Google states that they pay out over $500 million each quarter to AdSense advertisers. Are they using old statistics, or is that still the case? Most webmasters I’ve talked with stated that they used to make a LOT of money with AdSense since it’s inception, but that things have changed. Maybe AdWords users have finally learned that they can specify different bid prices for Google vs. content network ads? Maybe it has to do with Google’s Quality Score addition?

It’s hard to say, but a quick scan of the top blogger sites show that most of them have phased out Google Adsense almost entirely, and are now monetizing their site through other means (affiliate market, other ad networks, paid reviews, paid text links, etc). I came across an interview with Markus Frind (of PlentyOfFish.com fame) from 2006, where he talks about a $900K check he received from Google for 2-months of Adsense. Yet if you look at POF today, you’ll notice that there are no longer any Adsense ads. They’ve now been replaced with something else entirely. Why the switch?

We run Adsense on a niche site that gets around 4000 hits a day, and the results have been downright dismal. Hopefully in the next week, we’ll break the $100 barrier, so that we can stop running the campaign, get paid by Google, and move on to something else that monetizes better.

How have your experiences with Adsense been?