i also have had a hobby site for eons monetized with adsense. unfortunately for all its faults adsense is still king in monetization. that's why you see so many complaints in this forum when revenues decline. if better alternatives were around people would just abandon adsense and migrate. they know there's slim pickings out there.

as for me i had amazon affiliate years ago. started slow and then reached a significant amount but then amazon pulled some crap on me and banned my acct. i hear the revenue share isn't that great nowadays anyways. also had ebay partner. had some fantastic months with that too but the party ended eventually and i pulled the ads. got paypal donate and bitcoin links and both are flat liners with an occasional tiny blip.

haven't tried others like clickbank or media.net, my hunch is that they won't even come close to adsense. my adsense revenue this month is half of what it was last jan. but then admittedly i do very little work on my site these days. i just let the earnings accumulate for a year and then get one decent lump sum payment.

my advice, don't remove adsense. it may still come back, even if not to its past glory. you'd be hard pressed to find anything better right now.

I think you misunderstood the situation, satchmo: Adsense just increased its cut of the pie.

There is many desperate advertisers there for every niche looking for websites like yours.
You only need to show them your clicks are cheaper and more effective than the ones from Adwords.

It means hours of search and email sending, infinite patience to reply advertisers emails, but finally you will be rewarded with a less Google-centric business, your own business, not the Google's one.

Adsense just increased its cut of the pie.

No, AdSense/Google hasn't. Their cut was 32% and remained at 32% (AdSense for Content).
Nothing has changed in regards to Google's "cut of the pie".

@Lexur, please don't spread false information. 10+ years on WebmasterWorld, you should know better.

LuckyD, I have Adsense myself from 2003, june 23, (*) so actually I know what I am talking about.

If you think what I'm saying is "false information", go your way.

And due to these changes in the cut of the pie, although I know I can receive the rage from the Google fans, Adsense itself is not a business model for many websites anymore (mine included), just a bottom barrel resource for unsold inventory.





(*) I knew the launch of Adsense here, at Webmasterworld when I still had my older (and lost) username; this is the new one.

What might be helpful would be to cite the resource of information to avoid ambiguity.

For displaying ads with AdSense for content, publishers receive 68% of the revenue recognised by Google in connection with the service. For AdSense for search, publishers receive 51% of the revenue recognised by Google. These percentages are consistent, regardless of a publisher's geographic location, and are not in any way averaged between publishers. We don't disclose the revenue share for other AdSense products; the revenue share varies for other products due to different costs of developing and supporting these products.

[support.google.com...]

If you think what I'm saying is "false information", go your way.

My friend, this is not FOX news. Please look at the link that Engine provided. It's a fact that Google hasn't changed its revenue share with pubs.

Yes, AdSense revenues are declining for some publishers (myself included). Prices are all based on bidding. So maybe there's an inbalance of supply and demand? Google is a public company that is interested in making for money for its shareholders. It's not in their interest to screw publishers in any way.

LuckyD, I have Adsense myself from 2003, june 23, (*) so actually I know what I am talking about.

Blockbuster was founded in 1985, so I'm sure they knew what they were talking about too.

Actually, the question i was asking is whether anyone has had any success with requesting donations on their websites.

Actually, the question i was asking is whether anyone has had any success with requesting donations on their websites.

You posted in the AdSense forum, and the thread title does not refer to donations, only to AdSense. To start a new discussion specifically on the topic of accepting donations, perhaps Webmaster General [webmasterworld.com] would be a better section.

Here's an old thread on the subject of donations vs. AdSense: Comparing AdSense with PayPal donations [webmasterworld.com]

A broader search on the forums will likely yield more results.

@Satchmo So I experimented with donations a bit. Out of 40.000 people who saw the donation option within one week, not a single person donated. If you do have a real community, then you might have some success.

But most publishers tend to distance themselves from their audience, which is why it would be difficult have success with donations
(at least that's my theory)

I have managed on straight donation on my current site.

A lot depends on the degree of community around the site. I used to run a site for a local arts organisation (up to 8 or 9 years ago), This had a very low degree of activity but ads got a lot more clicks in those days and prompts to support the site through our Amazon affiliate links also paid off. You wouldn't believe it these days but despite daily visits being in the low two figures the site was self funding in terms of hosting and domain fees,

I now run a similar site that has five times the traffic but without the same sense of community and it comes nowhere near covering any of the costs.

I've just come in on this topic.

I have never had a problem with AdSense itself - the damage done over recent years has been with Google search relegating smaller informational sites from the index.

Many small sites are similarly affected.