double what I’d make off AdSense, even assuming the best of circumstances.

In reality, I’d get far more clicks on natural links inside my content, and I’d most likely make more than one sale per 135 clicks (I wouldn’t bet on more than that, but I’d be comfortable assuming at least 2). So, after thinking about it, I really see no point in using AdSense on my personal site. I know there are ways to make money with it, but I don’t have the time or the desire to set up “made-for-AdSense” sites, or to work overtime building several sites with good search engine rankings (which is what I’d need to do to make AdSense pay off).

I’m taking the ads down soon, then, and you’ll see a whole new layout when I do that. I’m still trying to design a nice, clean WordPress theme with all the features I want. Soon.