The Untold Truth About Paid Advertising And Blogging

I have been blogging for some time now and felt like it was time to cover some topics that are a bit of a grey area–paid advertising.

A lot of bloggers like to shy away from this conversation as they think by talking about it, there will be an impact to their income.

I merely wanted to bring attention to the not so glamorous side of paid advertisements. This post is meant to be an informational piece for those who are interested in paid advertising and for new bloggers.

Image result for blogging lay flat

Every blogger has their own intentions for paid advertisements on their site. For myself, I merely wanted to break even on my domain name.

Which after a couple months of paid advertisements seems like an unachievable goal.

What Is It?

I have Adwords on my site through WordPress, which is run by Google. A similar software would be Adsense ran by Google or Gmail depending on how you have it set up. These are the same thing.

How It Works

I have rented out space on my site at the bottom of one of my posts. I don’t get to pick which post will have the advertising on it. As well as I have no say in the ads.

Google targets my audiences based on their algorithms and searches history. In addition to mainstream ads like Wix, Bluehost, and Fiverr.

If my viewer is part of a limited target it will show them one of the mainstream ads.

The other downfall is you have to make $100 in ads before you even see a dollar with your name on it.

Which you will see is almost impossible.

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The Not So Glamorous

Without my permission or even my knowledge, Adwords put pop-up ads on my sites with a mandatory play time before you could exit it. I personally dislike these ads and find them quite annoying. But once again I have no say.

The reality is in 3 months with over 5000 site views I have made a whopping 0.18 cents.

Out of those 5000 sites views, only 1326 visitors interacted with my ads.

Trying To Wrap My Head Around It

The thing that confuses me the most, is the breakdown of the ad payment.

PERIOD EARNINGS AD IMPRESSIONS STATUS
05-2017 $0.00 841 Unpaid
04-2017 $0.11 178 Unpaid
03-2017 $0.08 307 Unpaid

The month with the most ad interactions had no payout. Whereas the month with the fewest ad interactions had the highest payout.

Overall

As I stated in the beginning of this post, I am making this information public for educational and informative purposes.

I feel like there is A LOT of misinformation when it comes to monetizing blogs and the reality is it takes years to turn a profit. It is very unlikely that a new blogger will make a steady income in their first year.

Thus the focus of a first years blog should be having fun and enjoy the experience instead of stressing over dollar, cents, and statistics.

If you found this information helpful let me know in the comments and I will continue to make quarterly updates on my paid advertisement experience.

Remember you can also follow Lidsandtricks on Bloglovin’, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook,  and  Instagram.

 

 

67 thoughts on “The Untold Truth About Paid Advertising And Blogging”

  1. colleenewelsch says:
    Reply

    Not that I’m an expert, but I think you’ll have more luck making money from advertising if you sell ad space on your blog yourself. However, it’s very time consuming! Google does make it easier but I think the $100 is such a threshold. Think of all the free advertising they get because they never have to pay out! I believe there are other services that do the same thing…I actually need to do some research on this because I’d like to monetize my blog as well!

    COLLEENWELSCH.COM

    Liked by 2 people

  4. Heather says:
    Reply

    I just started and this really answers a lot of questions I had. It seems ridiculous to earn nothing from it when it is your hard work that developed the following and that is ‘forced’ to see the pop ups and ad content. There really needs to be a better way I agree!

    Liked by 2 people

  14. Jill says:
    Reply

    Thank you for writing this! I have wondered about Adsense and Adwords for quite a while now (knowing that my blog doesn’t have nearly enough traffic to make a penny). I’m not sure when it became so taboo to talk about, most people make their living elsewhere anyway. I’d love some updates in the future, this was super helpful!

    Liked by 2 people

  15. BrinaR says:
    Reply

    Very helpful! I was thinking of installing Google Adsense but it doesn’t seem so appealing anymore. Do you have tips on how to successfully monetize a blog?

    Like

  16. yasmin@vivid-tales says:
    Reply

    Hey 🙂 nice informative post, I kind of thought it would be like this, it’s all shiny on the outside but below the surface its often just not worth it. I also just started blogging and I agree it should definitely be about the fun in the beginning, also because it takes heart and soul to create content and beautiful articles and it shouldn’t put pressure on you… thanks for sharing I agree so much!

    Liked by 1 person

  19. beautybychi.tonelle says:
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    Certainly good information. I blog simply because I like to share information and that is so important especially when you’re first starting out.

    Liked by 1 person

  33. walkaboutdoc says:
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    I had never considered the possibility that I would make any income from blogging. I write because I have to write, yielding to the imperative brings a sensual pleasure to the act and an immediacy to my day. I get up wondering what I will write about after the sun goes down, or the next day.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. sportsdiva64 says:
    Reply

    Thank you for pointing this out. I’m not ready to monetize my blog yet, maybe not even at all. I’m such a newbie to this that I didn’t notice ads on my blog. It’s annoying for me to see them and I can imagine how people who read my posts feel when they see them. At first I thought about Adsense , but now that I see just what it’s about, no thank you.

    Liked by 1 person

  35. weirdotribe says:
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    I just started blogging because I can show it to my students as an example in my digital marketing basics classes. I’m new to that too and has a lot of learning coming up. This post shares a unique perspective, a hard real one. Thanks a lot.

    Liked by 1 person

  38. OBM Creations says:
    Reply

    Thank you for sharing your experiences. I am a new blogger and my aim is not to make money, but that would be a nice side effect for when I do buy a domain, etc. Your post gives some welcome insight into the matter.

    Liked by 1 person

  42. lifewithclottedcream says:
    Reply

    Thank you for this post! I used to run (perhaps still as I haven’t closed it) a YouTube channel and monetised it through AdSense. I made a grand total of $0.37 before they took even that away as I didn’t reach $100 in the first three months…

    You have to do something for the love of it as it is truly not worth the money!

    Liked by 2 people

  43. nursenikkifit says:
    Reply

    Wow I had no idea! I am absolutely brand new to blogging and I just plan for it to be a bit of a therapeutic hobby for myself, so I never intended to make any money off the website, but that almost makes me think what’s the point of monetizing my blog anyway if I only have a handful of readers? It could be off putting to put ads on such a small blog like mine which would then result in no one coming back :/ Thanks for the insight!

    Liked by 1 person

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