- Hey everyone it's Neil Patel here
for another Q&A Thursday video.
I'm here with Adam LaDolce from Viewership.
- Hello everyone.
- And this week's question is ...
- This one is from Albert Santiago de la cruz,
and this question is very pointed to Neil,
what do you think of AdSense?
- I hate AdSense. I hate AdSense.
- We call him the AdSense hater, that's his nickname.
- I hate AdSense, I hate YouTube ads, no offense YouTube,
no offense Google because you're making good money from it
and other people are as well, good for them.
I hate Facebook ads because you can now
monetize your videos on Facebook.
I hate any form of banner ads.
And the reason I hate ads is for one thing,
well technically I don't hate ads, I like buying ads.
- Yeah.
- I just hate putting ads on my own website.
And here's why I hate putting ads on my website.
Number one, if I put AdSense on my website,
I'm getting a fraction of the money.
Google the middleman is keeping the other portion
and there's nothing wrong with that.
They're in business to make money too and they do it,
but you as a publisher you're not keeping the majority
of the money, or you may or who knows what the split is.
But I don't think everything is crystal clear
on how much you get to keep.
Number two, if someone continually advertises
on your website, that means they're making more money
than whatever they're paying you.
And they're just not paying you money,
they're paying Google money
and they're paying Google more money
than whatever you're getting.
Which means they're making more money
than whatever they're spending.
So if they're making more money,
that means you would make more money
if you just sold a product or service like they are doing.
To give you a good idea,
Adam puts AdSense on your YouTube videos right?
- I do.
- He has over a million views, that's a lot.
How much revenue do you generate from those ads per month?
- About $2,000, $2500.
- $2,000 to $2500 a month.
That's not bad, that's a good amount of money.
But with your YouTube channel when you first started off
and you started selling info products and Ebooks
from that same traffic,
before you even had your own website,
how much revenue were you generating when you did that?
- Yeah like 10X that, easily, when I first started.
- So he was generating $20,000 a month roughly.
That's so much more than putting AdSense on your sites.
You get what I mean right?
- Yeah.
I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't use AdSense
because I hate Google.
I love Google, it's my favorite search engine.
I'm just saying you would make more money if you created
your own products or services and then you were the one
who were doing the advertising.
You don't wanna be the person
at the bottom of the totem pole.
You wanna be the person who's buying the ads.
You don't wanna be the person who's serving ads.
- Yeah.
- Right?
Technically if you're Google and you're serving ads
you'd be at the top of the totem pole
but you don't wanna be the person placing ads
on your website, you wanna be the person
who are buying the ads
because that's where the money is.
- I also just one last thing on why I personally hate
AdSense or at least relying on that as your sole
source of income is that your entire livelihood in life
is all dependent on this other company.
Basically Google is your boss.
Like Google can fire you and they can shut you down,
they can demonetize you, especially on YouTube
and then suddenly your business,
let's say I have known YouTubers who make
$50, $60,000 a month from AdSense, you get demonetized,
you're out. That's it.
- There goes your income.
And if you wanna do ads, you can use AdSense, but consider
AdSense, consider direct ad sales,
consider signing up for other media partners
or ad partners, do direct sales, whatever it is.
And by doing that, you won't be as reliant on AdSense
and then you'll have income coming from multiple places.
So if something wrong happened
at least you'd still be making money.
- For sure. Yup.
Sponsored videos that's also a good way,
sponsored blog posts what do you think?
- I don't like sponsored blog posts
but you could do that as well.
- Yeah.
- You have to make sure you leave a disclaimer saying,
"This was sponsored," whether it's a video or a blog post,
it's just the ethical thing to do.
I think in some countries it's required
but in general you should do it because it's ethical.
- Interesting. Cool.
- So that's it for this week's Q&A Thursday video,
if you want a question answered on next week's video,
leave a comment below.
Either way I'll answer it, thank you for watching,
please subscribe, comment, share, like.
I appreciate it, thank you very much.