Why I Want To Stop Using Google Adsense

Published By zooboole

When I started this website back then in 2015, it wasn't to make any money or any business out of it. The idea was to list answers to questions my friends often ask once so that I won't have to repeat the same answers when another friend comes. But after the project became a more complex learning platform, and that was about two years after the inception, I realized that I needed some financial support to keep me learning more and sharing. I had nobody to turn to. I tried a few people but no one took me seriously.
So I had to turn to some online income solutions. Even with that, I tried to talk to many bloggers to see if they could guide me, nobody, nothing. I then turned to Google Adsense, and since then Adsense has been the only mean of income for phpocean. So why am I planning to stop to use it now?

It's because I am not earning enough money with it. But there is more to that. I would have tried hard to make the incomes increase if Adsense did not have any other harmful side effects on the project. Now, let's have a look at those reasons that motivated my decision:

Adsense's policies dictate what content you should publish and how your website should look like.

I see this to be very limiting. It kills the freedom of expression of the publishers. People write for various reasons and on various topics. It doesn't encourage original content and it dilutes messages. Words and figures of speech have different meanings in various regions in the world. It's a mistake to judge content based on a single standard. In several articles I have been restricted to use terms like "longevity of software", "when do you spend client's money or funds, etc.", Images with AI illustrations, etc. The list goes on. Besides, they impose to you where you should place the ads on your websites implicitly shaping your website's design and content. I have a sever concern with this. I am pretty sure that ads won't show in this article because of those terms I am bringing in and the fact that I am criticizing Adsense. With their auto ads placement, it has become worse as shown on this image:

I want to have genuine, raw, and authentic content without being limited by a referee who does not know my rules of the game. I admit my blog is not super popular to earn. But, if I can feel this at my level, I guess people who are beyond me have been under Adsense slavery for long to make them happy so that they can earn enough. I don't even believe your earnings with Adsense would ever equal your effort. Nobody throws the sand in their food.

Ads should earn as far as one shows up on my website

Adsense displays ads even if it doesn't pay the publisher, and whatever happens, Adsense takes funds from advertisers. It's a cheat. It hurts to see that you had some hundreds of genuine visits but at the end of the day your income is just $0.0X These ads just got displayed to my visitors for nothing. Nothing.

Geolocalization injustice

Revenues from most countries, except the USA, Canada, Australia, and their liking, are dangerously too low. This happens especially to Africans and Indians. If Adsense decided to underrate our countries, then there is no need for me to use it. It seriously pains me to see that a whole day, hardly my content can earn $0.5 after all these ads displayed on my website because they judged that our content is not good enough for them. But, was it not good for us, we, in these countries you qualify for unworthy? If we must write for those rich countries' standards before our content gets to be seen as good, that is unfair and reduces diversity and creativity to one thing. So, Adsense shouldn't have reached here in the first place.

I do not trust the page views, CTR, Clicks counts from Google.

It's an agreed metric that only advantages Google. Compare your pageviews from Adsense and that from Analytics. Adsense always gives a lower count because that's where Google pays you, but the ones in Analytics can lead you to pay Google. It's a calculation system we don't have much idea on how it's done. We blindly agreed with their policy without having any clear understanding of what it means.

The event of AdBlockers

Besides, we have the event of AdBlockers. The audience of this website is an awakened one. Almost everyone here knows about adblocking. I noticed, since 2018 and especially at the beginning of 2019, that ads revenues have slow drastically down.

I thought Adsense had probably deployed some of those they algorithms and so on. Later in the middle of the year, I realized that the issue was rather coming from adblocking. So I made an experiment by trying to detect ad blocking and showing a message like the following:

With the help of adblockanalytics.com, I observed the ads display. The result was impressive and strange, only about 19% of the visitors blocked the ads now. I don't blame you guys, you did well and thought me a wonderful lesson.

Adsense's bad influence on publishers

The worst part is that sometimes I have judged myself and my content based on the mediocre earnings from Adsense. I waste between 4 to 6 months or more to earn just $100, the minimum threshold in my region. It's so discouraging, and several times I stopped writing because of that. I had no idea what to do to get something more encouraging. Besides, when you publish continuously, your earnings with AdSense reduce seriously because your visits increase. Adsense kind of assumes you are trying to scam them. When I don't publish, weeks later my earning will rise probably to $0.03 a day or $1.0 for my rare and special lucky days.

I respect my audience and myself

I want to exit Adsense for real. I want to offer pure content to my readers. I count on you to show me your appreciation by supporting the content creation. And If you can't at the moment, help share my contents.

No matter the outcome, I will try to always produce cool content with the little efforts I have. I won't bother you guys again with ads. I could maybe accept a sponsorship from a company or an individual. And that would probably be a simple sentence close to the content for just a short period. I have also thought of setting up a premium option which gives you access to some special features and content. I work towards creating more cool content to make sure you enjoy your premium account.

These changes will take place very soon. until then, see you.