Since I started this blog a little over a month ago, it has had around 700 page views (not big by blogging standards, but still nice), 800 ad impressions, and 2 clicks. Those 2 clicks earned me very very close to $0, as close as you can possibly get and call it revenue (take a wild guess what that $ amount was). On top of it, these clicks happened on the very day I put the blog online — so it’s clear that was me clicking.

Let’s look at all the cons of having Google Ads on my blog. (1) I generated exactly $0 of cash from them, (2) it took me time to set up, (3) it eats up prime real estate on my pages, (4) it cheapens my content,  and (5) the ads are not even useful to my readers — they don’t click on them as I’ve discovered, and frankly, I don’t blame them.

Therefore, I will use the real estate for something else, and I will “monetize” my blog in a different way; in the same way as I do every “side” conversation I have with clients, sub-contractors, colleagues: in completely unforeseen and un-quantifiable ways.

In reality, like most bloggers, I write this blog in the first place because it forces me to identify and organize “nuggets” of information that I come across or generate. Second, I write it, again like most bloggers, in the spirit of participating in my professional community.

Making a few cents or dollars, as a third-rank motivation, is not worth the real-estate that Google Ads consume.

Instead I can strengthen the “message” of my blog pages quite a bit by making good use of that real estate; something much more interesting than ads. I am thinking of content that tries to convey ideas that are less transient in nature than the blog posts, in a way that is more compelling than a blogroll, and not hidden in a secondary page. For now, I’ll just post ads of my own making. Ha!

So… I am saying “Bye Bye Google AdSense, it was nice knowing you”.

(lingering fear: will this affect my google search Page Rank negatively?)