Over the past year or so, I’ve used Google’s AdSense in the left-hand column of this here blog. Others do it all the time and they seem to do very, very, well, financially.
To date, I’ve had a small ad or two up and I’ve made a grand total of $53.00. Why would a three-or-two-times-per-week blog only make about $3.00 per month with the most powerful advertising mechanism in the history of the 21st century? Because my content is all over the map. If I write a review of a book or a movie, I get one kind of ad. If I write some armchair philosophy piece on the relationship between technology and death, I get another kind of ad. And what are those ads for? Pretty much nothing.
<— Take a look.
What is there to learn from this? If you want to make money via Google's advertising network, make sure that your blog is focused, logical, and regular. If you want to post your personal thoughts about blogging, expect ads about 311 systems or studying seven months from now in India.
Postscript: I'm in good company, as usual. Trent Hamm, who writes the unusually good weblog The Simple Dollar, has just forsworn AdSense ads for very different reasons. He wrote about it today.