As you can see from both of my blogs, I use Google’s AdSense as well as Yahoo’s Publisher Network contextual advertisement systems (on seperate blogs, of course*). Due to the over-protective rules of these programs I can not give any specifics about what my earnings are. So I won’t.

…but let me tell you, I am REALLY sick of stories like this.

They suggest that all that you have to do is start a blog or a web site about some random subject and lo’ and behold, you’ll be raking in the dough.

Nonsense!

That’s flat out incorrect. Not only is that incorrect, but it’s down-right unhealthy to continue spreading hype like this. I’m tired of it; enough is enough! It’s time to bring our feet back down to the ground; or at the very least one foot!

The money that I make from advertisement revenue does not even pay my monthly hosting bill, and I receive between 100 to 200 unique views per day.

No, wait. Let me do better than that. Here is a screen shot of my visitors statistics for this entire year so far. This is just ShadowsInMotion.com. These stats do not contain the visitor statistics for any sub-domain:

Let me repeat that ALL revenue combined from both blogs from all advertisements do not pay for my monthly hosting.

As I read through this story on MSNBC about how people are able to pay off their house in full, work from home, and get paid for driving their wife to work and various other bits, it makes me sick.

These stories suggest something that is not only untrue but is unhealthy, and may even be down right dangerous. They make people believe that they’ll be able to “make it on the web”. That it’ll save them from their financial troubles. Just make yourself a web site, slap on the text ads, and you’ll be good to go within about a year!

Why don’t they just call it a “miracle” and be done with it?

Read that article very carefully and you’ll see that they’re talking about sites that receive millions of visitors per month. Millions! Oh, I guess the worse receives several hundred thousand.

…ahem…

You know who receives those kinds of numbers? Not you or I, that’s for sure! Yet those are the numbers that you need in order to make any real money off of these advertisements. Without millions of visitors per month (or darn well close to it) then you’ll be doing good for those ads to pay for your hosting. Seriously, you’ll count yourself lucky if and when they ever do.

The next time that you read a story like this, or someone says to you that you should be “raking in the dough” with your site numbers - don’t you bloody believe it!

Fed up,
~Steph

* site lay out is subject to change. So you may not see one of the two advertisement systems being used if you are reading this article some months after it was written.

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