This forum started five years ago today on June 20, 2003. I'm not sure of the exact date of the start of AdSense but I believe it was sometime in June, 2003.

I wouldn't expect WW to start a new forum for every new idea that comes along. What was it about AdSense that motivated WW to devote a new forum to something that had essentially just started?

FarmBoy

I have AdSense account from the very beginning. I was very exited when they came up with adSense. Later I realized GOOG was just abusing us. Now I can only say that AdSense did not change much in 5 years. Very sad.

Good place to list how you found out about AdSense.

I found it in my log files, that pesky media partners bot did some crawling and was the bread crumb I followed towards signing up. Who said log spam never works ;-)

I belong to the Amazon affiliate program, and someone mentioned it on the discussion boards there in October 2003, I think. I checked it out and never looked back.

If thousands of dollars in earnings annually is being abused, I'd love some more abuse.

I learned about Adsense from WebmasterWorld before the separate Adsense forum was created.

My first day with Adsense was June 20, 2003.

Boy, it's been a great 5 years. And to think when we started, we didn't believe in it and only put it at the bottom of a few of our pages. Yet that placement showed us the income potential of Adsense, so we moved it up and used better formats. After a thousand placements, Adsense is the best ad program for our website

[edited by: alika at 5:50 pm (utc) on June 20, 2008]

I was doing AdWords for clients for a long time before I got my feet wet in AdSense. But one of my 'hobby' sites was featured in a bunch of newspaper stories, TV stories, and a link to it showed up on the state's official website - it took off like gangbusters, and even then, it took me another year to get over my "no ads sullying my website" mindset and conclude that I should be capitalizing on some of this. I added it late in the season - I think it was 2005 - and made about $300 total and couldn't believe it was that easy. Last year, I hit just under that amount daily until the season was over. This year, I'm already averaging well over twice what I did last year so far, and the peak hasn't hit yet. So I have high hopes, unless something crashes on me (always a possibility) And I've branched out to other sites as well, but none of them does as well as the first one.

If this is abuse then I'm a masochist laughing all the way to the bank with money spilling out of my pockets. Strike, dear mistress, and cure my heart. You're my venus in furs. :)

For a program that you can just set it and forget it, it is without peer. There's nothing out there that approaches it if you have the right niche and have cultivated the right traffic.

Actually I don't remember where I found out. But I do remember signing up and putting one adblock on every page since I was allowed in. I didn't monetize the site before Adsense. I also remember my wife being very skeptical a company named Google would ever send us any money.

I still run one Adsense block on all the pages. Difference between 4 years back and now is that I have quit my day job and doing this web business full time.

Thanks Adsense, you made it possible.

I also remember my wife being very skeptical a company named Google would ever send us any money.

Heh, so was my mother, till she saw the 1099 I got from Google for last year. Now, at age 77, she's getting ready to publish her first site.

netmeg, that's great for your Mother and I wish her all the best!

I found out about Adsense early in 2004 but I don't remember where. I know it wasn't here as I found WW as a result of looking for advice for using Adsense. Wish I'd found both sooner.

I used to really dislike adsense until Google cleaned up some of the trashy sites in the SERPS...Well I really disliked it for other reasons too but deceided to pull the plug with online sales and jump on board.

Why didn't I do this five years ago? No more PO'd customers, no more answering phones. Now I live in the mountains with nary a neighbor blasting music, fighting traffic jams etc.

Some think I was nuts for changing my strategy, but they don't realize the freedom...and the income. They're basically clueless.

"How do you do it?"
"What's it called?"
"Did you sell your website?"

...trying to pick my brain

"I'm a freelance writer" is the only thing I say.

Thanks Adsense:)

If I remember correctly I was sent an invitation by Google to join the program before the AdSense launch and promptly forgot about it until a few weeks later when I saw it on a site, checked it out, found the e-mail and immediately applied.

Read about it here, but I had to wait until February 2004 before it launched in my country. Signed up immediately and was approved a few days later - I recall the date because it was mother's birthday :)

Good place to list how you found out about AdSense.

For me, it all started at a Grateful Dead concert. Frank Zappa was there, and I said hello. We drank some of the punch, and before we knew it we were onboard what seemed to be a spaceship, surrounded by geeks, nerds, and other social outcasts. They all wore Google shirts, and I noticed that many of them had brought their dogs. I don't know what happened next because I blacked out, but when I went home and looked at my site, there were Google ads on some of its pages. I called Frank and asked him about it and all he said was, "Great Googly Moogly!"

>I blacked out

This happens when the GooG bot probing gets too much and your system switches to shut down mode for self preservation.

Grateful Dead, now that's a green movement long before Al Bore invented the Internet.